Tranquilitas

Focus

No matter how much one would like to

Gandalf and The Godfather

We just had a long weekend, which I presume was Easter.

Off I went to meet Clinton at Montagu. I found him sitting here.

He was brewing Chai Tea.


At the same time, my good friend Roger was re-enacting the bolting wars of the 1980s up at Boven. I emailed my old friend Lance to ask advice. Lance isn't so popular these days, and no longer in demand by presidents and CEOs and the like, so he was happy to get my email. I asked him what he thought Roger should do, and he said he should drink the contents of this bottle.

On Sunday evening we were walking back from the crags in the rain when we received call from Ed February. An invitation to drinks ensued and Clinton and I ended up being graciously wined and dined by Ed and Nicky and enjoying the company of two other old legends, AdK and Tienie, with their respective families. According to AdK, Tienie had been nominated as their ropegun for the day, but turned out to have very few bullets in the chamber. He made himself feel better by chastising me for my poor morals and generally reprehensible behaviour. This was silly really, because there can be nobody more smug than a 51 year old with a 26 year girlfriend. It makes one immune to any jibes about ages gaps and the like. Boom.

After reminscing with wild inaccuracy due to failing our memories, Clinton and I headed back to the soggy campsite.

It would have been nice to have ended this post with tales of rampant successs and sexual conquest. Unfortunately it was not to be. Damp conditions ended Clinton's chances of success, while I didn't really seem to have a plan on my project, and gave it 2 burns in rapid succession before calling it a day, hours too early.

Apparently up at Boven, Roger was allowed back onto the God No Wall only after getting up Condor, on his 23rd attempt (sorry Roger). In spite of downing the entire bottle of Ingwe, his attempt on The Boltergeist came up slightly short.

Things stand this way at the moment:

Roger - the Godfather - is heading back to Boven in May
Clinton and Steve  - Gandalf - are probably going to be hanging out like two sad bastards in Montagu this weekend
Ed, AdK and Tienie are watching this with benevolent amusement while sipping on single malt.

Soloing

I listened with interest a few days ago to a number of my climbing friends discussing Matt Bush’s recent video of him soloing some hard routes at Montagu. The comments ranged from incomprehension at the soloing, and possibly even soloing in general, to condemnation for doing it in front of someone else and publicizing it on the internet. The comments made me wonder if anyone there had ever soloed anything, or at least anything remotely close to the point where success required trying, as opposed to merely scrambling up something.

From the judgments on Matt’s activities, it seemed that most viewed soloing as lunacy, to be done privately, and in Matt’s case, perhaps as proto-suicide. I said nothing but thought quite differently.  Soloing would seem to me to have little to do with flirtation with suicidal tendencies – it requires skill and focus of effort, especially as the grade goes up, and these are things that are far removed from suicidal thoughts and also things that are far from achievable when in a depressed and suicidal frame of mind. And what about the photographer? Was it fair on him or her? Given that Matt presumably thought he wasn’t going to fall off, and given that the photographer presumably was not coerced into hanging on a rope filming him, I cannot see that this could be considered unfair.

What about publicizing the soloing, on a viral internet clip complete with name and phone number in the credits at the end? Matt wants publicity. He’s socially different, at least by reputation, as I don’t really know him well enough to pass judgment. He probably feels misunderstood and unrecognized for his climbing ability. And isn’t this at the heart of the negative comment? I know wish I were good enough to solo those routes. And because I am not, I can narrow the gulf between Matt’s achievements and mine by criticizing the morality and sanity of his ascents…

Many years ago I was less timid. We all get like like this, and if you disagree, we can talk again when you have reached 50. And when I was younger, and a much better climber than I am now, I soloed a reasonable amount, although nothing like as much or as hard as Andrew de Klerk did. My impulses for doing so were one-upmanship and an incredible sense of satisfaction at controlling myself to solo routes that were moderately difficult, relative to the top standards of the day. Of course, in absolute terms the grades I soloed were easy, maxing out 23/24, but then we hadn’t climbed harder than about 27 at the time. Physically I suppose we might have been able to, had our tactics been better, but there you go.

When I soloed those routes, I certainly didn’t feel depressed or suicidal. Rather I felt that I was the king of the crag and soloed them with what I imagined was consummate skill. Neither were all of them short routes above good landings at my local crag (but lots were). Still, how many of us who disparage soloing at that height have ever fallen 10m to the ground? Other routes I did certainly didn’t fit into that category. Fear of Flight started off a ledge halfway up the crag – the big part of the crag. If you fell off, you would hit the ledge from 15 m, bounce off, and land at the bottom of the cliff in impenetrable jungle, completely dead. But I wasn’t going to fall off. Instead I was going to solo the climb with utter focus and precision and achieve a sense of satisfaction that probably trumped that which I had just experienced from doing the first ascent of Shadows in the Rain, next to it. My belayer was by that time at the top of the crag at this point – he had yarded his way up the rope and gear after belaying me on Shadows, and the real reason that my solo of Fear of Flight was unfair on him was the dreadful humiliation I subjected him to by rapping back down to the ledge and soloing a route he couldn’t do. I am really sorry about that, and Andrew, if by any chance you are reading this, I apologise sincerely for this event, and too many others like it.

Looking back, the solos I did really remain vivid in memory, much more than many redpoints of sport routes. Daylight Robbertsry, Vortex, Comes a Time, The Entertainer Direct… The satisfaction from doing those climbs has stayed with me in memory for a quarter of a century and I can still remember how those ascents felt, when many more recent routes have blended into some kind of bland recollective soup.

Still, some months after I had soloed Fear of Flight another climber pulled off the crux hold.

I might be getting weaker...

...but I sure as hell know more.

I got the clipping wrong on Catholic Schoolgirls on Sunday, electing to clip from a heinous position in the middle of the crux, and so didn't get up the route. Today I unravelled  an error in some calculations regarding liberation in confined bed crushing that a PhD student was struggling with.

When I was in my 20s I was strong, confident and ignorant. Like most people of that age. Now I am 50 I am not quite so ignorant.

Where I Stood

There were sounds in my head
Little voices whispering
That I should go and this should end
Oh and I found myself listening

Where I Stood 25th January 2012. Photo courtesy Micky Wiswedel

Thanks to everyone who helped along the way, both on this route and over the last 33 years. It was great.