Quitting vs Failing...

I just cannot get that route in Granada out of my head. I looked up at it and thought 6a+, I got this. The start looked much easier from the ground than it turned out to be. Part of my struggle was my belay partner trying to help me by pulling all the slack from the line. I did not realize this right away until I went to step back down to try a different approach and I couldn’t lower my body. Suddenly I realized that maybe my body positioning wasn’t as terrible as I had originally thought and maybe I could get a bit more on that slippery left foot. But there I am all in my head now, I force myself to let go of the excellent right hand I have, and get through the boulder problem. In retrospect if I hadn’t gotten all up in my head it probably wouldn’t have been so stressful. Fear is a funny thing though, it is contagious. My belay partner was nervous and keeping the rope short incase I were to fall, which made me more worried about falling. When you’re making bouldery moves with a tight belay the rope just doesn’t quite keep up with you making you have to pull harder.

Struggling to read the route and find good hands I found myself on a ledge just trying to sort my life out and commit to a potential fall, which at this point I am all back in my head again. I’m becoming frustrated with myself because when I had been climbing with Tyler in El Chorro, I had lost all that fear and was committing to hard moves and even falling. Here I just keep thinking about the fact my partner weighs less than me, the rope is tight and if I make a big move I might get pulled off by the rope or even worse if I fall he’s going to find himself a couple of feet off the ground. Maybe it’s even a bit of insecurity working its way in at this point. 

Anyway while I’m finally making plans for my moves to the next draw he asks me if I can just clip the bolt where I am so its “safer”. Which, for the record, is not safer to zigzag a route, all it does is increase the rope drag, and I know this. However, for some insane reason I do and just decide to climb that line instead. Abandoning my original route without a fall or even a take. At this point I was still in on-sight territory and I just changed routes? For the record my belayer pulling all the slack out of the line so I couldn’t step back down was not my fault and therefore I still just walked away from it. 

What is WRONG with me! 

That decision is going to haunt me for a long time I think. Almost as much as bailing out of the new route I moved onto because I couldn’t commit to the crazy heel hook move. There is a chance if I would have just pushed a little harder I could have stood up on that massive ledge but I gave up on that too. 

I also gave up at the start of the next route because the way the belay was set up. Listen to all these damn excuses.

Own your failures. Train harder. Climb with people that push you past your own limits. Bailing out without a fall is an absolute joke. (unless it’s before the first bolt is even reachable, cause that is just unsafe)