Climbing is so amazing: the intensity, the variety, the depth of the experience and the breadth of the challenge. It’s never the same day twice and it’s never the same route twice.

On Sunday I took an old, familiar partner, my ex-boyfriend Todd, on a new trip. “I’m going to let you lead everything,” he said. Which was fine with me. I had an agenda. My agenda was to do some routes that intimidated me with a partner who reassured me. Or, as I said to my mother the day before, “I only want to be worrying about my own end of the rope.”

I think I always knew about the no-hands rest on P38 (climbing with Todd you can’t help but know everything about every route), but it was never so crucial as when I had to fiddle in a few pieces before the step up to the start of the crux. And so I never knew that it hurt.

“This is the pumpiest no hands rest I’ve ever been at,” I grumped down to him, shifting my left foot and examining the crack for placement number three. (I don’t know why three. Because he said so and he knows everything about every route. But placement number one had been the best of the lot and it was getting silly.)

I don’t think I knew about that finger lock going into the crux. (If I did, I knew I needed to let go of it. Not such an easy thing to do on lead.) And the finger lock below the rocking rock. Hadn’t I always grabbed the rocking rock? But the finger lock is better when you absolutely, positively don’t want to fall because hey, that piece is way down there by my feet already. Sheesh.

I’ve climbed P38 more times than I can remember, but I never stood beneath it eyeing the dark streak–wondering if it’s rock or wet–when it was my own foot that would be smearing on it first. I never knew how deep a breath it would take to launch into the crux sequence or how pumpy the easy moves at the top could feel afterwards. I’d never built that anchor, never lowered off that route. Todd had never followed it.

It was a new day made out of old stuff.

Ken’s Crack, 5.7 (Dawn)
P38, 5.10 (Dawn)
Ape Call, 5.8 (Dawn)
Ape and Essence, 5.9+ (TR)
Size Matters, 10c (Dawn)
The Blackout, 5.9 (Dawn)