Dear Janet: “Is It Me or You?”

Our project over this past month, “Is It Me or You,” has finally been conquered in a redpoint fashion by me. Yes Janet, that’s right, the day you leave for Ireland I finally did it without a take! Allow me to give you the suspenseful play by play…

First, for those of you that do not know about this route, it is a 9 lead, half of which is on the roof of the gym, that’s right – climbing horizontally along the ceiling. It was set about a month ago, at which time Janet and I made it a project, aiming to do the route without a take. Although it is only a 9, it is lead and it requires alot of brute strength (a weakness of mine) to push through to the finish.

So, Janet, it was me, Steve, and Stu. We all warmed up and before I got too tired I wanted to do Is It Me or You. I stood gazing up at the multi-colored taped wall and visualized for a few moments, nervous about tiring myself out at the first crux (second draw), I began. I reached the second draw and clipped it without any problems, but as I was about to move up through the crux I fumbled with me feet. At this point I thought to myself, oh fuck – I’m done, but I managed to recover and bump off the triangle with my right hand and match hands on the jug above. At this point, the moment either hand came off a hold I shook out my arms as I moved from hold to hold.

Once I was on the ceiling things went fairly smooth for a few moves. I got my left hand around the dolphin, leaving skin and blood from my knuckle on the ceiling. I reached with my right hand to the hold on the ledge, and then – both of my feet peeled off! Arms spread above my head, hanging from the ceiling, both feet dangling in the air, I thought (or maybe it was out-loud) Mother-fucker! Don’t fall now-I’m nearly there.

…..I found out later that at this point Stu stopped watching, probably because it’s hard to recover from a dangling from the ceiling position. And, Tara arrived at the gym at the moment my feet peeled off and she was pretty much thinking the same thing as me….

So, there I was dangling. I swung my feet back up to the ceiling and got them on the stalactite and moved quickly. I matched my right foot (heel-hook) on my right hand hold and clipped. I moved my left foot onto the tip of the dolphin pushed twice and deadpointed to the finish.

No Takes. Redpoint. Zing!

*Climbing Lingo

~ by finnland on February 1, 2007.