you got a nice clean shirt!

rope'd up today!  etienne and i got on some easy sport stuff for his rest day, and my rest/active recovery day.  it was awesome.  the highlight of the day, was etienne in his "flashed" bouldering pants, and his 5ten dragons (downturned toes), climbing up 5.8 slab.    

when alan saw us walking up he shouted "oh no, here comes the boulderers!".  its true. its true. 5th class choss is good times (the approach). 

on the sport climbing bouldering note..  ropeing up today, after bouldering hard for a while, i got to thinking.  simply, bouldering is extremely more fun to me.  I think easy and moderate trad is the ultimate shit----for sure. so sport climbing has it's place--in being training for trad endurance, for me personally it is a means to an end.  and not an end in itself.   back to why i enjoy bouldering more than sport.  in bouldering the movement is much more dynamic, powerful, and intense.  the variety of movement is astonishing, when comparing sport to bouldering.  throws to crimps, diabolique heelhooks over your head, big compression moves, extremely exagerrated dropknees.  take a climb like... the mystery for example, or the sharma scoop, or high plains drifter.  these consist of moves that you would never encounter on a route.  the only way you could get close to doing moves of this interesting nature on a route, would be climbing a crux of an extremely hard route, like 8A+ or something.  and frankly, i dont have the strength/endurance to do the moves leading up to that crux, so i cant get up there, and why train to get there, when i can do it 15 feet off the ground without going through the trouble of roping up.  everything that i have climbed under 5.12 (i can only speak from experience) is pretty much the same; a latter of holds, the harder the grade the longer the lockoffs and the smaller the holds.  yeah, you get a sidepull or an undercling every now and then, but basically same shit.  etienne said it well.  bouldering is stability - amidst instability, and sport climbing is instability amidst stability.  instability is the physically fun shit, so go to where the concentration of that is.  if you want more of a mental game in your climbing, and highballs arent your gig, than go all out and get on a trad route.  bouldering and trad are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, bouldering is extremely powerful  and technical and strongly focuses on the actual physical aspect of climbing.  and trad climbing is extremely mentally challenging, even when the climbing is physically easy.  sport climbing is in the middle, it is not as physical or mental.  there are no v14 boulder problems within sport climb cruxes, and clearly sport climbing is never as "heady" as runout trad.  i have an obsessive personality and always prefer the extreme end of the spectrum.    tis why, i love hard bouldering, and easy trad.  but sport has its place.  

on another note, i started spinning fire the other night.  (poi).  and it was badass.