Climbing Narcissist » From The Narc

We’re All Beginners In Some Way

Narc — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:00:04 +0000

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s such a strange experience to be continuously revising and changing my climbing technique at this point in my climbing career. It’s about 10 days until my 20th anniversary of the first day I ever went rock climbing, and yet I often still feel like a total beginner out there, particularly when I’m on steep rock climbs with powerful moves.

This was Alli Rainey describing her feelings after reaching a new understanding about an aspect of her climbing she had struggled with previously.

For me its these types of moments, moments that are often unexpected surprises, that keep the sport of climbing interesting. Even though the act of climbing is innate in all humans, the application of this innate activity through the sport of rock climbing is something that offers continual opportunities for us as climbers to grow both physically and mentally. It’s one of the reasons we put up with all the downsides to climbing—expense, injury, general sacrifice of other life priorities, etc. These thoughts were in the forefront of my mind as I returned from a trip to the Red River Gorge the other weekend.

I had an uneven late winter in the gym so my expectations for the trip were low. The first couple of days were spent climbing new-to-me routes and the last day we ventured to Bronaugh Wall where I had hopes of sending a route called Belly Of The Beast (5.12c), a route that had rebuffed my efforts previously. 5.12c is obviously not an extreme grade, but it is a grade that I don’t climb all that often. In adddition, the combination of a high volume of climbing and excessive alcohol consumption in days prior had me feeling a little worse for the wear. Expectations were low.

My first try of the day went poorly but I chalked that up to a beta burn. The second try went much better. I climbed through the physical crux only to find myself hanging on the rope after failing to decipher a tricky sequence guarding the anchors. In my desire to save energy I had not revisited this section of the route on my beta burn since my memory was that this section was not hard. I was wrong. Lesson learned.

After much back and forth I decided to give the route one last go. Last day best day, last go best go. Isn’t that what all the cool kids say? So I set off for my 3rd try of the day, feeling haggard the entire way. I somehow managed to pull the physical crux at mid-height and found myself on the top section in a similar state as my prior attempt: totally out of gas. Thanks to my previous burn though I had a better game plan for how to recover before tackling the brief redpoint crux, and I managed to clip the chains. Psyched. And another lesson was learned.

So, this post was not just a long, thinly veiled humble brag¹. Rather, it was an attempt to highlight two simple, yet sometimes forgotten lessons of sport climbing:

Make sure you know where you are going. Once you fail on your onsight/flash/redpoint burn use that time to make sure you are familiar with all that a given route entails. Besides, if you’re over the age of 15 your memory is probably a lot worse than you think it is.
It’s amazing what your body is capable of doing when you least expect it. Leveraging the familiarity of a recent burn to more efficiently climb a route can yield surprising results, even if you feel like garbage while doing it. Remember, it’s not about how terrible you look when sending the route, it’s about how many points you’re to get for logging that send on your 8a scorecard. Not really. Sort of.

Obviously these concepts are not new or groundbreaking, but I know that I personally tend to forget them quite frequently. I spent several years at the beginning of my sport climbing career constantly waiting to feel 100% fresh before trying to send harder routes. This might be necessary for climbs at the upper limits of one’s skill level, but that seems like the exception to me. So, next time you’re feeling that you’re too tired to send follow these simple rules:

Take to your favorite social media platform and lament the fact that your day is hopeless².
Crush your hopes of sending by wasting a few attempts re-learning beta and botching the send on your first couple of goes
Give up for the day
Send
Celebrate by eating pizza at Miguel’s

Piece of cake!

Besides, it’s hard to brag about climbing a 5.12c when a 10-year-old girl climbed 5.14a in the same area just a few days earlier ↩
I recommend using twitter and tweeting using the hashtags #lastdaybestday and #lastgobestgo ↩

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Rules For Dating A Dirtbag

Narc — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:07:35 +0000

Another gem from semi-rad:

Although I’m a gentleman and you’re a lady, you will be carrying either the rope, or the rack. Take the tent, or the stove and fuel and pots. If I am cooking us dinner over a camp stove, you are setting up the tent, or vice versa. Right?

Right.

Rules For Dating A Dirtbag from Climbing Narcissist

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Stickers! Last Chance For Shirts!

Narc — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:52:36 +0000

Since I’m about to go over 4,000 adoring fans on The Facebook¹ any day now, it seems like now is as good a time as any to try to unload some of these ClimbingNarc.com stickers I had made…8 months ago. I have limited quantities, so ~~fill out this form with your info and I’ll get them out to as many people as I can~~.

Whoa. Thanks to everyone for the overwhelming response. I’ll try to get through the requests I have and see how many stickers, if any, I have left. If you placed a request and you live somewhere outside the U.S. I’ll try my best to your stickers to you, but no promises. That’s my bad for not specifying in the first place so I’ll see what I can do.

I also have a limited number of ClimbingNarc.com T-Shirts remaining. They will be $15 with shipping to the continental U.S. included at no charge. I have 5 4 Smalls and 3 2 1 Large left so when they’re gone they’re gone! Shoot me an email if you’d like one!

Thanks, as always, to everyone for all the support over the years!

Note to Mark Zuckerberg: this site is for sale too… ↩

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ClimbingNarc For iOS

Narc — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:15:33 +0000

Besides being a constant testing ground for my struggles with the English language, this site has long been my favorite sandbox for working on my software development skills. I’ve always enjoyed tweaking the design and functionality of the site itself¹, but early last year I decided I wanted to tackle a new project: a native iPad/iPhone app specifically for this site. While there were a few other climbing news apps in the App Store at the time, most if not all of them relied on public feeds from the respective sites, which, in my opinion, does not provide for a very good experience.

When I sat down to begin work on the app, I had a few goals in mind. I wanted the app to be fast and easy to use, and I hoped that it could provide an enhanced experience for those people using their mobile devices. I wanted the app to be easier to use than visiting this site in the browser, and hopefully at the same time it could be a more engaging experience. The toils of the development process and dealing with the arbitrary nature of the App Store approval process are fodder for another post if people are interested, but after many, many hours of hard work, the app was released to the App Store last week. You can download it for free² by visiting this link.

Highlights of version 1.0 of the ClimbingNarc iOS app include:

Read the latest posts, watch the latest videos and browse the latest comments with ease
Browse and search lists of all the climbers and climbing areas that have been mentioned throughout the history of this site
Add your own comments to any post

There are many other ideas I have for the app and at least a few bugs that I know of that need fixing. As long as I have time, and as long as people are psyched to use the app, I’ll try my best to keep it updated. If you have any feedback or suggestions after using it, please don’t hesitate to let me know. If you do check it out and enjoy it, I’d greatly appreciate if you would consider leaving a review for it in the App Store.

Download the ClimbingNarc iOS App for your iPad and/or iPhone today

Screenshots

Like I did last weekend. Hopefully you like the changes. ↩
The app will always be free, but it may not always be free of ads. Even if my time was free, having an app in the app store each year is not. ↩

ClimbingNarc For iOS from Climbing Narcissist

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Ouch

Narc — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:12:18 +0000

The Couch Crusher can hardly be bothered to get up… unless it’s time to take a dump on your project.

It’s been a tough morning for the ole Narc. I woke up to taunting texts from a friend¹ who got off the couch and climbed a problem I failed on over the weekend. This comes on the heels of Justin Roth’s list of 10 climbing personality types which includes not only the “Couch Crusher” described above but also a few unflattering personality types that hit a bit too close to home for yours truly. Ouch.

I use this term loosely since the gentleman in question seems to have given up climbing to pursue such heretical activities as biking, triathalons and playing volleyball ↩

Ouch from Climbing Narcissist

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First Tracks

Letting Go: Chris Sharma And Mark Coleman

Narc — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:53:01 +0000

Letting Go: Chris Sharma And Mark Coleman from Climbing Narcissist Get the ClimbingNarc iOS app in the App Store to enjoy all this site's content on your iPhone or iPad Related posts: Prana’s Chris Sharma Anthology Chris Sharma Does First Ascent of Demencia Senil (5.15a) In Margalef Joy Trip Project Interviews Chris Sharma Chris Sharma [...]

Letting Go: Chris Sharma And Mark Coleman from Climbing Narcissist

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Five

Narc — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:18:28 +0000

About 12 years ago a strange confluence of circumstances led me to the local climbing gym for the first time. I had no idea at the time how much my life was about to change in so many amazing and unforeseen ways. Looking back, I really can’t imagine what my life would be like had I never walked into the gym that day.

Likewise, it was five years ago to this exact date that I started this website with little forethought other than recognizing that I was obsessed with climbing, the internet and talking about climbing on the internet. Much like when I walked into the gym way back in the day, I can’t really imagine what my life would be like had I never started down this road.

Despite my tenuous grasp on how to formulate coherent, grammatically correct sentences, this site has achieved some modicum of success, and I would like to thank everyone who has visited, commented or shared your support in other ways throughout the years. Without your continued support there would be no reason for me to keep doing this.

The biggest thanks, however, goes to Mrs. Narc. Her unending support as I spend hours and hours and hours of my time working on this site has been invaluable.

As for what the future holds, it’s hard to say. I could do this for another month or another five years. Who knows. As long as I’m still having fun and as long as people are still psyched to visit I don’t see any reason to stop anytime soon.

Five from Climbing Narcissist

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It Was An Honor Just To Be Nominated

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