Yeehaw! I knocked down one of my longstanding, personal multiyear goals yesterday, at long last. Yes, I know that grades aren’t everything, and that they shouldn’t dictate all sense of success in climbing, but when you use them appropriately without placing too much stake in them, they can actually be fun markers along your journey toward climbing improvement. For me, climbing a route of this grade on rock this steep seemed absolutely unrealistic even last fall – or honestly, even this past spring, when I did my first route a letter-grade easier here (BOHICA). After that, I checked out Pushing Up Daisies for the first time, and I found the high crux really quite challenging, something that seemed like it would be impossible for me to do after all the climbing on Flour Power. (I tried those upper moves PUD one more time in the spring, but again, found them really hard and never went to the top of the route).

Second-day on yesterday, I warmed up with a couple burns on an easier route, and then went for my first burn up PUD. Fell going to the anchors of FP, which felt like having my candy for the day taken away before I even got a taste of it – dammit! After a long rest (maybe an hour and a half?), I got on the route again. This time, I felt better than I had on my first day on, and I made it to the anchors of FP and started my resting up routine. I counted to 100 slowly as I shook out on the anchor jug. I do this because I know that given my physiology and personal strengths and weaknesses, the longer I can shake out on a jug, the more my full pulling power and strength gets restored. So as long as I’m not feeling any sort of forearm pump, I can just hang out for a long time, feeling better and better and better as I rest.

After this lengthy shake, I punched on up to the next rest, and repeated the 100-count. This rest has terrible footholds, making my toes go kind of numb from front-pointing on them, but whatever – it’s an even better rest for me than the previous one, since the angle eases up enough to improve my body’s ability to recover even more, as the lesser the angle, the more of a base I have for it. I pulled through the upper crux, flagging correctly this time, and again, punched up to the next shake – then two or three more moves to the final shake, donating a count of 100 to each of them (I’m sure this was hideously boring and tedious for anyone who happened to be watching, but whatever – climbing smart means taking advantage of your strengths to send). After the last shake, I did the final crimp move to the anchor jug with ease, feeling good – that felt really good! Super stoked. Kev estimated the whole route took me 45 minutes from bottom to top, which is insane, and it definitely didn’t feel like that long to me…funny how climbing makes you enter a weird time warp like that.

I felt pretty drained from the effort, though I explored The Madness bolt-to-bolt much later on in the day, just to check it out. It’s cool, and I totally enjoyed it, and I’m sure I’ll get on it again on this trip. Not sure I’m ready to delve into projecting it seriously (is anything serious about climbing, though, really?) quite yet. I still have to finish my other proj, and I feel a push to tick off some easier climbs for a few days, maybe, just for a mental break and for fun. But I’m super psyched on so many counts – to send the climb, to have it feel like such a great time, to do it on a second-day on, to be warm and dry in the pouring rain today (happy I designated today as this week’s rest day), excited to climb and then train tomorrow, and super excited at the awesome forecast for next week here; it looks brilliant.

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