Fear can do a lot of things to you when you’re on the wall. It can get in your head and hold you back from attempting a move. It can mix with pride and prevent you from trying something in order to avoid failure. It might keep you from progression or have you down-climbing to your last clip or to a drop zone. So when fear comes up, climbers have learned to push it down, master it, or ignore it.
Last week I went to a local crag in Birmingham, Moss Rock Preserve. The Access Fund and local climbers have been putting love into this area in the last year (and this past weekend), revitalizing some of the trails and removing some of the less “natural” aspects that can occur at an urban boulder field (graffiti, litter, etc). It’s where I began climbing initially and it will always be a special place for me. MRP is the place I went to climb and hike before I knew there were gyms to train for these sort of things.
Our goal for the day was to make the most of what might be the last decent weather we would have in the southeast. Dave had been working a fun and dynamic roof problem that he wanted to finish, and one of the other folks had only been climbing for one week, and in the gym. Needless to say, we were excited to even be outside in late April with slightly cool temps, and extra pumped to go on someone’s first outdoor bouldering experience
Ray makes his way across the Loop Traverse.
We warmed up on the Ozzy Loop Traverse, a circular problem that you can start whichever way you prefer. Going up the middle of this oval traverse is a proud eighteen-foot line, General Lee, that had eluded me for quite a while. As we warmed up, we decided to goof around on General Lee before moving on.
The rock itself is only barely a slab, just under being completely vertical. And with a rating of V3, it seemed like we had to be missing something in our beta or that it was graded by someone a bit taller. It starts with a long move from a jug with a high foot to a small, but positive right hand crimp slot. Once there, you can add your left hand to a sloping crimp slightly above eye level. And this, this is where you could see what looked like a good crimp, about six inchesout of reach (as someone who’s 5’8” with a +2 ape index).
Dave looks up, searching for something, before we'd discovered the secret to sending General Lee.
So we were stuck hitting this point, about six or seven feet off the ground, over and over again, until I saw a small sloping edge about knee high for my right foot. The slab is so close to vertical that I didn’t want to test my weight on it, but I was tired of being shut down on this problem. I stepped onto it, it held my weight and my left hand didn’t dry fire. So I stood up just to the right distance for the next hold. When I landed on it, I was so surprised to find myself loving the hold that I fell back off of it!
With the new foot I’d found, I was about nine feet off the deck, and the two pads I fell on didn’t cushion me as much as I expected. I felt encouraged by the progress (finally), but slightly scared falling from the new height. I decided to give it one more go, and I could feel the anxious excitement that comes when your project feels mortal.
I made the moves up to my previous high point with muscle memory ease, hiked my foot up, and latched the next crimp with a sloth-like slowness. I’m happy to saw it was still good. But when I did, the fear of failure and falling became much more prominent. I’d always viewed the rest of the problem as being “over” at that point. I wanted to finish the problem, and instead of trying to overcome the fear invading me like Attila the Hun, I allowed it mix with my determination to send.
I snagged the next crimp with my left, finding it smaller than I expected. My fear grew a little larger. I looked down to locate feet and saw none that I trusted, and motivated by the growing hatred for gravity, I trusted a smeared foot with more certainty that I would have in my calm and collected mind. Then, making a long lunge for a jug, I exhaled as though I had just emerged from watery depths, and confidently topped the boulder.
I am not advocating that we disregard fear, or that writings like The Rock Warrior’s Way are wrong or unhelpful. If your fear holds you back, recognize it and approach it in a healthy way that helps you grow. But as I’ve been honing in my personal ability to control fear of failure, falling, and everything in between, it had been some time since I felt that slightly overwhelming sense of fear that made me want to quit. So maybe there is something to engaging fear, or learning to occasionally let it push you to new heights, or just getting sketched out and making sure you don’t fall or fail. I don’t think it’s the best thing, but maybe, just maybe, there’s something we can learn from our instinctual fear.