Climbing is not a game of success, it is a game of failures, stacked upon each other and repeatedly twisting against their gravelly skin until that failure is eroded away like river stones. Changed by a millennia of small movements, crimps and raindrops, smears and frozen ice, edging and earthquakes that make what came before just as irrelevant in the face of what now is as it is momentary.
Dixie moves up and down beneath a roof on Chicken Mechanics attempting to find the correct adjustment of one inch to the left or toed-edge converted to smear. She is a needle on a seismograph, measuring the earthshaking effect of her movements upon what moves from “I think I can climb that” to “Here’s what I did differently to get over that.”
She finds herself on top of the bulge, looking down at the turning drum of the seismograph beneath her. Sits upon her haunches to place a cam in the flaring slots above this crux of the route. I consider suggesting that she lower back down to attempt it again, to prove the movements as ability but she has already turned her back to continue up the route. I move further back from the rock to chase the sun and decide that I am in agreement with her choice.
The remainder of her climb goes without incident, wandering face climbing next to flakes, flares and cracks. I follow her to clean her placements and stop above the crux roof, her .5 purple cam seated in a flaring pocket. I assume that it has walked from its original placement because its current mushroom head shape would not likely hold a fall well. I measure the space to her next placement and make mental notes.
The transitions from stress to relief in movement up a route leave room for lapses in concentration, false moments of calm. Climbing teaches that your failures are what make the path to your success and (perhaps more importantly) that your success is as momentary as the next line of failures will be.
