In Which I Climb Hard Things

[tiger_spot]

Yesterday, I warmed up on a 5.10c. (I had to cheat on one move -- I don't know what the story is there, because the angles just don't seem to work out without being a few inches taller, and they're usually good about keeping things possible for the under-six-foot crowd. Maybe a hold got turned; if that right handhold had been sideways instead of

Comments

[xiphias]

How do you "cheat" at rock and/or rock-wall climbing? I thought that, if you got there, it counted.

[tiger_spot]

In the gym, they set up each route with a different color of hold, so that they can pack more routes into the same space. If you use holds that belong to other routes, it's easier, so it doesn't count as climbing a route of the indicated difficulty.

[xiphias]

That's convenient, efficient, and unfairly tempting.

[tiger_spot]

You get used to sticking to the right ones pretty quickly. It is occasionally annoying when there's a hold somewhere it's hard to see, and you have to ask your belayer whether you've found the right one. Also, I hate it when they put blue routes next to green or black routes, because there are some holds that are faded enough that they're either turquoise or gray and it's really hard to tell which route they belong to.

[inflectionpoint]

Nicely done!