The 5 boulders YOU fail on

Things have been going quite well for me recently. In the last three weeks I've managed to do three of my projects in La Pedriza. El Belén (7C) was the first to go. The following week I managed to grunt and shake my way to the top of Far West (8A). It was nice to have Jack there as well to move pads around and confirm that it was proper 'ard. I also did El Viajero (7C+) this weekend despite throwing up from mild food poisoning just before the send. It's true that weight is really important factor!

What follows is an attempt at the Buzzfeed style 'listicle' about a subject I know a lot about: failure. Before my sending spree, I hadn't climbed a single boulder since October, despite being on rock at least twice a week. We fail for a variety of reasons, but an article wouldn't hold anyone's attention, so here's a nice list...  

1. You want it too much.

You've spent multiple sessions, you have all the moves absolutely dialled, you're well rested, the stage is set, and then.... nothing. Unlike the type five boulder, who graciously allows itself to be climbed once a certain amount of effort has been spent, the type one stubbornly refuses. My example of this is Origami (8A+): my own personal nemesis. I have done all the moves and made every conceivable link on this boulder, except for the only one that counts. At this point, I feel capable of climbing it and that I have learned everything it has to teach me. My sessions on Origami stopped being fun months ago, but I can't bring myself to walk away after having invested so much time and effort.

My only recourse is to just keep plugging away, hoping for that one perfect try that would put it to rest.  

My heartbreaker on Origami this October

2. Pain. 

OUCH! You get the general idea. Some boulders are just out to hurt you. Take El Belén, whose crux revolves around a kneebar between a spiky rock and a glassy foothold. The knee takes most of your weight for multiple moves. You can't just slide it in there because the foothold is so bad that you have to maintain pressure or it pops off. By pushing on the foot, you are actively contributing to your own pain.

There are three solutions to this: 

1. Deal with the pain.
2. Get a fabric kneepad or wrap a t-shirt round your leg. A bit less pain but it doesn't help with friction. 
3. Buy a big rubber kneepad and climb it as a 7B.

In the end I opted for option two. I quite like not walking with a limp but a real kneepad seems a step too far. Where will the madness end? elbow pads for offwidths?? Full body pads for thrutching!? And also I can't afford one.    

You can't quite see the tears of pain from this angle...

3 Weirdness.

That's just what bouldering is: weird moves. We train for this, we get the beta sorted and send. Every now and then you meet a move that completely disagrees with you. No amount of practice seems to yield consistency. Moves in this category tend to be body-position based or anything dynamic. My example was the crux move of El Viajero. I could never do it twice in a row and when I did do it, it seemed like pure luck. Falling and not knowing why can be incredibly frustrating.

 In the end, I just had to go from the sit every time and roll the dice. Complicating things was the fact that the crux crimp (left hand in the photo) is a type four skin shredder. You do it in a few goes or not at all.

Getting ready to pounce on El Viajero

4. Skin.

Some boulders, easy or hard, just have a hold that completely shreds your skin within a few goes. This in turn means less tries, more sessions and more rest days. As my skin is made of wafer thin parchment that disintegrates at the mere mention of rock, I am intimately familiar with these boulders. Massive Attack (8A+) is a recent example. After warming up on the moves, I probably get two to three tries before doing unspeakable damage to my skin. To this date, I have never left the boulder without bleeding all over it first. Because my my skin restricts the amount of times I can try, I can't properly dial the first move, which (of course) is a type three dynamic throw to a razor crimp.

Who knows how to resolve this one?

5. The holy grail: consistent progress. 

This is the perfect boulder for people who work hard, but lack the freaky ability to pull an improbable send out of the bag. Far West was like that for me. It was still hard, but consistent effort yielded consistent results. Every session I did a little more, building up from doing the moves to making progressively bigger links. Every single session without fail I would find a new piece of beta, or link another two moves. Unlike some boulders I could mention (Origami!) the send happened exactly when it was supposed to. I linked it from a move in, took some rest days and did it on my next session.

Celebrating at the top of Far West (from the original footage, which was way too dark to use)