English man in Font

Martigny – to be posted August 9th

I left for Martigny with high hopes but tethered to a leash of reality. I’d only touched rock twice in the past few months, with the rest of my time either spent training on my board or studying. My readmission into the school of rock climbing turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. I knew my skin was bad, but what occurred was beyond even my own low expectations. To sum it up briefly, I spent 3 days barely being able to take my weight off the ground due to painful skin. These 3 days were spent in some amazing places though, and with two great guys (who should train more and take the crown of the world’s strongest bouldering brothers back to Wales). The area around Martigny is thus far rather under represented in the arena of world bouldering, and as far as I’m concerned it should stay that way. It is home to both hard and amazing boulder problems in amazing locations, and the best part is that you can expect to have entire crags to yourself. We visited a wonderful alpine crag called [unnamed for access reasons], the amazing blocs of Fionnay, and even the random collections of fallen boulders at Vernayaz. Obviously we also went to Branson! The most amazing thing about all these crags is that they are all home to multiple problems of (at least) 8B! The few days in the Martigny area were also fun because we didn’t have a guidebook (I don’t think there is one) and so we were navigating by strange directions and small scribbles that I’d drawn on my phone. I was genuinely surprised to find some of the places, but always pleasantly surprised when we got there. It was also refreshing because we had no idea of the names or grades of most things, so it was a case of picking the nicest looking things to climb, and the hardest looking things to try. As I wrote earlier, my skin was an absolute nightmare, and I was really suffering from painful tips every time I tried to pull on. This culminated on day 3 with a cessation of climbing due to the incredible pain I felt whilst trying to climb. I felt like a sack of spuds on the rock. I felt like I was moving so badly, using my feet badly, and not pulling because of the fire that had replaced my fingertips. I knew I wasn’t in bad shape (but not in my best either) so I was feeling rather frustrated and a little eggy. Later on in that day we went back to Branson, and things took a change for the better. I wasn’t planning on climbing because I’d quit only hours ago due to pain, but conditions were really good. It had dropped in temperature, and watching Danny climb just made me itch for a go myself. I resisted for a while, but then I eventually crumbled, pulled on my boots, chalked my hands, and starting warming up. The warm up’s felt easy and my skin had been the recipient of some serious magic as it wasn’t hurting! I didn’t understand why, but I thanked my lucky stars (of the shooting variety) and pressed on. I walked down to Radja where Danny was climbing and Sam spotting only to declare “I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel strong”. Later we decided that I must have broken through some sort of skin pain barrier, but in the meantime I wanted to try Radja. I just wanted to try the crux moves, which consist of a move into an undercut and then the move out of it. I had done the move off it in my previous visit earlier in the year, but the move into the undercut had proved too hard (or perhaps simply too complex). I had a few weak attempts, and then something clicked in my understanding of the move. I also realised how useless it is to ask a very good/strong climber for beta because they often don’t have a conscious knowledge of the theory behind the movement. I say this with reference to Tyler, who I’d emailed for info about Radja. Tyler is not only ridiculously strong, but he moves ridiculously well on the rock. His understanding of movement seems to operate at a subconscious level, so his body finds the best way to do a move, often without his brain needing to be engaged. I say this only as theory, but I’ve never actually hit the rocks with Tyler, so I say it based only on what he’s told me, and how I’ve seen him climb in videos. I’m rather sure that when he hits a move that requires his brain to engage, it does so efficiently and quickly, and then his body adapts very quickly. This is intended to be a compliment to Tyler! I think that is why these young guys are destroying many of the classic test pieces, because their strength is very high, but their subconscious understanding of movement is also very high. Unfortunately for me, I am not that strong, and my understanding of movement isn’t that good, so I often have to think very hard about how I’m moving to find the way to do a move. It is often a nice process, but I think I would trade it for being able to do hard things quickly! Anyway, this is all related to my experience with Radja. I’d seen two different videos of people climbing Radja, and the movement I’d witnessed was somewhat engrained in my brain (from watching them so many times), so when I saw Danny make a subtle movement it all clicked in my brain. I was going about the move all wrong. I saw how Danny was getting into his right shoulder before moving his left hand and I realised that’s what I was failing to do. Danny is also one of the guys that has a subconscious understanding of movement, so I thank him for the revelation! I had another few goes and then I managed to put my mental understanding of the movement into my physical execution of the move. Suddenly it went from feeling impossible and slightly beyond my ability, to possible and just about within my ability. I got up into the undercut for the first time, and with that I’m happy in the knowledge that I’ve done all the moves. It was a great mental boost though, as I was feeling eggy about my inability to climb on rock, but this one move turned it all around. I had to give up shortly after doing that one move though, because it’s a physical move and it really take it out of your back very quickly. My feelings for Radja haven’t changed though, and I’m still very psyched to go back there and try to do it. I am now very sure that I’m capable of doing it, but I’m also very sure it won’t fall easily. In many ways, that’s perfect.