Destroyed

Walk in lousy snow for four hours. Work on a cool new route with two younger guys for six hours. Get kinda scared and very physically pummeled. Rap in the dark. Walk two hours back out in the dark. I haven't been so destroyed in years, great day!

I've joined in on an existing project to help get 'er done. Two pitches of cool mixed, two of moderate but very nice drytooling, then one really hard pitch to the ice, then a couple of pitches of ice above that! It just doesn't get any better than that. Thanks to W. and B. for a solid day, the old man is feeling much older today but will recover.

I was enticed to this route with the following description: "Oh, it's great. Perfect rock, golden huecos out huge roofs, we've pretty much cleaned and bolted all of it, you've just got to come up and work it!" The part about almost being done the bolting was true, the rest was pure fabrication. The rock is classic Rockies choss, there's not a "golden hueco" in 200K, and there's a lot of cleaning to do. But it sure was an effective description to get me up there, and the route is truly world class. It's long, exposed, and fantastic, just have to get back in a few more times and get 'er done. Congratulations to B and W for working on it, lots of motivation went into the rig already!

Training is just that. Days like yesterday are where it gets real, and you see if all the training actually worked. A lot of people get stuck in what I call the "training trap," where the training becomes more important than the actual action you're training for. It's easy to see results when training; it's all nice and organized, improvements are consistent and measurable, and the training environment is generally pretty comfortable. But strap on a big pack, beat through the snow, haul your way up a couple of hundred meters while just giving it all-out and see how you function during the day. That's the reality, and that's what we train for.

I need to train a little harder. Game on.