Scottish climber Dave MacLeod is well-known for his boldness, having repeated and established several terrifying trad and winter climbs in the UK. And while his bold feats have garnered him many deserved headlines over the years, he is also quite accomplished at sport climbing and bouldering having climbed 5.14 and bouldered up to V14 both at home in the UK as well as abroad in places like Spain.
Most of MacLeod’s success in the bouldering realm until recently, however, had been mostly on problems local to the UK. When a climber has success like that on more local, less well-known terrain it’s not uncommon for others to wonder how a person like MacLeod might do on problems in more well-known areas. Well, after his recent trip to Switzerland I think we have our answer.
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MacLeod began his trip with a repeat of Conquistador Direct (V13/14) in Chironico which he followed up with a repeat of New Base Line (V14) in Magic Wood. So far so good, right? But MacLeod was not quite done.
After a prolonged battle that required him to extend his stay in Switzerland and session on the problem at the crack of dawn, MacLeod did the 2nd ascent of Daniel Woods’ sit start to Muttertag (V11), the V15 Mystic Stylez. As usual, MacLeod has a great write-up about his efforts on his blog, and I wanted to highlight the following passage because I think it pertains to any climber that sets their mind to a specific goal:
On one hand, the climb represented a target to focus my efforts. It’s just a bit of rock and it doesn’t matter to anyone whether I climb it or not. But completing it does make a difference in the mind of the climber. If you’ve really set yourself the target, and you’ve done enough work to know it’s possible, then giving in when the ‘extra mile’ to completion is there for the taking makes it difficult to move on with confidence to the next challenge…I knew I might not manage it, but I looked forward and visualised driving home to Scotland without the send. The failure on the climb wouldn’t be worth a second thought (because if you never have failures, you can’t be trying anything that’s actually hard). The only regret I’d have would be failing without first giving everything to the fight.
This juxtaposition of the fact that climbing any piece of rock is ultimately pointless with the reality that this is what drives many of us to continually try to improve ourselves is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this spring. For a few different reasons I’ve never really projected anything long-term1, but this spring I decided to focus my efforts on a specific route in the Red River Gorge. I knew that I probably wouldn’t send this spring and I was ok with the fact that I was going to be driving 1,000 miles round trip to fail work on it. I was ready to get invested in the process.
My recent ankle failure ended any opportunity I might have had to continue working on the route this spring, although it was unlikely I would have done the route anyway. In some sense this is better though as the route continues to be, as MacLeod puts it, a target for my efforts and gives me something to work toward as my ankle gets better. In the end that’s what this game is all about, isn’t it?
- I think the most days I’ve ever spent on a route or boulder problem that I actually finished is 3 days.
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I have commitment issues. ↩
Buddy of mine saw you at A-Rock with the crutches..hope it heals fast man. I suppose all the campusing you will be doing might get you ready for a send next season!
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That or my fingers will explode. Stay tuned…
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I broke my ankle in December last year, walking down from a trad session. Turns out it was great for my sport-climbing! I used the time to actually train for once and have been much stronger than ever before since I got back on. Venga Narc!
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I liked this comment really much. gym —>
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It could always be worse. This guy demolished his leg and it would seem got way stronger for it. Time to start campusing.
http://king-dino.com/ankle.html
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Dave MacLeod is the man. Nice write up, Narc.
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Any idea how old he is? So awesome to know that he’s able to climb such hard numbers. I really like reading his stuff, his blogs/etc. are a great resource.
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33 years 9 months 27 days if you want to be specific about it…
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