Poet Judy Kendall, in her 2012 Climbing Postcards, writes of bouldering, a type of climbing I’ve only recently reunited myself with:
Holding out
waiting for my partner
I boulder past the boredom threshold
jigging my feet in a dance
from hold to hold hoping
she hasn’t quite come yet*
The Reach recently reset both its upstairs and downstairs bouldering routes, putting the areas on my radar. Generally, I really only consider bouldering if waiting for a climbing partner to arrive, like Kendall, or it our group contains an odd number, and I am taking a break from ropes to allow someone else to have a turn. Last week, however, a climbing friend, Catherine, took her father, who was eager to get on the wall after a year away; I was happy for a mid-week climb and a ride to Woolwich. The auto-belay area was out of action for resetting, and, rather than wait it out, in the cold, I took to the upstairs caves.
The thing about bouldering is that, like auto-belaying, you can get in a lot more climb-time; with bouldering, you are working on both the ascent and descent, getting more for your money. After an hour bouldering, I could easily call it a day and feel satisfied and physically spent. Kendall mentions ‘the boredom threshold’, and I get this: bouldering can seem like an appetiser for the main meal on the rope. Some prefer the props, the greater height, the connection to the other person belaying you. The sense of achievement associated with an average top rope or lead climb can seem far more note-worthy than a short, hop-on/hop-off bouldering problem. Contrary to what many beginners think, statistically, the overall risk factor is actually greater when bouldering as there is no support equipment; it is you, the wall, and a thick crash mat below. Landing improperly, or climbing above your ability, and higher than you can safely fall, is the greatest cause of accidents at a gym. It is a dangerous to wear a harness, as falling on its metal bits could cause injury. In this way, bouldering is both high-risk, but also free and unfettered.
Bouldering is essentially a solo activity, although many do it in the presence of others, trying out new routes, helping each other with tricky sequences, competing to see who can master a difficult grade first. I love climbing with friends for the camaraderie, the chat, the shared experience; but I needed thinking space last week, with the recent US election still troubling me. I had the upstairs to myself, and I applied myself to the task of completing all of the green routes with a single-mindedness that made me forget all about politics. I discovered the pink ‘improver’ routes, and worked through them from number one, to twenty, never finding number nine (!), and getting a bit suck on fourteen. (I am chicken on some of those overhangs, and my mind starts telling my hands and feet ‘no’! My friend, Cecilia, stops herself from going too high by picturing herself in a leg cast at Christmas!)
With bouldering, I feel like I’ve discovered a new sport within one I already love. The category of bouldering can seem separate from top-roping/lead-climbing in action, accessories, and mind-set. The mental challenge is formidable, constantly bringing to mind injury, error and sensibility. And yet, it allows for space to think, to climb without conversation, words or post-game analysis. For a writer, it might seem antithetical to crave a space where words play no part; but this is exactly the sort of space where the solo mind can work through problems, where the random, inspired lyric can find silence in which to breed, and one can do and feel and move in anticipation of words, to develop in the muscle before making their way to the mind and mouth.
I wouldn’t wish my partners away, or even delayed, in order to get bouldering time in; however, I would, from time to time, welcome the ‘boredom’, for the workout, physical and mental. I may even get a poem out of it in the next days.
*Judy Kendall, Climbing Postcards (Cinnamon Press: Gwynedd), 2012.