I'll admit that when I picked Mike up and the 17 degree air hit my hands as I shifted things to make room for him, for the briefest moment I questioned whether climbing was as good an idea as I had thought. By the time we got to Governor Stable though, it was already in the low 20s, as high as it had been at the warmest part of our previous visit. We ran laps around the parking lot, did calisthenics and stretches on the playground, and headed down the hill for a perfect day of diabase slopers.
After a quick warmup, including lots more jumping jacks and general flailing about, we settled in at the slab below Huck so Mike could try Pimp Smack and I could take another shot at Simon. For such a pretty little slab, with seemingly endless options for feet, those crimps at the back had never quite been within reach.
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| Photo: Mike Brest |
Fortunately Adam came down the trail and was able to piece together his memory of finishing it last year, using a high right foot that I hadn't been able to hold when I first tried it a few years back in my old soft shoes. My new Oracles toed into the diagonal edge perfectly, but I still found my left hand slipping off the sloper in the process of getting my foot that high. Then for some reason I decided to shift my hand down and crimp the bottom of the sloper dish, and instantly felt solid.
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| Photo: Mike Brest |
I've never thought of myself as particularly strong on slopers, but early this past summer I was at Gretna with a friend who I had always assumed was better on slopers than me, yet he was falling off holds that I found easy. Looking at how we both used other holds, we realized that my greater comfort on slopers was a result of my preference for open handed crimping, which puts my hand in a similar position to that of holding a sloper. While figuring that out was a good confidence builder at the time, realizing yesterday that the extra leverage from my fingertips can give me more of an advantage than increasing contact area felt like a game changer for me.
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| Photo: Mike Brest |
With about an hour left and the temperature up to a balmy 30 degrees, I wanted to see if I had the energy to keep the momentum going and finish No Moss, after peeling off the finish jug last time. Pulling on, the start hold didn't feel as good as I wanted, but then the first sloper felt amazing. And the next. And right when I expected to be landing on the pad, I realized I was comfortably hanging from the finish instead. It was a bit anti-climactic actually, aside from realizing that the climb somehow made me look like an angry pirate.
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| Photo: Mike Brest |
This may be an unpopular opinion, but here's hoping these cold days stick around a while!
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