Far from onsighting new routes with a strange partner, today I’m trying to lead my nemesis Cris Cross Direct with my two oldest partners.  Steven and Todd and I have a lot of history and so do Cris Cross Direct and I.  Let me start by saying that I know of no route called Cris Cross.  Apparently you either go direct or go home.  I’d like to go home.

I’m not climbing the route well and I’m not conducting myself well either–crying, whining, freaking out over a perfectly safe situation.  I know all the falls on this route are safe because I’ve caught them (over and over, in some instances).  My emotion is coming not from the physical circumstances in front of me but from the mental circumstances behind me.  I’m replaying old memories and old patterns of behavior.  This route has made me feel bad, and Steven and Todd can be counted on to try to make me feel good.  I surrender to the comfort of being tended for past wounds instead of addressing the challenge in front of me–this move, this day.

Eventually I find a way through the opening sequence which I’ll record here, not because it’s the right sequence but because it’s what works for me and I’d like to remember it:  #1 as high as I can get it, right hand jams below it, left hand laybacks above it, step up on smears until left foot can get on lowest broken point of the arete.

From there I can see that I’m at the level of my gear and that brings a fresh wave of fear, but I stay with it to get the pin clipped and backed up and then stand up to where the real crux is.  In most recent toprope attempts at this route, I haven’t had trouble with the 5.10 move, but it does involve standing on a glassy smear from fingertip crimps with your gear at your feet, and so on lead I’m freaked again.  My mouth spews non-stop pleas for help and predictions of eminent death while my lower body remains calmly in place and my hands frantically touch every piece of rock within reach.  In other words, I’m clearly fine, just not willing to take that one second leap of faith onto my right foot to be done with the crux.

I millimeter my way to the finishing holds and pop in a new piece.  The drama is over for the day.  I’ve led Cris Cross Direct for the first time.  By some definitions, I’ve even led it cleanly, since each attempt (of about twelve) started from the ground, but I don’t think I’ll cris-cross it off the list just yet.  I’ve also embarrassed myself again, added to the legacy of agony and disappointment already accumulated on this route.  But today I recognize that burden is mine and doesn’t belong to the route at all.

Cris Cross Direct is a piece of rock–sometimes damp, sometimes slick, sometimes lacking in features, but never harming or judging.  The route holds no emotion.  All that resentment, shame and fear is in me.  I bring these emotions to it; it doesn’t bring them out in me.  This is a pattern of behavior I’m learning to break, though I can only claim progress, not perfection.  I look forward to being without unreasoned fear in the future.

It’s on the next route that someone almost dies.  Which goes to show that danger and fear are not that closely linked.  Out of a clear blue sky, Todd came within an instinct’s instant of falling directly to our feet in a replay of the Le Plie accident.  All three of us are familiar with the details of that accident.  If we hadn’t been doing something a little bit different, we would have known we were doing something dangerous.  But the seeming simplicity of what we were doing–top-roping a 5.8 we’d all led innumerable times–combined with the relief of being free at last from my hysterical lead and a desire to make setup slightly more convenient, kept us from analyzing the consequences of the deviation from normal procedure we were taking.  Don’t improvise!

I’ve accepted the fact that I might be involved in an accident some day, but I imagine a lead fall, maybe pulled gear or a swing into a corner.  There’s first aid, a carry-out.  Someone needs to go to the hospital.  I don’t imagine a friend’s body landing with a single sickening thud at my feet from eighty feet up.  That isn’t something I like to imagine because I imagine I’m immune from it.  There were over forty years of climbing experience standing there making the choices that were prevented from ending in death only by Todd’s body awareness at the last second, by the fact that hadn’t committed his weight to a useless rope before he had that moment to realize that something didn’t feel right.  I thank God for that moment and for his innate kinetic intelligence.  I won’t stop climbing over this, but I’ll remember to be careful of improvisations.  I’ll also remember that the danger isn’t always where the fear is.

Birdland P1, 5.8 (Dawn)
Transcontinental Nailway, 5.10b (Todd)
Cris Cross Direct, 10a (Dawn)
Broken Sling, 5.8 (Steven)
Inverted Layback, 5.9 (Todd)