Sweet Dissatisfaction
Climbing is hard. It makes us uncomfortable. If you’ve climbed long enough, you’ve probably had moments when you questioned why you keep doing it. Is all of the discomfort even worth it?
Curiosity is one of our most basic, intrinsic motivators – it is an innate human drive to explore novelty, to seek knowledge, to learn, simply for the sake of gaining understanding. In his book Curiosity, Ian Leslie called curiosity “the sweetest form of dissatisfaction.”
We don’t climb to be comfortable, we climb to explore challenges. (If you don’t want to be challenged, bail now. Pack up the climbing shoes, head back to your couch. Or rather, stop reading, close the window that’s open on your device and snuggle into the couch – this article is not directed at you.) Challenge means you will fail. You'll be anxious or downright scared. You’ll get flustered. You’ll fall off. Again. And again. You’ll feel frustration. Discomfort. Dissatisfaction.
“Curiosity killed the cat…” The often shortened idiom has cast curiosity in a negative light, but the full saying actually goes: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.” If exploring challenge is that sweet dissatisfaction, then gaining understanding in our “failures,” in our discomfort, may in fact be what keeps bringing us back to climbing.
Discomfort isn't something that we automatically get excited about. It isn’t natural to want to engage with it. So how can we turn discomfort into something that we actually want to explore? How do we tap into curiosity’s deep well of motivation? What makes us feel curious in the face of anxiety, fear and frustration? It's all in asking the right questions. Curiosity appears when there is an information gap – a space between what you know about something and the information you perceive you don’t yet know about that thing. An information gap requires you to know enough about a topic to pique your interest, but not so much that you feel like you know everything that is worth knowing on the topic. Asking the right questions illuminates the information gap.
The upside is, we know something about rock climbing and ourselves, plus there's always more to learn. The downside is, when we get caught up in those uncomfortable emotions, we don’t automatically respond in a way that provokes curiosity. We forget to ask questions or we ask the wrong questions. For example: you’re anxious about falling or failing. You’re just overwhelmed and blinded by that uncomfortable emotion and that’s all you’re able to focus on. Or if you’ve already fallen, you might ask (or your partner asks): why did you fall? Or you might even look a little deeper and ask: what did you learn? What could you do better next time? While these questions might provide useful information to reflect on, they don’t necessarily spark your curiosity. The questions are too simple (even if they are difficult to answer). These are questions that have a distinct answer embedded in them. They won’t necessarily shine a light on an information gap. In order to tap into the motivation of curiosity, we need to ask questions that force us to explore something new in order to fill the void of an information gap.
You’re anxious before a redpoint effort and you hate this feeling! Try asking: what are you actually anxious about? What if the worst case scenario plays out? (Ex: you stick the crux, then punt. Now you have to climb it again. That cute crusher at the crag saw you fail, your friends tease you…) Really explore the emotion of anxiety. What does it feel like? Can you describe the sensation in your body? What does it mean to you? Instead of having a negative meaning, could it be an indicator that you are excited to try hard?
You’re climbing, about to enter a crux sequence, you feel more pumped than you’d like to feel here. You’re tempted to say “take” or just rush through the next sequence to escape this discomfort in your forearms, because at least you’ll fall trying. Instead, pause and observe the sensation. Why is it so uncomfortable? Is it because of what it means to you and how you normally react (by getting anxious, saying take or rushing through the sequence)? Instead of an indicator of impending failure, could it instead be a trigger for taking a deep breath and moving with more focus and precision? How hard can you actually try when you’re this pumped?
You fell. Again. Something didn’t go right and now you're frustrated. What is actually making you frustrated? Did you mess up the beta? Did you just give up because you didn’t do it perfectly? Why does this make you feel frustrated? Does it threaten your identity as a climber? Dig a little deeper. Explore the emotion of frustration. Can you describe the sensation in your body? What does it mean? Is there another possible meaning you can assign to it?
Discomfort is there to get you to pay attention – because something is important. Why is this climb important? Or why is climbing important to you, in general? Probably because it challenges you, so you’ve had to invest energy in it. Things we invest in become important. Climbing is hard and you fall or “fail.” This is what inspires you to invest in getting better. The above examples are just a few of many uncomfortable situations in climbing. The concepts can be applied universally: get to know the uncomfortable emotions and their meaning. Instead of avoiding them, explore them. Instead of fighting against the discomfort, can you accept it and try to assign a different meaning to the feeling? When you ask the right questions, the discomfort feels a little sweeter.
Goals: Antidotes to Negativity
Do frustration and/or anxiety plague your climbing sessions?
I’m gonna call you out here: frustration and anxiety have less to do with your actual performance and more to do with lack of intention in your climbing process. There are an infinite number of positives and negatives that you can discover when you analyze a specific climbing performance. Analysis is good, it’s how you learn. But when you overly identify with the negative aspects of one specific past or future performance – causing frustration or anxiety – it’s usually because you’re neglecting to take in the big picture of your climbing. The good news is, you can address this issue by defining your goals and consistently directing your focus towards your goals.
You might be thinking: “But Josie, I know what my goals are and the frustration and anxiety are about not achieving them!” But hear me out. We need to go further below the surface in the process of defining goals – from a big picture down to a detailed perspective. In order to manage your frustration and anxiety, it helps to be able clearly articulate three things in any given moment of climbing:
1. This is who I am as a climber ________________
2. This is what I’m working towards ________________
3. This is what I’m trying to do right now _______________
Let’s think of the above three statements as three types of goals, respectively: purpose, specific goals and clear intentions. Why are these important? Well, what we’re really trying to do is improve our overall motivation in climbing. Defining your identity as an athlete, what you’re working towards in climbing and the clear – in this present moment – intentions, increases your control over achieving success. Every little success causes the brain to reward us with dopamine, which increases focus and motivation. Focus and motivation lead to more success. Consistent success over time is what creates the momentum to stay motivated and positive when doing the hard things that are required for us to be the climbers we want to be (assuming that you don’t climb because it’s easy!). When we’re being the climbers we want to be, concern over isolated past and future performances have very little impact on our experience.
Defining who you are as a climber is about articulating the big picture of what you want to get out of climbing, what you love about it, why you do it: your “purpose.” This becomes the overall goal of how to approach rock climbing, day in, day out. For example, I climb for the feeling of being immersed in a playful experience of moving my body over rock. I love the challenge of puzzling through hard moves, of pushing my body to continue to hold on, even when I’m pumped or scared. I climb because it forces me to be present and it teaches me something new everyday. Knowing these things allows me to also know that I am succeeding in rock climbing, just by being present in moving my body over rock. And, importantly, it allows me to acknowledge that I am accomplishing my purpose in climbing by challenging myself, by getting pumped and scared, by learning – all things that, if looked at from a different perspective, could be labeled as “failure” instead of “success.”
Defining what you’re working towards is the more standard version of goals. I like to think about several categories within specific goals: performance, training and skills, and within each of these categories are short-term and long-term goals. A good formula in creating these goals is to start with long-term, performance goals, then think about training, skills and shorter-term performance goals that help build towards the longer-term goals. When selecting long-term goals, think about how they align with the big picture of why you climb. This helps maintain focus in training because you’re moving toward something that is truly inspirational, while also maintaining motivation by being able to check off specific, smaller successes along the way.
Finally, define clear intentions for what you’re trying to do in each session, each route or boulder problem. Intentions also build toward your specific goals, but have one very important element: intentions should be process oriented rather than outcome oriented. This means that an intention should be something like focusing on moving smoothly through a sequence, refining beta, trying to relax more in a spot that scares you, etc., rather than intending to send your project on this go. This allows you to succeed whether you send or not. This has the twofold benefit of reducing performance anxiety before a redpoint attempt and reducing frustration if you fall.
To talk about your goals or to not talk about your goals? There are two schools of thought on this topic. One side recommends sharing your goals because it helps to have others to hold you accountable and keep you motivated. The other side recommends to stay quiet about your goals. When you talk about your goals, your brain gives you the reward of dopamine as if you’ve actually accomplished the goal, so you don’t actually have to work for it, which actually decreases your motivation. To answer this question then, I recommend thinking about why you want to share your goals. We usually need a partner for our climbing goals, so it might help to share your goals with the people that will go out and work on a project with you. It might also help to share if you need a reminder of your intentions to keep you from getting too outcome focused. Share your goals if you need support. But share your goals with discretion, not just because you want to spray about what your working on!
How it works in practice:
You created a training plan based on a long-term goal. This specific goal inspires you because it has fun movement, a runout that challenges you to focus, a technical crux right at the end to test your endurance. You identify as a climber that appreciates both physical and mental challenge. You love the idea of this project, because one of the things you value about climbing is how it teaches you to manage your stress. Your training includes working on a short-term project that involves similar elements as your long-term project, but it’s a little easier.
You worked out the beta on the short-term project last weekend and think you could probably send today. The pressure is on and you start to feel anxious. Before you leave the ground your climbing partner reminds you that your intentions are to focus on moving smoothly through the first sequence and relaxing through the runout that scared you last week, because you know it’s safe.
Because you’re less focused on the pressure to send, you're able to relax and climb more smoothly through the first crux. You get to the runout and are still scared. You remember the intention was to relax, but it’s too late: you’ve been over-gripping and you’re already too pumped to do the final move. You think momentarily about down climbing, but again your belayer reminds you: the fall is safe. You decide to go for the move. You fall. It’s fine.
For a split second you feel the familiar frustration arise, ready to start the mental flogging because you “got scared unnecessarily, blowing the send.” But then you remember what your intention was and you have just done exactly what you needed to do: taught yourself that the fall is safe, so next go you can relax. Not only that, but part of why you chose this climb is because you wanted to get better at climbing through runouts for your long-term project. Now you know that part of refining the beta is to actually take falls (as long as they are safe!), so you don’t use extra energy next time. Then you remember that you value the way climbing teaches you to respond under stress. You were able to try the move rather than just downclimb, so you are also able to recognize progress in this.
Overall, you’ve reduced performance anxiety and frustration. You found success and now you’re even more motivated to try again, curious to see how well you can relax through the runout. And you just feel psyched on the whole challenge: climbing is pretty awesome! You’re operating on a lot of dopamine. We’ll just call this legal doping.
The Mystery Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Cultivating curiosity in challenging situations to manage our response to mental/physical stress and increase flow.
“Curiosity is the sweetest form of dissatisfaction.” – Ian Leslie (2014)
Curiosity is a basic, yet powerful state. You can likely recall a time when you experienced the drive of curiosity. But have you ever been curious about curiosity itself? I believe that by looking into our own curiosity, we can learn to cultivate it. The ability to bring a truly curious mindset to the day to day can dramatically improve the most challenging and/or stressful situations and help us to find flow.
I was inspired to share these ideas due to my own experience of using curiosity in challenge. In 2016, I had been suffering from bouts of anxiety, especially when climbing. I began working with a sports psychologist and reading books on performance. My mental training was still in its infancy during the following story. It was out of sheer necessity that I found a way and ultimately learned the power of perspective.
The paper explores how curiosity works and how it relates to stress and flow. Finally, there is a list of “tools” to cultivate curiosity for managing stress and moving into flow. Practice these tools to find the power of your own perspective.
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The Nose of El Capitan, November 2016
“Nooo.” I gasped into the darkness, watching my full water bottle fall. It hurtled through space below me, then out of range of my headlamp beam. Still staring into the abyss below, I imagined it falling the rest of the two thousand feet. After 11 hours of near constant climbing, I was two-thirds of the way up on the sheer face of Yosemite's El Capitan. Just below “The Great Roof”, I sat still for a moment on a two foot by two foot ledge, too stunned to move or think clearly.
Then it truly set in: I now faced another thousand feet of the steepest, hardest climbing, with only about two ounces of water left. And I was alone.
(I will spare the complex, technical details of how to go about climbing El Cap alone.) Instead imagine this: you are running a one-hundred-mile ultra-marathon. At about mile seventy you run out of water. Now you’re looking at the longest, steepest hill climb of the whole race. And oh yeah, there aren’t anymore aid stations.
Dread clenched like a fist around my gut.
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The Unknown
Curiosity | noun:
“an eager wish to know or learn about something” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2021).
“Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the mouth of a great cavern, in front of which I stood for some time, astonished. Bending back and forth, I tried to see whether I could discover anything inside, but the darkness within prevented that. Suddenly there arose in me two contrary emotions, fear and desire — fear of the threatening dark cave, desire to see whether there were any marvelous thing within.” – Leonardo da Vinci (Leslie, 2014)
While researching curiosity, I was left with more of it. At face value, it seemed like a basic enough concept. However, the scientific community has yet to agree on a succinct definition of curiosity. It is widely discussed as a drive for information. In his book Curious, Ian Leslie describes curiosity as a state that is unique only to human beings. He calls it “the fourth basic drive”, after food, sex and shelter (Leslie, 2014). This desire to learn and know may account for humanity’s ability to adapt, survive and thrive across such diverse environments and circumstances around the globe.
The basic drive for information is stimulated by a sweet spot in the amount of information one has on a specific subject. With too little information on a topic, our interest isn’t piqued, on the other hand, once we gain enough information, we lose interest in gaining more. When an amount of information on a topic is just right, we perceive an information gap – an awareness that there are things that we do not know. This not knowing can put us into the “curiosity zone” (Leslie, 2014).
The same information gap also has the potential to cause stress/fear/anxiety, depending on the context and depending on one’s mindset. Many factors affect the human brain’s perception of the unknown. It doesn’t always accurately differentiate between real risk and perceived risk. Many people experience stress beyond what is warranted for the situation and/or they may experience chronic anxiety.
On a spectrum of perception of the unknown, curiosity and fear may be seen as opposite ends. Each emotion along this spectrum is important to be aware of – curiosity can be pleasurable and help us deepen our learning and stress is a natural response to dangerous situations and should not be treated lightly. Remember: “a healthy fear of the unknown has allowed humanity to survive and thrive for millennia” (Baker, 2017).
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The Nose of El Capitan, November 2016
I knew exactly what needed to be done, there wasn’t really a way for me to go down from there: I had to keep climbing. Objectively speaking, with a certain amount of pure grit, I was probably physically capable. But then my mind began to fill with scene after scene of worst-case possibilities. These scenes ranged on a spectrum of somewhat likely to be fully irrational.
I sighed in defeat, leaned back against the wall and shut off my headlamp.
I felt the cool granite on my back. Eyes adjusting to the darkness, I slowly became aware of what, moments ago, had merely been an empty void around me. The stars seemed closer. I could hear the faint gurgle of the Merced river, weaving through the meadow below. The serenity of my surroundings was a stark contrast to my internal tumult. Aware of my insignificance in this vast space, I began to take a wider perspective. It was as if I was surveying the scene from somewhere outside of myself.
I had decided to come up here. Because it’s a spectacular place. And because it was a goal, a challenge I had set for myself. I inhaled deeply and let out a long, slow breath. What did I expect? I didn’t come up here to not try hard. As I pondered, I realized that every muscle was tensed in anticipation of suffering, of some hypothetical struggle. I noticed the clenched sensation in my stomach. Why does it feel like that? And what am I really worried about? What will it actually be like to continue? I wonder…
The feeling of dread shifted into interest – almost excitement. I wanted to explore the depth of my capability. I wanted to know what it was like to push myself that hard. In that desire to know, I found the drive to push on.
____________
What is flow?
Flow is experienced across every field, from sports to art and from businesses to playgrounds. Many descriptors can be attributed to flow, including: an optimal state of consciousness, an intrinsically rewarding experience, the merging of action and awareness, a loss of sense of self and time, complete absorption and a sense of effortlessness. Of the many definitions of flow, the following is perhaps the most succinct and therefore is a personal favorite: “Flow is an intrinsically rewarding state of absorption in which control feels effort-less” (Norsworthy, 2021).
Many elements come together to create flow experiences. The following five factors, particularly pertinent to this discussion, increase the chance of finding flow within an activity:
Motivation: pure, intrinsic motivation for the activity/the activity embodies our values.
Challenge to skill balance: a specific amount of challenge, equal to or just above our perceived skill level for the activity. Too much challenge creates stress, too little challenge results in a lack of focus.
Resilience: a growth mindset, focuses on process goals and allows us to see “failure” as learning.
Attention: being focused on this moment, here and now. “Optimizing the contents of your consciousness towards presence and absorption.” (Norsworthy, 2021).
Trust: a. Knowing that we are entering into a challenge and we have the skill set. b. We are able to push those skills because we have cultivated a resilient mindset. c. Therefore, we can let an experience happen, releasing into flow.
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The Nose of El Capitan, November 2016
Fingers wrapped around the familiar hold, sensing each grain of the rock, in just the right position. Toe on this crystal. Breathe. Reach. Hand settled into the crack, slotted against the natural undulations of stone. Every part of my being perfectly connected, present with movement through this space… flow.
About twelve hours after the “water bottle incident”, I pulled myself to the top of the Nose of El Capitan. I had climbed with very few breaks for twenty-three hours and been awake for around twenty-seven hours. I had only drank one liter of water. The first rays of golden light were touching the high peaks in the distance. I found water on the top, took a sip, sat down and cried. I watched the sunrise for the second time that “day” and I’ve never felt more alive.
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Cultivating Curiosity and Finding Flow
“Your doubts can become a good quality if you school them. They must grow to be knowledgeable, they must learn to be critical. As soon as they begin to spoil something for you, ask them why the thing is ugly? Demand hard evidence, test them… Request arguments and act with this kind of attentiveness and consistency every single time, and the day will come, when instead of demolishers, they will be among your best workers, perhaps the canniest of all those at work in the building of your life.” – Rainier Maria Rilke (2016).
The following tools can help cultivate curiosity and manage stress. They are building blocks to the five factors above that increase flow. The tools are all interconnected in engaging intrinsic motivation, creating optimal challenges, developing resilience and maintaining awareness. More specifically, skills that train the ability to regulate emotion will help maintain an optimal challenge to skill balance for entering into flow. These factors combined create a sense of trust, allowing us to release into flow experiences.
1. Breathe
The breath is a normally automatic function that is always there to use as a tool. There are a nearly infinite number of specific breathing methods. Among other things, these exercises can have powerful effects on our autonomic nervous system, either increasing our arousal or decreasing our sympathetic (stress) response.
Breath work is one component of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Mindfulness is defined as “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment” (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). The MBSR practices have been shown to help find an inner source of calm, move from fear to curiosity and stay focused. (Hjeltnes, et al. 2015).
Witnessing the breathing rhythm in and out is a simple way to begin to build curiosity, decrease stress and improve focus. This in turn can help us reach an optimal challenge to skill balance and find flow.
2. Ask questions.
In your day to day, notice when curiosity arises. Practice taking inventory of your physical and emotional experiences and your surroundings. Ask what does ‘x’ emotion feel like in the body, how can I do ‘y’ better, how does ‘z’ work the way it does? Recognize what it feels like to have an information gap that drives you toward finding an answer. Developing inquisitiveness builds a habit of curiosity and helps to be more aware from moment-to-moment of our mental state. Awareness is the first step in regulating our emotions (Walter, 2020).
3. Make learning a goal.
Ask what can be learned from this? Goals create focus. Focus improves attention. Learning oriented goals increase resilience by reducing outcome-oriented-goal pressure. Learning goals also naturally help us develop skills. Skills build confidence and can help create the optimal challenge to skill balance for situations that would otherwise be stressful. There is always something to learn, so we can always find success.
4. Accept the challenge.
Challenge is an essential part of finding flow. To be curious we first have to recognise that an information gap exists. When there is something worth learning, it is likely to be a challenge. If we aren’t challenged, we get bored! The challenge is here, you might as well embrace it.
5. Be playful!
“Play is the active part of creativity. Children naturally play with great bravery. They play with courage. They play because they are in the beginning. They are in that place where anything is possible. To a kid the unknown is a world waiting to be explored” (Baker, 2017).
Play is a basic, intrinsically motivated activity. Exploratory play taps into our innate drive for information. We become absorbed, focused on the task at hand. In play we embody trust, release control and find flow.
6. Practice
In order for these skills to be effective in highly challenging situations, two conditions need to be met: First, practice the above skills during less challenging circumstances. Second, acknowledge that you are capable of changing your perspective. Practice will help build the habit of inquisitiveness. Practice also builds a foundation of confidence that you are in charge of your experience. Day to day curiosity can lead to a dramatic shift in the experience of challenge. It can lead from feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place to finding flow.
Resources
Baker, E. (2017, Jun 2). Replace Fear of the Unknown with Curiosity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYrX3qvdNaM
Cambridge Dictionary (2021). Cambridge University Press. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/curiosity
DiMarco, I.D. Ph.D. (2020, Nov 17). The Power of Responding to Anxiety with I Wonder. Psychology Today Blog: Mom Brain. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mom-brain/202011/the-power-responding-anxiety-i-wonder
Hjeltnes A, Binder PE, Moltu C, Dundas I. (2015, Aug 20). Facing the fear of failure: An explorative qualitative study of client experiences in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program for university students with academic evaluation anxiety. Int J Qual Stud Health Well-being. 2015;10:27990. Published doi:10.3402/qhw.v10.27990
Kabat-Zinn J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future. Clinical Psychology-Science and Practice. 10(2):144–156. doi: 10.1093/Clipsy/Bpg016.
Leslie, I. (2014). Curious: The desire to know and why your future depends on it. Basic Books.
Li, D. & Browne, G. (2004). "The Role of Need for Cognition in Online Flow Experience: An Empirical Investigation" AMCIS 2004 Proceedings. 386. http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2004/386
Norsworthy, C. (2021). Flow Diploma Course. The Flow Centre.
Patenaude, M. (2015, Nov 5). What Drives Curiosity Research. University of Rochester. https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/what-drives-curiosity-research/
Rilke, R. M. (2016). Letters to a young poet. Penguin Classics.
Walter, L. LCSW (2020, May 21). Managing Uncertainty When Nothing Is Certain. Psychology Today Blog: Life Without Anxiety. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-without-anxiety/202005/managing-uncertainty-when-nothing-is-certain
Training Day
Silly shenanigans of a big route climber living in Lander Wyoming.
SILLY SHENANIGANS OF A BIG ROUTE CLIMBER, LIVING IN LANDER, WYOMING: Yesterday, I decided to try to climb a day of 5.12s. The real goal of the day was training for trying hard on big routes. But is was also a training mission for the more arbitrary goal of sending 12 x 12's in a day. I don't usually like to share these goals, but yesterday there was so much stoke to support me on my training day and it kept me really motivated! So I thought maybe it would be good to share.
On a training day, it is good to reflect on what could've gone better. *This is not beating myself up, as I am quite proud of my effort! AND, here are a few things to remember for next time:
1. MAKE SURE TO TAKE THE TIME TO WARM-UP WELL. I did my usual 5.10 warm ups, but skipped the .11+ crimpy route (sunspot) because it "doesn't count as .12." Normally, I would go to Bush Doctor, the .12 that I know the best and is easiest for me, but it was still too cold in the shade. So I opted for the sunny route, which happens to be probably the hardest of the routes that I would do all day: Hypernova. It has a very crimpy crux that I don't know very well. I had to try too hard for the send and I got flash-pumped. I then had to take about an hour of rest.
2. HAVE PLENTY OF TIME. I took my time through the first half of the day (because it was cold in the morning, then because I had botched my warm-up), then I wound up having to rapid fire at the end of the day, leading to my first falls of the day.
Which brings me to 3: STRATEGY FOR WHICH ROUTES TO DO WHEN. I wound up getting on one of the routes that I hadn't done in over a year at the end of the day, Mergatroid. It also probably has the next most difficult (after Hypernova) boulder sequence of any of the routes: about 3 bolts straight of tiny crimps with bad feet. It was essentially an onsight burn (a year ago for beta on a route that I had done only a couple of times is basically totally new terrain for my goldfish-like beta memory ability.) I messed up the sequence and gassed-out trying to lock off on dime edges. I worked out the beta, but only rested for a few minutes because the day was drawing to a close. Then my foot slipped on the first few moves on the next go. *sigh*. I got right back on and fired through most of the crux, but did a long move before getting my right foot up and alas, was too tired to pull out of the full extension (See point number 2). Too rushed to dial the beta in perfectly and too tired to not climb it perfectly. 🤷🏻♀️ Oh well!
4: GET TO KNOW THE ROUTES BETTER. I wouldn't say this was particularly an error, learning the routes was a secondary intention of the day. But now I have another plan: at the end of my project days, I will go refine beta on a 5.12 for next time!
5: TRY F***ING HARD. I do believe I actually checked this box – I was pumped and had to fight, almost falling on three of the pitches that I didn’t remember the beta on. That fight is part of what I love about rock climbing! So this is the final point on the list of “need to remember it for next time.”
I woke up last night with my fingers throbbing, but I’m one step closer to 12x.12s: I did 7x.12s with no falls in around 6 hours. Hypernova, Palladin, Bush Doctor, Bloody Endeavor (pictured, photo by Nate Liles), The Wilds, Achin’ for Booty, and Purple Galaxy. Thanks to Grace and Dennis for the belays and encouragement! And for all the fist bumps and cheers, from the Killer Cave to the Wilds! ❤️ the Sinks crew!