Getting Better at Getting Better

What expenditures of your time or money are the most efficient at generating improvement in your totality of climbing accomplishments?

• Guidebooks - Buying a book and consistently browsing through it for inspiration and information is an underrated mechanism towards actually getting yourself to the top of something.
• Meaningful partnerships - Climb with ambitious climbers who challenge you. Be reluctant to consistently climb with others who are complacent or who are worse climbers than you.
• Learn your weaknesses - When you team up with a climber who is (broadly) worse than you, find specific ways that he or she is more competent. Learn about their specific strengths.
• Guiding - Find a specific highly-accomplished guide/instructor. Pay them for a day of climbing on a specific route or at a new crag that you feel would otherwise be slightly above your ability to tackle. Ask many many questions. Include the question "How would you be doing this if I were your partner and not a paying student". 
• Classes - Be reluctant to substitute social and political capital for competency in choosing instruction or knowledge sources.
• Advice Skepticism - The person who "achieves the most via the least" likely has far greater insight into achieving goals than does someone who has "achieved the most with the most".

Dials Not Switches

I just spent a weekend instructing climbing skills at an American Alpine Club event in Bishop. One takeaway from talking with a wide range of climbers: binary thinking (all/nothing, single solution, etc) is far too common and usually misses the point of a change or improvement.

Most challenges in life aren't going to be solved by "a solution" or "the solution" but instead by a variety of complementary nudges that move us in one direction via small increments. Hearing someone on the radio talk about "THE solution to climate change" is as silly as being asked "THE way to climb long routes faster". Often we may not even know for sure that these changes will steer us directly at a solution so much as slowly steer us away from an error or distraction. (It's why this well-reasoned website is called "Less Wrong", not "More Correct".)

After suggesting to someone that for their upcoming planned goal climb they don't bring along their cumbersome and tangleable personal anchor daisy chain or several very large HMS lockers, they incredulously looked at me and asked "Will that really make the difference?" But this question misses the point. They were thinking in switches, not dials. It will make a difference, and that difference will help move the dial towards where they want to be.

Footwork and Headspace: Underrated.

Freedom or Death 5.12a

Earlier this year I got the chance to climb around on the East Face of Liberty Bell with my friend Scott Bennett, who had just completed a continuous push of running the 100+ mile Wonderland Trail while climbing Mt. Rainier twice. Scott was in very very good cardio and "suffering" shape, but had hardly been rock climbing and basically lacked any kind of forearm or finger strength, and was barely able to comfortably wear rock shoes. We decided to go rock climbing.

Despite having (a couple days earlier) fallen off a .12a permadrawed sport climb that he'd done before, Scott was able to style his was up the onsight of the long crux pitch of "Freedom or Death" while fighting off heinous mosquitos and despite already having just climbed and rappelled the whole East Face via "Live Free or Die!". The mosquito swarm, tiny holds, and sloppy shoes didn't hold him back because the long crux pitch relies on intricate footwork, careful planning, slab balance skills, and maintaining a cool head. It's also a pitch that I'm sure would be more difficult than the .12a sport climb for 90% of climbers. It was a stark reminder that for most granite climbing, knowing how to climb correctly and calmly is far more important than what you have on your feet or how many pounds you can dangle off your waist while you fingerboard.

(Freedom or Death - climbers is Chris Allen, photos Forest Woodward)