People I meet who don鈥檛 know climbing often ask me, 鈥淒o you ever fall?鈥 At first, it seems like a ridiculous question. I fall every day, countless times, sometimes off the same pebble sticking out of the wall.
I beat my hands up until they bleed, torn from unsuccessful efforts. I squish my feet into downsized rubber shoes to heighten sensitivity and control. I go through this process repetitively, fighting for the slight chance that, this time, I won鈥檛 fall. And when I finally don鈥檛, I feel this unparalleled, overwhelming sensation of personal satisfaction. On some trips, that moment never happens.
But really, how much does that send matter? Is the successful climb that much more significant than the climbs of the previous days, when I fell and fell?
Recently, I returned to Spain to work on a specific personal project: a climb at a crag called Oliana. I spent the first half of the year there, first training with , then climbing outside with friends. I kept falling, and the send eluded me.
I had graduated from Columbia University in 2016 and was starting my first year with no school commitments. Earning my degree is one of my proudest achievements鈥攊t even trumps winning the world championships鈥攂ut once I took off the cap and gown for good, I felt aimless. I didn鈥檛 know what would come next. It didn鈥檛 help that my transition back into full-time climbing was rocky. I nursed a bad back injury for the first few months, and though I traveled and climbed in many incredible places, I felt uneasy. I like to juggle a lot of responsibilities鈥攅vents, business opportunities, work with nonprofits鈥攚hich at times may be a self-defense mechanism. There鈥檚 less pressure to do just one thing superbly. While in school, wearing a lot of hats gave me built-in excuses: if I failed at something, I could blame the workload.
Those circumstances prompted me to think deeply about what climbing means to me and what objectives I should consider noteworthy in the future.聽
What I have learned is that the challenges that fire me up don鈥檛 need to have significance to anyone but myself.
I have no concrete answers. But what I have learned is that the challenges that fire me up don鈥檛 need to have significance to anyone but myself. Moving forward, this is what I want to prioritize: test myself on terrain that I鈥檓 passionate about, try my hardest, and have fun. I want to seek the elusive flow that comes when I鈥檓 climbing my best.聽The point is that the reason a personal project is significant鈥攔egardless of what boundary it does or not break, what definition of success it meets鈥攊s because it matters to me.
Oliana, for whatever reason, mattered. I didn鈥檛 want to fail on this rock. After dedicating August and September to a focused training plan, constructed by , I returned to Oliana. My first day back on the route, I broke past a point that I had always fallen on throughout the spring. The moves felt like they were flowing together, and the burly cruxes felt well within my range.
On October 31, after just over a week of trying the climb, rehearsing sequences, and refining my beta, I sent it. When I started off the ground and climbed through the second main crux sequence, midway on the route, I had a smile on my face. I felt like this was my time. I didn鈥檛 know how I knew that, and I still had almost a hundred of feet of climbing to go. But something felt right. I tapped into this flow, hitting all the holds exactly how I wanted to. When I clipped my rope into the chains at the top, I actually thought I might be dreaming. As I lowered myself to the ground, everything felt perfect. I felt proud of how I climbed, motivated by the progress that I proved to myself was possible, and genuinely excited.
I climb because it鈥檚 the space in my life where I feel the most in control. My world is still when I鈥檓 on the wall, and my worries are about whether I鈥檓 going to hold onto that next little crimper. Whether I can accurately twist my body into the position it needs to be to make the subsequent move possible. The subtleties that make all the difference between success and failure.
And that feeling when I get to the top, it's like a hit of self-confidence-boosting dopamine. I聽feel good about myself when I聽climb something that I've worked hard on; there is this sense of confidence that comes with clipping the chains that has nothing to do with how anyone else in the world thinks of me聽or how I聽look at myself聽in the mirror. It feels damn good.聽
Good enough to convince me to enjoy that fleeting high, then move on to the next project. And keep falling.