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In the middle of the summer when it’s possible to go climbing virtually every day, the most difficult thing about climbing hard is figuring out how to stay motivated. Of course, if you have the right partners who have that perfect energy, you can feed off of one another and really ramp up your game to a higher level. In a perfect world, it works that way for all of us. But for most people, our motivation and outlook occasionally need a reboot. Here are some tips to help you revamp the way your climbing is going in the middle of the most intense climbing season of the year.

1. If you don’t have a project that’s making you push to your very limit, find one! Have an objective, a goal, a route or boulder problem that gives you enough obsession juice to keep you coming back with all the drive of someone running for his life. There’s nothing like having a must do project to keep your laser focus and get your spotters and partners screaming “go for it.”

2. Go to a new climbing area or, better yet, take a full on road trip to a crag that you’ve never been to but have been dreaming about. And while you’re there, make sure that you don’t just climb with your partner.  Meet the locals and be willing to get sandbagged in the process.

3. Watch what you’re eating and drinking. If you’re out slam dunking donuts and chugging down an extra large coffee on the way to the crag, you’re probably sabotaging your best energy before you get to use it.

4. Take a few days off. If you’re climbing day after day and not getting enough rest it’s almost certain that your body is breaking down and you need to give it a chance to rebuild and be ready for the hard climbing that you really want to do. If you feel totally burned out, you may even need an extended break from climbing. Take it, and come back with all the vigor of a lion.

5. While you’re taking a rest from climbing, try doing some cross training. Jump on a mountain bike, do some trail running, or go swimming.

6. Change climbing styles. If you can’t allow yourself to take a break, you could really benefit by doing some different types of climbing. If you’ve been working really steep, reachy routes, get off the thug routes and try getting on some thin face or finger cracks. A change is often as good as a rest

Have you been thinking about bolting a new sport climb? If it looks like it’s going to be an excellent new route, a great climb or even a work of art, then do it and do it the right way. Before you start, there some things you should think about… Will you be proud of it? Will other climbers repeating the route want to talk about how good it is? Will they talk about its aesthetic qualities?

New route development is both an art and craft. The skills involved are many. Although difficulty is obviously a

Bolting on Rappell

consideration, it should not be the dominating factor. The line you are considering should be clean, defined, separate, and long enough to qualify as a lead route rather than a top rope or boulder problem. As climbers and first ascensionists, we have a responsibility not only to ourselves but to future generations. In sport climbing the importance of the first ascent has changed since bolted routes, unlike gear routes, can never be repeated in the same style as the first ascent party did them. In the case of bolting on lead, there could be scary hooking, or in the case of drilling on rappel, everything was foreseen and holds could have been marked ahead of time. Such is not the case with subsequent parties they neither have the potential for falling off hook or the luxury of pre-investigating every move. Guidebooks on bolted sport areas don’t list the names of those who are responsible as often as in guidebooks full of traditional routes. Additionally it can often be more significant to know who has accomplished the first flash ascent.

Many methods are being used to create new routes. Park officials, climbers and the general public are no longer as concerned with the style used to put in the new route as they are with the finished product and its environmental impact. It’s important to respect local standards of an area. It’s also important to create routes that are safe and have as high a quality as possible within those guidelines.

If your vision is outside local standards, go exploring elsewhere. America is huge and has plenty of quality routes just waiting for the intrepid artist. Let’s face it, on difficult sport routes it’s almost impossible to put bolts in on the lead if they are to become classics, simply because good hook placements are not necessarily good clipping positions. How many times have you been on a climb where the difficulty was the clip rather than the moves? How often have you heard the expression “the clip is the crux”? Perhaps you’ve heard someone say “it’s a great route but the clips are really desperate”. Isn’t it about time we just hear someone say that a climb is a great route. After all, gymnastic climbing is what it’s all about on sport climbs not gymnastic clipping. I’d like to argue that bolting a route on lead may be an ego trip for the first ascensionist because subsequent climbers will just clip the bolts.  It is true that some routes, especially extremely steep ones, don’t lend themselves to rappel bolting. In that case putting them up on the lead from hooks or other gear is a necessity. Otherwise, the only benefit is that the first ascent bolter experiences a heady rush of fear from rattling sky hooks and the bragging rights of having done it that way. As stated earlier, the first ascent thrills are unrepeatable. The focus to the first ascent party should be what they will leave behind for others to follow and nothing that has to do with ego. In the next week, we will be putting in a new article on bolting the right way. Hope you enjoy it.

I don’t know, maybe this little trick has come out in Climbing magazine or Rock & Ice. I can’t remember if it has, but you’ll let me slide on this one I hope. It’s smoking hot at a lot of climbing areas right about now. Everybody’s ducking for shade or heading to the high country. If you don’t have the option of getting at about 8000 feet of elevation or higher there is one easy way to at least keep yourself from frying while you’re pulling on some hard bouldering moves. I first saw this years ago when a climbing partner named Don had a bouldering posse at Hueco in early May. By then daytime highs are already just about hitting 100. The season is over unless you live in El Paso. But some people just can’t quit on their projects until there is no other choice. Don was begging for an end of season run.

Everyone had some kind of equipment, not just crash pads. One person had a huge swath of cardboard at the end of a long stick as a mobile shade machine meant to protect both climber from overheating and his eyes from the sun blast as he pulled out from underneath huge ceilings. But the final piece of gear, the one I want you to know about is the spray bottle. As Don climbed along underneath steep overhangs in the sweltering heat of the day one of his posse members was spraying his bare back with a mist of cool water. The guy with the big cardboard was fanning him until he got to the edge of the ‘hang and needed to make shade. Don didn’t hit his V10 project that day and had to drive back north to Colorado. The one thing he did have at the end of the day was energy. In previous years, even on cooler days, he would’ve felt smoked, but now with the cooling spray he was able to muster up enough energy to give it everything he had.

If you’re out there broiling you might want to stop for a spray bottle, or better yet head to the high country.

In the world of climbing the things that are really making the news these days are incredibly fast ascents of alpine walls and extremely difficult free ascents on big walls in Yosemite. Traditional climbs that have a high potential for injury at a very high standard of difficulty have always raised eyebrows in the climbing community. It still shocks us to see someone who could’ve died and yet pulled off a climb that the next day he or she fell off of on top rope. But more than anything else, the spotlight is on youth. Only a week or so ago, a 13-year-old successfully summited Mount Everest. In the aftermath, a law has been passed in Nepal to prohibit anyone from under 18 years of age from climbing Mount Everest. Equally phenomenal is the number of extremely strong young climbers who are approaching the difficulty standards that seemed to be possible only for climbers in their 20s and early 30s. Why should we be so surprised?
If we look back at the history of climbing, the progression makes it clear what the future will be. Phenomenal ascents of big mountains have traditionally been accomplished by older men. Even to this day it’s not unusual to find men in their mid-40s or even older attempting the big peaks. Warren Harding spent 27 days on the Wall of Early Morning Light and was in his 40s when he did it. At the same time younger men like Royal Robbins were competitively upping the ante of difficulty on routes nearby.  As the emphasis of the 1940s and 50s shifted from big mountains to big walls in Yosemite, age ranges also began to drop. Men mostly in their 20s and 30s (excepting Harding) were hitting the big walls during the golden age of Yosemite climbing. Even though the commitment of climbing on big walls didn’t equal that of 4000 m peaks, it was still phenomenal.

The ’70’s
As the 1970s wore on, the first one-day ascent of El Capitan was ticked by a group of young bucks. Jim Bridwell, John Long, and Billy Westbay were decked out in full Jimi Hendrix regalia to show what was possible. The Honemasters in the 70s were breaking through to new standards on a regular basis. It was now guys in their early 20s and one phenomenal youngster named Ron Kauk who were puffing out their chests and letting everyone in the world know who’s boss. The status quo remained for several years until, in the late 1980s, the sport climbing wave hit.

Sport Climbing
As the trends that began on French limestone spread worldwide, standards of difficulty began skyrocketing. In the USA, beginning at Smith rock, Oregon the upper limits of what was possible were being explored. Climbers like Alan Watts and Scott Franklin were pushing upper 5.13 and into the 5.14 range as early as 1990. Even still, these climbers were in their 20s. It simply didn’t seem possible that young kids could have the technical experience and raw physical strength to pull through the superhuman moves that were required for the most difficult rock climbs that were being established at the time.
After decades of the cutting edge of climbing being established by strong young adults it came as a total shock to the climbing community to see gangly teenagers ripping through the grades of difficulty as if they didn’t exist.
The answer as to why is fairly simple to understand. In virtually all other sports requiring extreme agility, high-strength and dynamic movement, teenagers have always been the dominating force. In sports like gymnastics and figure skating anyone over the age of 23 or 24 was considered to be a dinosaur.  If they were still holding on, it was usually with huge amounts of physical therapy and doctors attending to their every injury. At any moment a superstar could be turned into a sports commentator. The days of doing gave way to days of watching and talking about it.

Sponsorship
In mainstream sports, sponsorship has always given the upper hand to the best athletes. Anyone who is good enough could have money from Nike, Chapstick or Adidas pouring in. Not so in climbing. Being a professional meant getting three free pair of La Sportiva shoes and a season pass to the local climbing gym.

Everything Changes
In the last couple of years however, increased media attention, high quality, broadly released videos and more and more frequent World Cup competitions, has money for sponsorship is going out to more than just the top three or four climbers in the world. The best of the youth, like Adam Ondra, can travel to any crag that they like, have a personal trainer and a stipend in order to ensure that they are at the top of the game.  Their sponsor’s logos are seen on pictures in every magazine and by the spectators at the heavily attended European competition circuit.
With this shift from young adults having some disposable income and all the time on their hands to get stronger to teenagers now having some semblance of professional sponsorship everything has changed. Youth now have the mobility needed to be at the places where the hardest climbs are being worked and professional level training and trainers will coax every drop of ability out of them. As the trend continues, more and more 15 and 16-year-olds will be pulling into the 5.15 climbing range and the most difficult climbs will be within the grasp of the youngest climbers.

We shouldn’t be surprised…
Sport Climbing has just entered into a stage of maturity where it’s beginning to act like other sports.
As to the rest of the sport of climbing, be it on big walls, dangerous traditional routes and big mountains, these realms should responsibly be left into the hands of older and more mature climbers.

Strong egos and predatory territorialism are nothing new to rock climbing and mountaineering. The golden age of Yosemite climbing is footnoted by competition, backstabbing and route erasure. Bolt wars went on for over a decade. Climbing areas in Connecticut and California were hard hit by clashes between traditionalists and the new wave of sport climbers equipped with roto-hammer drills, plenty of free time and the power of the almighty trust fund.

Enter the new age of enlightened sport climbing and bouldering. The days of controversy are over. Traditional areas

Chris Sharma

are traditional areas and sport climbing areas are sport climbing areas.  Those in Spain and the Far East have endless miles of beautiful overhanging limestone. There is no need for competition anymore. The field is wide open. There’s so much hard unclimbed rock that every aspiring Strong climber can have a project with nary a person to attempt to usurp her / him. Or at least so we thought…

Chris Sharma and Nalle Hukkataival are two of the most unlikely rivals in the climbing world right now, or at least they were. They’re both really nice guys. Sharma is the quintessential Zen master. Very little seems to bother him and he embodies the word “centered”. Nalle on the other hand is the picture of enthusiasm.  He’s ready to take on the whole world with a smile. He lives to climb and he wants you to know that he’s enjoying it.

Back in April 2010 the storm clouds started to brew over what is potentially the hardest sport climb on earth between Chris Sharma and Nalle Hukkataival. According to Nalle, “When I went to Spain, my main motivation was to try a very well known project, but I was not allowed to try it.”

The project he was not allowed to try was Chris Sharma’s First Round, First Minute (FRFM) at Margalef.

Nalle Hukkataival

Hukkataival continues, ‘When I arrived in Spain, Dave Graham told me he had been working on it with Chris, so that also meant it must be open. Before I ever got on it, Chris asked me to give him a chance on it, so I did.

Later on I found it extremely weird standing there on the ground, watching Dave Graham and Dani Andrada trying FRFM, when I wasn’t allowed to.’

Sharma found out about Nalle’s intention to try First Round First Minute by reading Hukkataival blog, Chris Sharma wrote at Björn Pohl’s The Lowdown:  “I found out his aim that he came to Spain specifically try First Round First Minute by reading his blog.”

For anyone who has followed the career of the Sharma, the fact that Sharma would even take note of someone else’s intentions regarding his climbs is remarkable. The egoless one seemed like he might feel threatened. The question is, why?

It’s no new news to anyone who’s been around the climbing world that the video production company BigUp uses Chris Sharma as the centerpiece of most of their videos. One of their techniques is to show Chris on his latest project.  Sharma is usually groping fiendishly at the hardest move on the hardest rock climb in the world that has yet to be done. He’s flying off the crux move screaming at the top of his lungs. Chris walks away unsatisfied, but promising to return to hit the crux when he’s stronger on his next visit. Of course, in BigUp’s latest video, Progression, Chris is seen working his project First Round First Minute. At the end of the video Chris succeeded at the hardest route in the world Jumbo Love, at Clark Mountain, California. But First Round First Minute was left dangling in classic BigUp style.

It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out what the featured Chris Sharma success would be on BigUp’s next video project. The fact that Chris was allowing his friends Dave and Dani to work as route is not too surprising. They wouldn’t grab the prize that BigUp needs for the next video, right? But Nalle has no such investment.

According to Josh Lowell of BigUp  “We have never asked or told Chris to “close” one of his projects. From a filmmaking perspective it actually would have been really exciting to watch several top climbers battle it out for the FA, but Chris did not want to turn his long personal epic with the route into a competitive spectacle / circus. That was his decision to make, and we understood and respected it.”  Lowell continues later on his blog… “It was never “officially open” or “officially closed.” Chris swapped belays and attempts with his regular climbing partners, Dani Andrada and Dave Graham, and they were excited for him to succeed on it, and to try the moves and help him refine beta. After months of effort, Chris got to the point where he was falling at the last hard move. He fell there over 20 times, thinking every attempt would be the one. When he realized that Nalle had flown in from Finland on a mission to try the route, he asked Nalle to give him some time to complete it first, and pointed Nalle to other short, hard projects he’d bolted. Nalle agreed.”

After Josh’s blog post, there wasn’t a lot of news about what was going on with the route. There was a lull of over one month where anything that was said about Chris’s just a rehashing things we’ve already heard.

Being the good sport that he is Nalle blogged: “Chris’s point of view is very understandable and although I am against red-tagging, I respected his wish. My intention is not to wage war with anyone or make anyone feel bad, I just want to climb and have fun.  This was not the end of the world for me and there’s so much good climbing in Catalunya, that you’re never going to run out of routes to try.”

It would seem like that would be the end of that… Nalle would walk away and Chris would have time to finish his route and keep BigUp productions on the roll that it’s had for years.

About a week ago, 8a.nu had an interview with Sharma when he dropped a bomb:  “I haven’t given up on FRFM. But with the weather getting warmer I’m just doing different things. I’m still motivated to send the route. After this last season working on it and falling off the top so many times, I think it’s good to change focus to something else and then come back with fresh motivation. At this point I would really love other climbers to get on it. It’s such a good route and it needs to be climbed; if not by me then by someone else.”

Someone else? Where did that come from? A couple months before, that climb was the center of the biggest controversy in the sport climbing world in possibly a decade. And now he says, “Someone else”?

It seems like the Zen master has returned to Chris Sharma. Possibly, Chris will be able to quickly dispatch it when the weather cools down as does the pressure on him to do what we anticipate he will… climb First Round First Minute.

All right, welcome to climbingaction.com’s first blog post. For a long time I thought that blogging was mostly personal ranting and raving. It’s kind of like a twist on the well known saying… Blogs are like toilets, everyone has one. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean that we all want to look at it. Sorry for the crude insinuation here, but I had to start out with my own personal rant before getting down to business.

At least at this point, the intention for the blog is to bring editorial and commentary on the climbing world.  It may grow to be much, much more at some point in the future, but for right now with a little discipline we’ll contain it. If there’s a controversy or something in climbing news that’s getting a lot of spin, sometimes it’s just impossible not to jump on and put little torque in the other direction.

Climbing has never been without its controversies. In every generation of climbers something new comes up. Believe it or not, at one time it was controversial if a climber used chalk. Spring-loaded camming devices were next. Climbers thought that it made protecting a route to easy. And of course everyone knows that bolting wars went on for years. Of late, the two biggest stories have been the downgrading of Jade from V15 to V14 and Chris Sharma’s First Round First Minute in Spain. It’s probably old news by now that Chris locked horns with Nalle Hukkataival and didn’t allow him to get on the route. Quite a bit has happened since that original confrontation and if you haven’t heard what followed then it’s a worthwhile endeavor to check it out. That may just be the topic for the next rant here on the blog. Meanwhile check out the main website, get back with us soon and keep up on the latest rockclimbing psychobabble.