Friday glee is keeping an eye on Yosemite

[rydra_wong]

The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee: Lynn Hill climbing in Yosemite, talking about focus and body position when setting up for moves.

And apparently Hazel Findlay has just sent Golden Gate (5.13b) on El Cap.

Comments

[emperor]

I went climbing this week, and it was good. Nothing very remarkable happened, but it was good :)

[rydra_wong]

Good is good!

[rydra_wong]

I have my copy of Johnny Dawes's autobiography on order!

And the giant free-standing boulder at the Reach is finally open, and (according to one of the staff) I was the first person they've seen top out on it.

[emperor]

did you plant a little Dreamwidth flag on the top? :-)

[rydra_wong]

No, I just lay there and whimpered a bit. *g*

(Freaking overhanging top-out. And I am terrible at top-outs. Which was why I did it; I assumed it was terrifying because I am terrified by top-outs. Whereas it appears that everyone is terrified by this, and has been tagging the top hold and then down-climbing.)

[wpadmirer]

Whoo-hoo!

[rydra_wong]

In fact, I now have my copy of Johnny Dawes's autobiography! The BMC shop is commendably speedy.

[wpadmirer]

My glee this week was my climbing partner is back and we climbed together on Wednesday. We're hoping to get a good climb in this weekend as well. YAY!

[rydra_wong]

Yay climbing partner!

[fadeaccompli]

I'm finally feeling ready to move from up-and-down V0s to the really slanted V0s (surely there's a term for these? I should look it up) and the easier up-and-down V1s.

This doesn't mean I'm actually climbing those. Ha ha! No, it means I'm repeatedly falling off the starts of them, several times in a row. But it feels like "something I need to get stronger for" or "something I need to get better at" rather than "something entirely beyond my level and comprehension" the way, say, V5s are. So I'm still seeing it as a type of progress.

[wpadmirer]

That's great progress. I had to give up bouldering because at my age, I'm just not bouncing all that well any more. (grin) So I'm sticking to sport climbing which is easier on the shoulders, and on which the falls are always caught by the rope. (grin)

[fadeaccompli]

I prefer climbing with a rope, but between the gym with all those routes not being on a bus route, and the difficulty of matching schedules with a partner... Bouldering it is!

[wpadmirer]

I totally get that. I'm very lucky that my gym is close to where I live and I was able to find a reliable partner!

[rydra_wong]

to the really slanted V0s

The ones that hang over you? Overhangs. *g* The up-and-down ones are "vertical", and the ones that slope away from you are "slabs".

And that's definitely progress!

[fadeaccompli]

Overhangs! That's the word I was looking for. I'm not really sure at what point a wall transitions from "a kinda tilty vertical" to "a not-too-bad overhang", but the ones I'm falling off have definitely been overhangs.

Is there a particular word for the outright horizontal bits? The gym has a few small sections of those, just below overhangs or verticals. If it follows the pattern, I suppose "horizontals" would make sense.

[rydra_wong]

I'm not really sure at what point a wall transitions from "a kinda tilty vertical" to "a not-too-bad overhang"

Anything that's more-than-vertical is technically an overhang, but overhangs can be more or less "steep".

If it follows the pattern, I suppose "horizontals" would make sense.

But instead, they're "roofs". *g*

Once you have the strength to stay on at all, roof climbing is exhausting but ridiculous amounts of fun.

[fadeaccompli]

Ahah! In that case, I've been doing overhangs that are something like 5-15 degrees off vertical, but now I'm trying to tackle the walls that are more like 30-50 degrees away. It's sort of impressive how fast the route goes from "do I have the skills for this" to "do I have the physical capability for this" (no!) as the angle of tilt gets worse.