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What’s the Problem? Thinking about Climbing Difficulty in a Different Way
by Peter Beal

     For many climbers, the attraction of the sport is in exploring the limits of your physical capacity. To be able to ascend a piece of stone or even a series of plastic holds that initially felt impossible even to hang onto is a very satisfying experience, regardless of ability or experience level. The combination of an aesthetic line, complex movement, and exertion of physical power is an alluring attraction whether on a small scale as in bouldering or on a grander one such as free-climbing a big wall.

However the same factors that make the search for difficulty so compelling can also prove to be traps in improving as a climber. I want to think first about how the idea of difficulty is presented to climbers in various outlets including the media and how these ideas can in fact hinder improvement. I want also to think about what climbing difficulty actually means and how clearer thinking on the topic can result in better performance and more enjoyable climbing.

A good example of mass thinking about difficulty regards grading. Grades were originally intended as a form of warning or advice. In the era before safe climbing technology emerged, say roughly around 1970, a climber’s safety depended on his or her ability to move confidently on unprotected terrain. Ropes, pitons, and carabiners were typically safeguards against catastrophe rather than fully integrated into the climbing experience. In other words, the technology was sufficiently cumbersome and intrusive that only on the most casual terrain could a climber easily stop to use it. Otherwise one resorted to running it out or using direct aid. Thus a free climbing grade rarely represented physical difficult per se but existed instead in the context of physical injury or death. That’s why to modern climbers, many older routes will feel undergraded since the penalty for failure can be severe, unless tamed by modern protection technology. A good example would be pitches like the Hollow Flake or Ear on the Salathe Wall/Free Rider routes on El Cap. Although trivial in comparison to the difficulty of the crux pitches, modern free climbers will often be particularly concerned about the run-out and exposed aspects of these relatively “easy” pitches, both of which were free-climbed on the first ascent and present significant sections of unprotected climbing.

With the advent of modern protection techniques, especially camming units and bolts, climbers could begin to think more clearly about what physical difficulty implied. The development of bouldering aided this development; however it is worth pointing out that like early free climbing, bouldering was poorly protected as well until the arrival of crashpads in the 1990s. By the mid-60s, a concept of free climbing as an end in itself had begun to take hold and by the mid-70s was the dominant mode of climbing. At around this time, grades became tools for comparison rather than safety advice and were seens as a means for competition outside the older arena of dangerous, albeit typically less physically difficult, climbing. As the competitive aspects of climbing became more prominent, grades were a popular option for media outlets to crown stars of climbing and laud “significant” or progressive” achievements in the sport. The earliest 5.12 and 5.13s however were looked upon with suspicion by an old guard still focused upon the aspect of risk in climbing. Since then grading debates have remained a staple, however pointless, of climbing discussion

I mention this historical background to help understand why standards seem to keep rising by leaps and bounds and why younger climbers reach high standards so quickly. A good example is Adam Ondra who has climbed 5.15a and V14 at age 15. Young climbers are not burdened with the baggage that defined difficulty in the pre-modern era. They are in a very real sense much more free to climb harder than their fathers. Furthermore competition has changed radically since the 1970s. It used to be the case that climbing was a much less publicized pursuit and as a result the achievements of the elite and even the elite climbers themselves retained a kind of aura, a psych-out factor if you will. The classic instance is John Bachar. Although he was never a standout free climber by the world standards of difficulty, his absolute control in deadly situations and his unwavering and perhaps arrogant definition of climbing style put a great weight on the shoulders of others who might wish to travel another path. It is unsurprising therefore that the difficulty revolution in America occurred well off the beaten path in Smith Rocks. There the beginning of the evaporation of the aura of difficulty began.

So a climber when considering a route needs to take into account the aura factor. The degree to which he or she can move past it can considerably affect the outcome. In other words can the climber focus on the actual movements and not a host of counterproductive thoughts that will hold them back?

It is my belief that climbing is certainly physically difficult but that most climbers have more problems resolving mental and psychological factors that prevent the best use of their physical capacities. Some of the most important are fear, desire, and memory. Fear is an insidious but useful aspect of climbing. Useful because it helps us realistically assess terrain that may be dangerous yet insidious because it persists in the absence of genuine danger. I truly believe that anyone could climb 2 grades harder than their present limit if they could fully rid themselves of fear. Fear comes in many flavors but the most dangerous is the fear of failure. This is manifest in many ways including hesitating on moves, forms of self-sabotage like forgetting gear , poor route choices, poor technique, and so on. Many of these behaviors are the result of fear of failing, whether alone or in public. While there are many techniques that climbing books have described to help deal with the problem of fear, every climber must get past the inner fear of not achieving what they desire or worse not measuring up to an image they might have of themselves.

Desire is the engine that drives the pursuit of climbing. Defining climbing desire is pointless but recognizing its importance is not. If you cannot constantly stoke the engine, the amount of energy and motivation you can bring to the climb is lessened. Climbing as a social order has found subtle and not so subtle ways of dampening desire, often by mechanisms of fear or shame. This goes back to the earliest days of climbing as certain figures preached about style and ethics as though they were real and actually mattered and were not just social conventions attempting to govern a highly arbitrary and subjective pursuit. Social control is perhaps the most effective means of inhibiting human potential and it is curious to see how many great climbers are important not least because they ultimately moved beyond the suppositions and conventional wisdom and acted upon their desires and realized them.

Memory is a difficult thing to define in regard to climbing but perhaps I intend it to mean the extent to which we truly absorb the lessons of every climbing experience. While I am not convinced that our understanding of the world is entirely empirical in nature, that is, based solely upon our observations from experience (which is an important and yet unresolved philosophical debate), I am certain that very few climbers retain all the aspects of their climbing experiences that can be used to improve future efforts. There is a great deal of emphasis on living in the present in climbing but past experiences greatly affect present action, whether realized or not. It can be as simple as remembering sequences on a boulder problem or as subtle as an intuited kinesthetic sense of rightness in a given movement that builds upon a dozen failed experiments.

Climbing presents the climber with a paradox; to make the apparently impossible, possible, the initially difficult, easy. Resolving this paradox in an interesting fashion seems to me to be at the heart of the enterprise. Strong fingers and arms are helpful but more helpful by far is clearer thinking and understanding of what you are actually doing and how you will get there. There are really many difficulties wrapped into the act of climbing once you begin to think about it and as you begin to resolve them, the overall burden begins to diminish making the final outcome more positive. For example, many of us have to squeeze in climbing time. Are we doing this kind of “move” well? Do we have a regular schedule with objectives that interest us? Do we have motivated and supportive companions? Are we mindful of weather? Warming up? The drive to the cliff or boulder? The approach? Are we fearful of the climb? Is there a social scene we would just as soon avoid? Is our finger skin ready? Can we remember the sequences? The list goes on and on and the degree to which we control or understand these seemingly extraneous factors can affect the outcome considerably. I would propose that climbers who can resolve these difficulties have a much easier time with the actual climb which, we must remember is merely a continuation of all the steps we have taken to get to it and part of the path we take to reach our next experience.

In the end, technique and physical power are hugely important. The highest levels of climbing are unthinkable without extraordinary contact strength, for example. But we are misusing or wasting our time and our strength if we are not aware of how every experience feeds into the next and how best to use that experience and knowledge. Hopefully by lightening the mental burden on our shoulders, we can see more clearly what needs to be done to achieve our dreams and desires, less hindered by distraction and living more fully. Difficulty, or the perception of it, recedes as a goal, replaced instead by understanding and learning.

- Peter Beal   05-29-08
  visit Peter's blog at mountainsandwater.blogspot.com