When you’re on as long of a road trip as I am right now you start dissecting the elements of climbing into unnecessarily tiny compartments of information (some call this state obsessing). My most recent focus being red-pointing. In my current state of complete climbing submersion I now have the entire process divided into succinct quarters.
The first part is picking your hard project. This means getting the draws on, trying the moves, and seeing if the line is “possible”. You’re just imaging links at this point, checking out the crux, seeing if all the moves are doable. All in all this is a pretty enjoyable period of the red-point. No expectations, just good ole-fashion, wide-eyed possibilities.
Next is when you start to put the route together. You do all the moves, make the clips, and start to link through moves you never thought your weakling fingers could crimp through. I’ve decided this part in the process is in fact the best. It’s when you know you can do the route, and it’s just a matter of when all the planets align, conditions reach perfection and you do. Which brings me to the next stage...
The real attempts stage. This is when you know you can do the route, but you’re just not doing it. You weren’t warmed up enough, or you were too tired from your last burn. Maybe you had a brain fart and missed a hold you’ve stuck a million times before. This part of red-pointing really starts to suck. In the beginning it’s manageable “Oh I got it next go,” ect. But if this stage drags on too long you reach that funky point in climbing where you’re like “Wtf am I doing here, I thought climbing was fun!”
Of course this part of the process is the most of important element of the red-point. Mostly because it brings you to the next stage: sending, which those who see through the above stage will witness. Some of the most badass climbers I know out there are doing rad shit because they don’t give up. They stick with their projects and see them through to the end. Plus we all know the harder the fight the sweeter the send.
I’ve left a few too many projects here in Europe on this trip. I’d like to blame it on celebrity track downs for multiple video projects that allowed us about one week per area, just enough time to not do anything cool. Or the sweltering summer conditions, that we fooled ourselves into believing wouldn’t exist this” spring/summer in Europe. But really it was about being stuck in the red-point rut part of my project. In the end I’ll leave happy anyways, I may not have sent every line I got on, but through failure and all the attempts in between I got a better idea of what I could do.
Perhaps the biggest buffer is that this trip isn’t over yet. We head to South Africa in three days where we’ll be working with the South African National Climbing Federation on a slideshow tour that will take us through numerous parts of South Africa from Johannesburg, to Durban, to Capetown. We be hanging and climbing with SA’s super psyched youth team, as well as bringing climbing clinics to some of SA’s impoverished areas. We’ll cap our trip off with one month in Rocklands, where we plan to climb and only climb. I can only guess how long it will take us to pick up the camera again…