Fugue E9 6c - page 1 “Can I just have one more try and then we’ll go?” After years of hearing the same question, Claire knew exactly how to answer. She wouldn’t actually say no, just test my conscience. When it comes to a really big route, it’s probably the only way to get through. “You said four goes, its almost dark Dave. You can’t do it in the dark.”. “I’ve got the torch, we did come all the way up here after all”. I could feel my frustration with the route building up. I had to try one more time to make sense of why I kept failing on ‘the move’. After a long summer of bouldering, I was both better prepared and not for this line compared to my previous efforts on the top rope. I had stronger fingers, no doubt about that. I could stop and think on all but the crux move now. Despite this, the climbing actually felt harder and seemed to be taking a bigger toll on my mind than a top rope attempt normally should. I reasoned later that I had been missing the intense emotional involvement that goes with a big headpoint since ‘Achemine’ a year previously. With my headtorch beam skirting all over the rock as I aim and launch for each hold, I start the crux once more. I slap out right to the quartz, fingers curling into a tight crimp before my body weight drifts back, arch left and squeeze the undercut. I tense my whole body as I drag my feet up, letting out an audible ‘heave’ as my breath is frozen in the squeeze. I glance at the crucial edge up and right as my body falls away. My right hand whips up and extends but before I know what’s happened, I’m swinging through the air on the top rope. As I came off I blurted out an involuntary scream. As soon as I did I realised just how hard I was trying. It had been a long time since I’d had that feeling. When I first tried the route the previous year, after several days of effort I had actually nearly led the route. One evening I climbed it so smoothly that I decided to pull the rope and lead it there and then. Unfortunately the dusk came quicker than I could recover and I had to postpone the closure of an already long and drawn out process. Since then, three small holds on the crux section had deteriorated slightly on subsequent top ropes, tipping the balance of difficulty decidedly against me. It seemed that with every visit, the big lead inched further away instead of coming closer. I retreated again to undergo the familiar process of churning the climb over in my mind. I had visualised the lead in my head countless times. The problem is visualisation is a double edged sword! Failure was an inescapable possibility and must be prepared for, but the prospects in this eventuality looked bleak. A groundfall into a small boulder valley looked very likely despite some low gear. Even after the crux, a ‘Do or die’ placement of fiddly wires in a pocket in a very strenuous position terrified me. The image of hanging helplessly pumped from the pocket, unable to fiddle in the wires haunted me. I pictured just waiting until my two fingers slid out and I fell to a messy end. When this image began to dominate my mind every time I thought about the route, I realised I had a ‘head problem’. Despite what the psychologists say, I don’t think there is any easy formula to excise a mental block such as this. It’s against all natural instincts to ignore a screaming warning of impending danger and pain. I knew it would take a lot of hard thinking to break up these thoughts.
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