Incomplete Perfection

Wow. It’s hard to explain how happy I am.  Adam Ondra made this statement after he sent the hardest route in the world La Dura Dura.  I say it now after sending the hardest route of my climbing career.  I didn’t really know what was going on when I made that final pull around the bulge and established myself on the victory jugs.  I just remember breathing very hard and being more focused than I ever have.  I reached quickly for the rope and brought it up to the chains clipping the draws and yelling “The impossible is possible!!!”, followed shortly by a lot of yelling and high pitched screaming.  I don’t really expect everyone at the crag to understand this reaction, but for me it was appropriate.  I can’t keep these feelings on the inside and so my outlet is to celebrate in a somewhat cathartic display of emotional diarrhea.  It came pouring out of me, I couldn’t help it.  I couldn’t believe it.  When you have been working on something for a seemingly incalculable amount of time, and when that something finally comes to a logical end point in the light of success, there is an overwhelming amount of conflicting emotions.  I felt extremely happy, relieved, scared, proud, euphoric, sad, prideful, and somewhat alone.  This route had become a part of me.  I had dedicated so much of my time, energy, essence, and self into this route, this path, this challenge.  Having finally put it all together in a seamless fashion was a bit jarring.  I kind of feel like an appropriate analogy would be to compare it to when your children (if you have children) grow up and finally leave the nest.  I was finally leaving the comfort of this paternal process I had undergone during my time working this route.  It had turned into my teacher; I loved it at times, was bored with it a times, I hated it at times, but I kept coming back to it because I had developed this intricate relationship with it, and I would hope, if I could be so bold as to romanticize this relationship even further, that maybe the climb developed a love for me as well.  Of course the rock is inanimate but the interaction between us has to be imbued with some kind of life, the story of my battle, of my growth through this route has to evoke some kind of energy and essence of its own.  Or so I would like to believe. 

This past season has been one of true success and obstinate progress.  In the last ten months I’ve been able to clamp down on my goals and follow through with them.  After a long summer spent chasing a job, and learning how to train for climbing I was met with the challenge of elevating my game.  I had been stuck in the mediocre goodness of 5.12 for my entire climbing career.  Every time I seemed to be closing in on my first 5.13a something happened, an injury maybe, a change in the weather, a social shift, a life change, etc.  For one reason or another it just never happened and as my life twisted and straightened, ebbed and flowed, I forgot about it. 

At the close of last summer I found myself at an all too familiar haunt, Little si.  This time I wasn’t going to divert my attention, let my motivation wane, or get distracted by social obligations.  I made up my mind that I was going to send my first 5.13a.  I learned how to invest, implode, explode, and then finally calm my mind and execute.  When I sent my first 5.13a route I had also set another goal.  It didn’t have anything to do with grades necessarily, but more to do with learning how to stay motivated.  My new goal was to never be completely satiated.  I wanted to develop an unquenchable thirst for climbing, for progressing (no matter how small), and for learning from and immersing myself in this art.  It has been 10 months now since I sent my first 5.13a route, and in that time I have managed to send 7 5.13a’s, 4 5.13b’s, and as of this past weekend, my very first 5.13c. 

For now, as of this moment, I feel happy, I feel accomplished, I feel like I have at least temporarily, validated my commitment to climbing.  There are times when maybe things don’t go the way you thought they would, you fail repeatedly on a route that you feel should be attainable or below your limit, you get shut down in the gym, or maybe you get injured, but it’s at these moments when you call into question whether or not the investments you make are worth it.  These moments are when you become vulnerable, and learning how to embrace this vulnerability and integrate into the fabric of this beautiful and complicated process is key to sustaining yourself and your motivation within climbing.  And ultimately it is these low points in which you struggle, in which you don’t see the point, in which you question yourself that define who you really are and what you really want in and from climbing.  So, in hindsight, I realize that it’s easy to be motivated and psyched all the time when you’re riding a send high, but the really integral piece that makes climbing lucid, that expands the realm of climbing and ultimately the spirit of climbing is the cultivation of an attitude of exultation in the face of failure.