My Kind of Cleaning

In answer to my previous puzzler—that was a real cliffhanger—here's the walkthrough for cleaning my route. Recall that this was my first time, so I'm describing what it was like, not giving instructions. Learn to climb from a qualified guide. I mean it.

First, think through the whole scenario and collect the gear you will need. Realizing you are one biner short when you are up in the air is too darn late. I needed two slings of webbing, each with its own locking-gate carabiner, plus an extra biner. For each sling, I used a girth hitch to attach one end to the front of my harness, then clipped the loose end with a biner into a gear loop at my hip. I hung the spare biner in a gear loop, too.

Next, you climb on top-rope back up to the anchor, and ask your belayer to "take" (take your weight; hold your rope locked off). You clip each sling into a hanger, to set up your personal safety system, and screw shut the locking gates of the carabiners. At this point, you should be held to the rock by your slings and not depending on the rope. Test this by asking for some slack, and noting that, as the rope goes slack, your slings become taut and bear your weight. Then you can ask your belayer to take you "off belay."

Now that you're set to hang out here all day, tie a backup knot to make sure you don't lose that dang rope: Grab a bight of rope and tie a quick knot and clip it into the spare carabiner. Because you're about to do the exact opposite of what your frightened little monkey brain would want you to do—you're going to untie the rope from your harness. And if you drop it, you will get to hang out here all day.

So, yes, untie the knot. The umbilical figure 8 from which you so often hang your precious hide. Untie it.

Remove the rope from the quickdraws and run it through the bottom links of the chains. We use the chains for lowering from the final climb out of necessity, but avoid using them all the time in order to minimize the erosion we subject them to. Retie your figure 8, untie the keeper knot, and retrieve your quickdraws.

Hoist yourself up a bit and ask your belayer to take, so that you can confirm that you are back on belay and the rope will hold your weight. Unhook your personal safety slings and clip them back to your gear loops to keep them out of the way. You are ready to be lowered to terra firma.

In addition to being a MYST-like brain teaser, I found route cleaning to be a good barometer of my mental state. Late in the afternoon, I'm hanging from the slings, and I think, "Okay, I have no idea what to do next... Must be time for dinner."

And it was. So we three girls drove back into town and ate three cheeseburgers, and they were very, very good.

Climbing Logistics

Great day of climbing yesterday with SheClimbs on Zoe's Wall at Reimer's Ranch--never too hot, patches of sunshine and blue sky, great company. I cleaned a sport route for the first time, and this was really neat. It's just like a MYST puzzle. I'll set up the challenge for you...

Goal: Before your climb, a teammate lead-climbed the route and set up an anchor for you at the top, using some of your equipment. Now you need to climb up there, retrieve your equipment, and get safely back down.

Setup: At the top of the sport route, there is an anchor system. This system comprises two hangers, bolted into the rock, and a few links of chain hanging from each hanger. Your lead climber clipped a quickdraw into each hanger, and ran the rope through the bottom carabiners of the quickdraws. (Here's an anchor using a rope instead of two quickdraws.) This allows many climbers to use this rope and anchor while minimizing the wear and erosion on the chains. But you want your quickdraws back.

Constraint: You're 25 or 30 feet in the air. You climbed that high using your own muscle power, and you've been climbing for hours already. You're tired. You don't want to fiddle with ropes and clips and slings while hanging by the tender fingertips of one hand above the rocks and trees below.

Solution: What to do? (Open the spigot to drain the water from the chest, close the spigot, fill the tower with water to make the chest float up...) I'll let you think about it for a bit. Perhaps if you look around, there might be some more gear here at the bottom that you could click on.

The problem-solving challenges is one of my favorite things about this sport. Hanging with great people and the sense of accomplishment are two more. You really make a connection with the woods when you're that close to the rock.

A little light reading

John Long's Climbing Anchors, a technical guide to setting protection equipment into rock, could be subtitled "50 ways to leave your lover."

Life-saving, perhaps, but not relaxing. Sheesh.

Lessons at the End of my Rope

The universe was conspiring to prevent me from climbing tonight—and trying to demoralize me, to boot—but I would not be deterred. After the rather manful weekend of Alt.Net, I needed Ladies Night at the gym, to get some hang time with the girls and scuff a layer of skin off my callouses.

I am reminded of two lessons that will dog me until I learn them.

If I climb only once a week, I will never improve. Whether it's muscles or brain waves, repeated, consistent practice is the only way I'll advance. For strength training, this is intuitive, but it also applies to programming and any other cognitive skill.

A Radio Lab article on sleep explains that, while we sleep, our brains gently wash away the memories of the day, turning down the volume on all of them until only the loudest remain. The next time you practice a skill, you reinforce its memory, amplifying it back up. If you practice a whole lot on one day but then drop it for many days before your next practice session, the practice is all but washed away. If instead you invest a moderate amount of practice every day, you will be able to build on your previous practice.

Which is all a way of saying: I gotta hone my craft every day. And climb three days a week.

The second lesson is about fear. I am so frustrated with the limitations I let fear put on my abilities. To nail the last move on a route, I needed to launch myself, just jump for it, let both hands leave the wall and pop. My legs would not comply; I was holding back.

Why? Well, 30 feet up is part of why, but really. I was safe and capable, and had nothing to fear but a scrape or a wrench or a bruise. Just some "naw, I don't wanna" in the back of my head, until I got angry enough to lunge past it.

Scott Bellware suggested that what differentiates the Alt.Net mindset is a willingness to be comfortable with fear, in the interest of improving. This stuck with me because it let me be proud of my fear; instead of a weakness, it is the indicator that I'm pushing myself and growing.

It wasn't all suffering for my art, by the way. I totally kicked the ass of a project I've been working for weeks, after collaborating on it with two other ladies. (Collaboration? Another lesson here? Sheesh, enough already.) The answer lay in reaching around instead of over, that one inch making all the difference.

My arms are burning, my hands are raw, my cuticles are filthy, and I'm a little bit wiser. It was a good night.