I’m not even going to try to think of clever titles for blog posts from now on. It’s just ‘day 8’ – the eighth day this season I have spent working Hard Boiled. Communists must love climbing routes. It’s cold, everything is blue/gray, everyone has serious expressions and rad facial hair, and at the end of the climbing day, before getting in line for communal potato soup, you get tattooed with a big government-standardized stamp marking your consecutive day attempting the same route you’ve been projecting since birth – ‘day 8000’.
I got on Hard Boiled four times on Saturday. That’s a lot. It felt like a lot. My middle 2 goes were redpoint burns and on both attempts I fell throwing out right to the crux crimp. Things felt better though. Every week is a little better than the week before. There’s a rythm I’m starting to feel and I’m changing little things like the speed of my footwork in the crux. Moving on the route is more natural and fluid. I feel a redpoint coming on. And I think my finger is getting better.