Levitation 29 part 2 - Dealing With Fear.

Climbing routes recently has been a mental push for me. I don’t know if it has to do with a low level of motivation or just being disconnected from the zone. I have been feeling a larger than normal amount of uncertainty with my climbing. Perhaps it has been all of the sport climbing and the disconnect from the do not fall mentality. Maybe climbing at my limit more often has given me more doubt. I don’t exactly know the cause but I hope to fight through it and figure out how to climb more confidently.

Doubting my ability comes into play when I climb because I am in the middle of a burn and I struggle to keep climbing, since I don’t feel I can do it. It has been a bit frustrating to have all of this doubt when there is no obvious cause. There seem to be a few different mind sets that I encounter when I am climbing. They range from a relaxing send, free from doubt, to a fearful onsight where I struggle to commit to every move. I think what is happening to me is that I am hesitating and unable to commit because I am afraid of failure. I am tied to the success related to sending the route and unable to fully commit my self because of fear.

My hardest trad onsight to date came on a tricky finger crack in Squamish called Crime of the Century. It was much harder than anything I had tried to onsight before. The lack of precedence allowed me to give everything. Even though it was very difficult I was less worried about failing to onsight the climb. This disconnect from having to send allowed me to be less hesitant and through a lot of grunting and hard work I got to the top.

This all relates to Levitation 29 because it is a route that has been in my mind for over a year now. The goal was to onsight the route and when the time came to go out and try the route this weekend there was a lot of intimidation. I was afraid that I would not be strong enough; I would be too tired after the long approach or that I would just fall/fail.

I had recently been training on longer sport routes but nothing would compare to a nine pitch route. Almost half of the pitches were 11a or harder and I would be leading all the hard pitches. While the crux fifth pitch would stand out as the technical crux of the route I would have to make sure to keep it together to the top.

The first hard pitch was the 2nd which I linked to the first. The climbing was fun and complex to a difficult crux. It seems height dependant as there are good holds but they were too far away for me to reach. This lead to some easier pitches which I followed and then the 5th pitch. The plan had been to skip bolts and link this to the next pitch for 150 feet of fun. As I started climbing up the climbing was harder than expected and I knew I would have to climb the pitches separately.

The crux of the 5th pitch started from a good 2 foot long hand jam sized pod. It moved from there up a few moves of laybacking into a fist pod with some bad face holds inside and a decent left hand crimp. You had good feet for the clip but had to move up to smears for the next move. This move, my crux, was a reach from either a bad fist jam(for my hands) or from the small but positive left crimp. I watched my right fist sliding out of the jam as I stabbed for the next finger lock. I got it and moved up to the next clip but I was physically and mentally fried.

I had spent so much time trying to find a better sequence through the crux that I was now really tired. The pitch did not ease up for many more clips so I really had to fight for the onsight. I wanted to send this route so bad and I knew that I could do it. This quote from this Steph Davis Blog was in the back of my mind as I kept refusing to let go.

“I’ve done all my groundwork. I am totally capable of doing this, and I know it for a fact, because I trained, practiced, meditated, and I am absolutely prepared to pull this off.”

I still climbed slowly and hesitantly through the pitch but I managed to make it to the anchors without falling. The next pitches were less difficult but I was still quite tired. I wonder if climbing the crux pitch faster would have been successful and saved me energy. I am still trying to figure out the best strategy for climbing onsight. I have to learn to work through my trust issues and climb with more certainty.

This climb was an amazing experience and I would be excited to go back and do it again. It pushed me both physically and mentally and I am still reflecting on the experience and learning lessons.

- Luke

Levitation 29

So we just got back from Las Vegas and the ever-impressive Red Rocks. Overall it was a really successful weekend.

On Friday morning we drove out to Vegas and after picking up the 2 new guidebooks (both of which are excellent and highly recommended!) and procuring a campsite (which was good because the campground was full when we got back that night) we headed out to Black Velvet Canyon. We've done a couple routes out here before - Prince of Darkness (5.10c, 6 pitches, lots of bolts) and Epinephrine (5.9, 13 pitches, lots of chimneys, we topped out after dark and nearly epic-ed the descent with tricky cairn-finding in the dark). So the approach was no big surprise. We finally got to climb Dream of Wild Turkeys (5.10a, 7 pitches), which was super fun. I followed the last pitch in semi-dark and we rapped and got back to the car safely, where we had some yummy breakfast burritos for dinner in the parking lot.

After passing out before 10pm on Friday night, we awoke early on Saturday morning to head out to Levitation 29. We left the Oak Creek Canyon parking lot at about 6:45am after lots of repacking of bags, breakfast, and the several miles of loop road preceding the parking lot. I've climbed Johnny Vegas, Solar Slab, and Black Orpheus before, so the first bit of the approach was already familiar to me. We made really good time hiking up the wash to the Black Orpheus approach, although we still had tons of wash to hike up. We had hoped to take a shortcut (approximately following the Black Orpheus descent I think), but due to a misunderstanding ended up hiking the standard (long) approach that goes up the wash to the really big pine trees. But it was ok because we were the first to the base of the route and actually had Eagle Wall entirely to ourselves save for two guys who climbed part of Eagle Dance.

Luke linked the first 2 pitches into one and I followed, unfortunately falling at the 5.11b roof crux. I lead the next two easier pitches (5.8, 5.10b) which were really fun, getting us to the base of the crux pitch, which Luke lead brilliantly :-D I fell once at the crux of this pitch, struggling with a wide pod that I couldn't even fist jam. The pitch was surprisingly sustained and I was really tired after following it. The next pitch was a little less steep, but still quite hard with many small crimps (which were very common on the route). This was followed by a weird, hard pitch with some rather crappy-quality white rock. I fell near the top of this pitch at some strenuous layback moves - my hands were cramping so badly I was losing motor control of my fingers - not able to keep holding on. Then there were just 2 more pitches, which Luke lead for me (and linked) to the top featuring some more sketchy rock. Hoping to use the remaining light to get back to the wash the faster way, we rapped immediately from the top of the 9th pitch (where we saw some climbers topping out Black Orpheus). We got to the ground with some light to spare, and started working our way down the wash. We ended up at some sketchy steep downslabbing in the dark, but found a rap station and rapped/bushwhacked our way back into the wash, making it back to the car by 8pm.

It was a great experience and a huge challenge for me and for us. The hiking took us about 2.5 hours each way, which added to the challenge of the route due to the shortness of the November days. The hard pitches of the route were a lot more challenging than I might have expected and I really struggled with keeping up my energy throughout the day. We left our sandwiches at the base to be lighter, so I ended up doing most of the climb on a package of shot blocks, a gu, and a clif bar, which considering the difficulty of the route was probably nowhere near enough food. We also only brought 2.5 liters of water, so I think both of us were also pretty dehydrated, which contributed to both of us getting cramps in our hands (which had never happened to me before). It's made me think a lot about how we could have addressed this problem better - different food, more food, supplementing our water with some gatorade, or maybe even a potassium supplement to fight the cramps. These are really important things to consider and learn about because as we push ourselves more it's only going to become more critical to be adequately hydrated and fed to be able to function and achieve at a higher level.

I do think all our efforts to improve our efficiency did help us out, though, because our belay transfers were in general fairly efficient and (due to the bolted belays) were able to keep the wasted or excessive gear to a minimum.

Hopefully this is just a starting point for us for climbing routes of this quality and caliber of difficulty. We were dreaming on the route back about future projects in Red Rocks, including Cloud Tower and the Original Route on the Rainbow Wall, both of which involve much harder cruxes and (in the case of the Rainbow Wall) long approaches.

I'm sure Luke will have more things to say about Levitation 29... what a day...