Cozy crew
Guillaume, Joana and I took a quick trip to TRC. I was convinced we were going to die in the minivan just getting there. I can't recall most of it since my eyes were closed, but it involved an on-ramp, an Audi, trading cut-offs, some hardcore tailgating, accelerating where there should have been decelerating, flashing of brights, and going fast enough that my palms started sweating. Oh, and Guillaume never stopped telling whatever story he was telling (you know that thing about stress and memory, right?).
Gym wasn't too packed for a meet-up night, and it was nice to see lots of people leading. G demonstrated a remarkable about-face in his approach by deciding to warm-up! Started with the Grand Traverse (GF: 63, BL: 49), after which I lead a 10 (blue, from last time), while Guillaume warmed-up on a 9 (pink) which caused him some grief (maybe cause he had an adrenal dump during his shit-crazy driving). Joana fought up a grovely 10 (pink) that involved some rather painful-looking body-smearing. I finished leading by trying the purple 10 but got burnt out trying to get to the second chain on the roof, after which I switched to working an 11- (red) and 11 (blue) on toprope. Sent the blue eventually, but couldn't manage one of the initial moves on the red, despite repeated attempts and beta from multiple people. Guillaume, despite his less than auspicious warm-ups, kept leading some 12s with Meghan. I think he now owes her his life in addition to Kenway. Joana kept at the 10s, ticking off a blue 10, and flashing a white 10+ that wandered all over the place (we'll still count it even though you slipped off the start :-). She's definitely getting stronger, pulling bigger moves from smaller pieces and tougher angles. Guess the jumproping is paying off?
Got to watch Meghan climb a 12 (dark green). She has crazy skills. Guillaume gave it a shot too, and when he got to what looked like the crux, gave us the quote of the night:
That's where you clipped from?!?!? I'm leaving.
6 comments:
My quote made me laugh. What an ending to a week of bad climbing!
Next week we'll try: driving slow, and climbing hard. Let's see if that works better.
You would also do well to ditch your warm-ups ;-)
I was thinking I would warm up on something meant for leading instead.
I'm curious - does your gym not rate with letters(ie 10a-10d, etc), or do you just leave those out of your summary? I'm still newb enough that the difference between a 10a and a 10d is pretty significant, but I guess if you can climb 12's they may all seem the same.
Letter rating seem to depend on the setter as well as the grade, but very rarely do they assign letter grades to anything rated less than an 11. And even on >11 routes, they really only use the 'a' suffix to note that a route is on the easier end of the spectrum for that grade. That said, they will give a route a '+' when enough people get on and are like, 'WTF!'. So the routes can vary a lot within a grade at this gym, which I don't mind so much as it gets me away from focusing too much on the grade, and more towards being able to assess whether a climb suits my style.
Yah, the grades at our gym are pretty general, I think in most cases putting on the letter subgrades would just be an exercise in overspecification. Certainly some 10s are harder than others, but it's subjective enough that 10 is fine (and probably more correct than an actual letter).
The fact that there are a bunch of different setters at our gym would make very specific grading designations difficult anyways.
BTW, just wanted to state that the 6 and 8 we led out here in SLC was way scarier for me than any 12 at the gym (except the Mad Russian 11)...
Post a Comment