Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Core Strength: Knackered, Blinkered, and Spent

Today was a marathon day of rock climbing. Now with the kitten worries gone, my focus returned to sending. Our scooters needed to be returned at 1:00, so Kenneth and I went for a morning session at Arhi so that I could try and redpoint Angelica (8a). The route had felt the most challenging yet and I did not know if I would be able to do it this trip. While we were warming up on Kastor (7a), some funny folks from Scotland got on Angelica to see if it was a route they wanted to work on this trip. After they found out that I was on it the previous day, they asked me if it was desperate or do-able: I quickly answered “both”.

Those blokes were a good time and used all sorts of hilarious Brittish/Scottish vernacular that we had never heard. After the first had made it to the upper crux of the non-holds, he exclaimed many “bloody hell”s and “I’m way to blinkered” before he came down deciding this route was not for him. The second Scott decided to see the non-holds for himself and also came down from there. All the talk of this route being so difficult and not easy to redpoint in a short trip was not exactly encouraging. I tried to block out the negativity and believe that I was about to send the route. My first go, I gave it my best fight through all the sections of difficult climbing. I felt strong going into the upper crux but blew off the eventual target at the end of the non-holds: a jagged right handed crimper. I lowered off quite discouraged thinking that this route was probably too hard for this trip, but I wanted to do it so badly. The line was so beautiful and the climbing perfectly challenging.

After Kenneth had a couple of goes on Eros, I decided to give the route one last go before we had to return the scooters. I felt desperate through the bottom moves and was trying my absolute hardest to get to the upper crux: my arms and shoulders felt like rocks and I knew I would fall as soon as I got on the crimps. I looked up at the rest that I had dismissed as unreachable, but I had no choice. I did a huge move and was so relieved that the rest hold was good enough to recover. I was rejuvenated going into the crux and stuck the crimp with two fingers. Unable to close it down, I high stepped and deadpointed to the bottom of the upper tufa. I knew I would not let go after that and the climbers on the ground yelled “a la muerte” (to the death). [Mom sidenote: to the death is not a literal translation. . .it just means try as IF your life depended on it]. I have not been this psyched about a send for a long time.

We returned the scooters and hiked out to Odyssey to meet up with James & Laurel. I got on Marci Marc (13a) and was very excited to pull it off second go despite feeling so knackered and blinkered. Odyssey is a really cool crag and there was a cute French family there with their little four-year-old boy. We were all amazed how self-entertained he was playing with rocks and dirt and water paints while his parents climbed. To get him interested in climbing routes his dad would place little matchbox cars at various places up a climb and then send him up to retrieve them. Very cute!

Laurel was very psyched to send her first 7b (Luci Luca). James gave Marci Marc a good go and then the poor guy broke his front tooth repair (the result of a Buckhead driver vs. James’ bicycle). He is now missing half of one of his front teeth and we have been trying to decide if superglue would be a valid option. It has made for a good number of jokes- especially after the 1.5L of red wine that was consumed at dinner tonight. Rest day tomorrow: my arms are thrashed!