Rock Climbing With Round Numbers

 At nine pitches, Doug was ready to quit for the day, while I had fallen apart on pitch eight but recovered a little by pitch nine. Ten pitches however, is such a nice round number, like your typical 50 kilometre day. In pursuit of ten, Doug belayed me while I led the last pitch but, in typical restrained Doug style, he passed on the climb so I cleaned the route on abseil.

I only had three real climbing days in October, and one of those was with my nephew at ClimbFit in Kirrawee. ClimbFit is super fun, and climbing with Mitch who hurls himself up the routes with great enthusiasm but less skill is also super fun, but it’s not climbing outside, and every time I go - which is every time I am in Sydney - I think how much it is not like climbing outside, but still super fun.

So, I got to thinking on the walk out, when was the last time I climbed 10 pitches in a day and how many pitches was an average climbing day when we lived in Nelson and climbed a lot more frequently? What is the point of all these comparisons you might wonder when “comparison is the thief of joy?” Well, comparison when done solely against your previous performance/ability is a measure of how well you are holding back the tide of ageing. Plateau, as the saying goes, is the new PB (personal best) if you are on the dark side of 60. While I did not get out climbing much in October, I did climb a lot more on my home wall and, all the time my forearms and glutes were getting painfully pumped, I was hoping that the training would hold off the inevitable decline in rock climbing performance.

So what does the database show: In July, I did 11 pitches in a day – my notes say I fell off a couple of routes (sad face) – while in May I climbed 15 pitches – but they were mostly short pitches of under 15 metres so they are worth less than a rope stretcher of 30 full metres up the Slocan Valley north of Nelson, BC. But, putting aside pitch length and difficulty and whether or not the routes were sport or traditional, these numbers aren’t bad. In fact, they are pretty good compared to my old Canadian days, bearing in mind we climbed a lot more trad and multi-pitch routes back in North America, both of which consume more time.

So I guess comparison is not all bad but I that might be because on this one metric, things don’t look too grim.