Blogged Et Animam Levavi

I went climbing today for the fourth time in my life – good stuff! I was working on my technique, so I was mostly climbing easy 5.7’s. However, when I say “technique”, I mean whatever I think is the right way of doing it. My hands still hurt after each climb and that is a sure sign that my “technique” is nowhere near where it should be.

I also tried climbing a very short 5.10c a couple of times and that is where I got some very interesting results. What’s interesting is that the difficulty of this route meant that I couldn’t just muscle through it. There were no good handholds, and I had to use my legs for climbing. And then the tiny crimps were so far apart that I often had to bend my body in very odd ways and cautiously move from one position to another while keeping balance – thanks to my yoga classes I was able to handle it pretty well. In the end I failed to reach the top, but my hands were actually very well rested after the fifteen minutes of trying painstakingly and failing to attack the crux. I think it was a great technique exercise and I’ll do it again next time.