Last week Todd and I both climbed well, perhaps a little too well for a first day out. If day one we climbed like mid-season, for day two we must be in end-of-season form, right? Wrong.

The mistake was probably jumping on To Be Or Not To Be so early in the day. Neither of us could get up it and it was my task to fall/be pulled to the top to get our gear back. Both pumped, Todd still turned in a fine lead on Criss Cross Direct and my performance as follower was about par for my particular course (that route hates me, I swear).

Not particularly daunted by my failure on To Be Or Not To Be, which is hard, or Criss Cross Direct, which is hateful, I geared up for Crass. I’d never led it but towards the end of last season Steven and I TR’d it straighforwardly and it was “on the list”. As soon as I put on the rack I knew I was in trouble. The crux move there is part dynamic, part wiggly and I suddenly couldn’t imagine doing it weighed down with dangling obstacles.

I’ll say this for myself–I did try. I got the gear in and made a half-hearted attempt and took and made a two-thirds-hearted attempt and dangled and finally made a three-quarter-hearted attempt and took a real fall. So there’s my first lead fall for the season out of the way. It took until day two.

Even Todd couldn’t finish it up for me, though he was brave enough to downclimb and clean. I’d planned to go up Le Plie to get our gear back but Todd hates Le Plie, so perhaps it wasn’t a question of bravery so much as aversion.

If we’d been there alone we probably would have quit at that point, but we were in a car with another friend who was a full-dayer, so instead we ran up four more pitches of sub-10 climbing in about two hours. Thanks to Scotty we got in a lot of nice climbing for the day and got to restore our bruised egos. The familiar lines felt more fun than hard, though there’s more climbing on P2 of Inverted Layback when it’s all done in one pitch than I’d previously realized.

Farewell to Arms, 5.8 (Dawn)
To Be Or Not To Be, 5.11 (TR)
Criss Cross Direct, 5.10 (Todd)
Crass, 5.10 (no one)
Alfonse, 5.8 (P1: Dawn, P2: Todd)
Inverted Layback, 5.9 (Todd)