Wednesday, March 1, 2017

pushers

In the fall of 2015,  I started work on what became my longest climbing siege of the last three years, the curiously-named Jesus Save the Pushers at Horne Lake. I first heard about this route back in 2010 from expat Brit friend, Colin Spark. At that time I hadn't visited Horne, but Colin described the route so vividly that I built up a very strong mental image that stuck in my head for several years. JSTP is spectacularly steep: about 20 metres of net horizontal movement in 30 metres of climbing. An early ascensionist, Mike Doyle, described it as "the best 5.13a in the world". Overall, an obvious candidate for obsession.

Lowering off Jesus Save the Pushers at Horne Lake
Projecting routes at Horne Lake has some strong positive and negative issues for Squamish-based climbers. On the plus side, during the often-wet fall season, the Amphitheatre at Horne works like an umbrella and only gets wet once seepage works through cracks in the limestone after several continuous weeks of rain. In comparable conditions, almost everywhere at Squamish has long since been shut down.

On the minus side, every trip to Horne requires a ferry crossing from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo and back, which is both expensive and tedious. (Well, some say tedious ... having been chauffeuring son #1 to and from soccer matches for about nine years I am very used to killing time on demand; a ferry is essentially just a sort of giant floating Starbucks with extra seating.) Given that, I am indebted to the people who accompanied me to Horne from the mainland for my attempts: the afore-mentioned Colin and on other occasions Chris, Travis and Todd. A climbing friend from my UAE years, Vanessa, also picked me up from Nanaimo on two occasions, allowing me to save on the vehicle portion of the ferry ticket.

A good metaphor for describing my efforts on JSTP would be extricating a vehicle stuck in mud or sand. Lots of tire-spinning and going nowhere, punctuated by abrupt, but usually short-lived, progress and significant amounts of sliding backwards. The first half of the route is an awkward overhanging 5.12b called Plastic Jesus, with its own anchors just off the line of JSTP. It is often attempted as a route in its own right. I onsighted a 5.12b at Horne back in 2013, but for whatever reason never really felt solid on "Plastic" and needed three days just to get the redpoint. In particular there is a strength-sapping sequence at the lip of a horizontal roof just before the chains, where it is easy to hang almost indefinitely off a jug and cammed heel hook, but weirdly hard to actually move. I spent much time trying to find an efficient sequence there but my beta always felt improvised and sketchy.

Just before the end of "Plastic", JSTP goes right for a couple of moves into a peculiar alcove sandwiched between big overhangs. Allegedly there is a good rest to be had there but I never found anything better than an uncomfortable and mentally-draining "butt scum" wedged out of balance on two opposing tufa features. From there the route breaks out through another big horizontal roof on spaced pockets to a difficult clip, a tenuous perch on the lip then a pumpy set-up for a dynamic and blind move on the merely-overhanging wall above. The trick there is a complicated sequence of knee bars - four "knee swaps" in total for me - to avoid cutting loose and to recover some strength. This section I did get dialled from around day 6 of my siege but it never felt easy.

Above is a long "slab" section (it probably overhangs 20-30 degrees) with good holds broken by an OK rest on a knee bar at the amusingly-named "Garden": an often-wet niche with a single tiny fern. Then the climbing gets hard again with an awkward barn-door'y traverse then another near-horizontal section ending on two unhelpfully-flat small holds. As most normal people are seriously pumped at this point, the moves off those holds are generally regarded as the redpoint crux: a campus-like throw to another flat hold then a committing lurch sideways on a shockingly-small gaston to big holds and a stem rest. The chains are just above. For some reason, when discussing Pushers no-one mentions that this crux section is hideously run-out with a guaranteed fall of maybe ten metres or more. This makes it hard to work the route as it is really hard to regain contact with the cliff after falling. Furthermore, some sadist placed the bolt after the crux in a hard-to-clip spot, so the consensus strategy is to just skip it and push on to the chains.

My last three days on JSTP in the fall of 2017 (I took eight days spread over a year in total) all involved taking the big whip from the top section at various points. Unsurprisingly, stamina seemed to be the primary problem as I always felt out of gas at the twin flat holds. I addressed this issue in two ways: back home, trying to improve my stamina through some monotonous "foot-on-campusing"; on the route, looking for greater gains from the available rests. As seems typical of prolonged sieges, I also developed some irrational neuroses, of which the primary one became BC Ferries coffee! I concluded that I was drinking too much of it (hard to avoid on a 90 minute crossing), that it was over-caffeinated and toxic, and that I was therefore arriving at the cliff too jittery and uncomposed.

Just say no (to BC Ferries coffee)

On my last day there, aptly accompanied by Colin who had first got me interested in the route, I tackled the coffee issue by bringing my own flask and strictly rationing my dosage whilst on the boat. I also requested that Colin use his phone to time my rest at the "butt scum", to ensure that I didn't set off too soon. Perhaps predictably, none of this worked and my first burn terminated at the four-knee-swaps spot - my lowest failure for some time. I threw a classic sport-climbers' tantrum whilst lowering off and vowed to give up on the route for the rest of the season ...

... a vow which I reneged on about three hours later. It would be an overstatement to say that my psyche returned; more accurately I accepted that honour required at least one more token try. However I made sure the deck was so stacked against me that there could be no risk of success: belaying Colin for long enough to get thoroughly cooled down and for good measure necking the remainder of my coffee to ensure I was too hyper to focus. I then sealed the deal by forgetting to wear my knee pads and not realising until the fourth bolt.

The problem with assured redpoint failure is that despite being mentally excused any annoying pressure to "try hard" there remains the small matter of actually succeeding in falling off. Despite the "oops-no-knee-pads" shock I failed to fail anywhere on the Plastic Jesus section and found myself back at the terrible rest. The obvious next strategy was to leave that rest too quickly and make sure I pumped out at the four-knee-swaps section but somehow I bumbled on through that part too and reached the knee bar rest at the "Garden".  At this point whichever part of my brain handles optimism experimentally fired a few neurones whilst long-term memory reminded me that I had never fallen off the next few moves. My overall mental state shifted subtly from total indifference to "well, fuck it then: let's at least get high enough for a respectable fall".

Autopilot then carried me all the way back to my usual high-point at the twin flatties. Where a miracle occurred. Someone had once told me that there was a final knee bar possible there, in a short wide crack, but I had never found it. But this time my right knee just slotted in without any conscious effort. I considered the situation and realised that this was actually a sort of rest and that I could de-pump modestly for a few seconds. All sorts of good brain chemicals then kicked in hard. I nonchalantly crushed the pop to the higher flattie and nasty gaston move, spat dismissively on the un-clippable final draw and whooped to the chains.

POSTSCRIPT: What do I learn from all this? It is stating the obvious but: to succeed on these kind of routes, you have to just keep showing up and trying them. Which requires a certain stubbornness (plus time and willing partners). But beyond that, does it matter what else is going on in your head?

Specific psychological training seems to oscillate in and out of fashion in the climbing world, but there is usually at least one coach out there pimping a book or course on how to think your way to success. However the very accomplished Scottish climber, Dave Macleod, wrote an excellent blog-post a couple of years ago debunking the whole topic:

"The cult of positive thinking, both in society and in sports psychology, is looking increasingly like it may be among several major diversions from the path of progress of sport and health in recent decades .... A determined performance with 100% effort can exist just as easily in any state of mind, positive or otherwise. The key point is to give that effort regardless of your state of mind."

For what it's worth, this seems right to me. Ideally it would be great to suppress the mental chatter before or during a climb, but, otherwise it is just seems best to ignore it. My Pushers' send was the most farcical experience I have had of succeeding against all expectation but it has happened to me before and I am sure will happen again.