Upping the Game

So I wanted to go climbing in a place that is too hot in the summer. It’s south facing and not that high in altitude, so you kind of have to wait until autumn to go there. Zuestoll, it’s called. It’s not particularly popular because of the vomit inducing approach path.

We go on Saturday and choose the most mellow of climbs, maximum 6a according to the topo. It takes me over an hour to put up the rope on the first pitch. It’s got everything to hate: exposed climbing on rotten rock, and a now infamous traverse…while holding on to bits of grass. Seriously, a grass traverse. Feet pressing into non-existant footholds while doing a layback on grass.There’s no holds to be found on the rock, and the last protectable area is about 2 meters down and to the right, so if the bits of grass come off on your hand, you’d be swinging down and right like a pendulum clock into the other side of a chimney. I get to the to top and it’s my partner’s turn, but the next part of the climb isn’t even pretty. He goes up a bit, get scared (TOTALLY reasonably) and we call it day. And we come back the next day.

Sunday, we try to do another climb, this time maximum 6a+, so harder than the day before. There’s a four pitch access, so we’re already well up the cliff before starting this new route. And we can’t do it. He tries, I try, but it’s a long way between bolts and there’s no way to add anything, and we’re both scared.

So we finish by a well-protected climb that we’d already done, maximum 6b+. Do you see the irony here? We start out easy and get harder and harder until the climb we’re doing is protected and protectable.

We’d done this climb before but it was a while ago and we were younger. The annoying bit is that this climb is in the middle of the cliff. There’s four pitches to get to it and then another pitch to finish at the end. I thought we were done and my partner tells me there’s another 5c to get to the top….

I’m just getting to be a bit tired of difficulty levels being all over the place even on the same cliff. Maybe we should change the rating system with full on descriptions, as in “I climb 8a and found this pitch easy, but I’m kind of a macho jerk” (which would translate to around 6c). Or “I have really good health insurance and don’t even like my job very much, so if I fall here and break my leg I’ll be happy to stay home for a month or two” (that would translate to around 6a on crappy rock, or, heaven forbid, a grass traverse.)

We had good weather? I guess I need to look at the good side. We finished a climb. It was a nice day. And I’m done with the Zuestoll for this year, at least.