With Sweden shut down due to vacation and the beautifully warm weather, my usual climbing buddies were, well, they weren’t climbing anyway. Half the morning on the phone didn’t get the job done, so I was determined to aid if that’s what it came to. Besides, diversity is key and aiding is as about as intense as it gets. Don’t think so? Go find a sketchy couple of placements and then let’s talk. Given, it’s slow, fairly monotonous, fails miserably when it comes to acrobatic entertainment, but, there is that mental edge. And I needed a climb.
As luck would have it a couple of friends had a few spare hours in the afternoon before BBQ time so we headed to the closest alternative, a scrappy little crag in Uppsala that has one surprisingly stunning line. It’s a mixed line, starting with a crack and then moving on to a face that is unprotectable unless you’re British, and then with the crux at the top, if things went wrong, well, that’s why they have such good insurance.
We started on the other line, then attempted to steal our way up the face above the crack. It could have gone better… I’ve aided “Stöldförsök” many times previously, technically its aid anyway, and even managed to send it free clipping the bolts and rusty pitons on the face; but with BBQ time already here, my friends were off and I was left to rack up for a real aiding.
For me there’s a certain serenity to aiding, you have to trust yourself, there’s no “don’t fall now”, you get to know each placement intimately, that’s just how slow aiding can be. Nearing the top of the crack I was feeling pretty good, alone in the forest with a nice rhythm going, place, test, move up, clip and repeat. All that gear, and then just a simple trail of carabineers, there’s a certain esthetic.
About the time I was feeling pretty good I was nearing the top of the crack and well aware that the transition onto the face would be the crux. Now, if you’re free climbing it’s a pretty routine move, but standing in those aiders it’s a bit of a different story. And then I made a mistake. Normally you’d try and get as high in your aiders as you can and I’d just placed a #6 Walnut at the top of the crack before it’s crossed by a horizontal crack at the beginning of the face. So, I stepped up on the second step and could reach onto the face and the flared diagonal crack. Unfortunately, this crack flares outward. I figured, since I was high and standing well that I’d neglect the usual placement in the horizontal crack when you climb it as a mixed route.
So I stood up and it didn’t look good, I couldn’t reach as high as I wanted but there was the sketchy flare before the next sketchy flare. So a #3 Walnut set edgewise and flush to the rock. And this is the great bit about aiding, now you’ve got to test it, there’s no “I’ll just hold on…” Now, you throw down the dice and ease over into the aiders and if you’re still there, test it a little bit before you get brave and give it a little jump and then there’s that faint smile that you’re still there, a good feeling. So, into the other aider as well, and gingerly step up. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to put any force on the placement other than directly down and that left me desperately clawing at the diagonal side pulls you’d normally layback; but shifting my weight would mean changing the direction of force and I really didn’t want to do that. The routine free move was suddenly very touchy. There’s not much choice, the piece held a jump so I was going to move up, what else is there to do? So I struggled for a rather intense minute trying, hoping to move up without changing the balance.
It comes quick, you know before it happens but it comes quick and there I was laid out horizontally just two meters off the rocky deck with a #3 whizzing by my face. I’d had a long fall ending up close to the ground a month or so ago, for me there’s no fear, how could you move up with that burden? Instead there’s the need to get back up there, the system works, there’s knowledge gained and a new opportunity. Take it, a trip to the dark side and the ensuing questions of what could have been aren’t going to do you much good.
So I thought I’d have a quick drink of water and get back to it, except some jogger had just been running by in the forest and seen what’d happened and now he was just standing there watching. He didn’t say anything. I asked if he’d ever climbed, he said “No”. So I took my drink and clipped the jumars into the daisies, put the lowest piece back in that had popped, this time setting it to hold the upward force. And he just stood there. I clipped the jumars to the rope and headed back up explaining that there are other forms of climbing where you don’t hang on the protection. He might have said something but mostly he just stood there, watching, almost like filmmaking, but without a camera, for another 15 minutes. Maybe he wanted to see what would happen or be there just in case?
I topped out around sunset and cleaned in the dark. The blown flare is a little wider and the #6 took a good 5 minutes to get out. My wife’s voice on the phone was good, the air was crisp and now there wasn’t any water left.
The author flashing that one problem.
