OFF THE WALL

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Mind Control

The world turns, creaking slowly, just in time - before I turn into the spoilt child at the party who hasn’t won the prize (actually I think I did for a short while there). Anyway, the sun comes out, agendas mesh and we go to the Avon Gorge to play.

I like traverses. My first climbing experience was traversing so the traverse on ‘Gronk’ (VS 4c) has started to goad me on. I decide to give it a close looking-at so we scurry up to the belay stance on ‘Morpheus’, cunningly avoiding the polish and run-out-ness of the first pitches of ‘Gronk’.

I do the usual thing of avoiding looking at it in the eye for a while and then stare rudely. It stares back implacably. ‘You could always take a look and come back. You don’t have to do it’, says Baz. They are just the sort of words to pander to my fear. Part of my head wants an excuse not to do this. I know it’s a climb above my grade. I need someone to say ‘do it’, not to give me an option. But I know that the words have to come from me. So I decide commitment is necessary- a difficult thing at the best of times. I take a deep breath and step out onto the face...

It was a breeze – a strong breeze with some blustery bits – but it was a pleasure. There may have been great amounts of air beneath my feet but I had a grinning crack for cams and hands, and enough ledges to tip toe easily across. It was nowhere in the same league of subtlety as ‘Clan Union’ (E1 5b) - the route just down the road that I did last year on the other end of the rope. ‘Where were the difficult bits?’ I had the temerity to ask later when Baz appeared around the corner.

And then the sun shone some more and we go to the Dewerstone – so I can repeat the April success on ‘Central Groove’ (HS 4b). But it’s not that simple - the buoyant confidence of the VS day eludes me. It has escaped somewhere out of the van window on the drive down perhaps. Where before I had felt in control and relaxed, now I have the classic head battle; ‘I don’t like this. I can’t do this. I want it to stop.’ Disco-leg and pumped arms ensue. I fumble with the wrong gear and mutter and moan, and only calm down when I reach the traverse across the tiles. I approach the VS top pitch feeling faintly sick- but then find it the breeze that ‘Gronk’ had been.

How does this happen? How can it all be so possible one day, with a quiet head dealing with the exposure calmly, and then so noisy and so difficult the next? There’s a thin line between fun and fear – a thread it seems, and the thread is in my head: sometimes as tangled as the wires on my MP3 player and sometimes rolled up neatly. I’d really like to know how to stop it from getting tangled.

Posted by fishinwater