Living closer to a crag and climbing performance

[jetjackson]

So I'm interested to hear if anyone here has lived in a place with very little access to a local crag, i.e. >3 hour drive to the crag, meaning that day trips are not realistic - that has then moved closer to a crag.

I know Avaserfi has recently moved to Denver - keen to see how that impacts his climbing.

Just thinking in the longer term, how important is it to have day trip access to a sport crag, in order to progress your climbing. 

Mark - From my basic understanding, you and Mike have moved around a lot through your careers - what kind of impact do you think this has had on your climbing? Has living closer to a crag coincided with more rapid improvements in climbing? 

Anyone else have any long term experiences they could share about living close vs. far away from crag?

[MarkAnderson]

I think living near climbing is huge. It gives you way more options as far as planning/scheduling, plus it makes it really easy to keep your skills maintained with periodic outdoor mileage days that otherwise wouldn't be worth the logistical effort. The benefits are amplified if you have kids. You just no longer have the time for long commutes to the crag. The ability to climb near home gives you way more options for babysitting, etc. Bottom line, there's no way I'd be where I am now if I hadn't moved to Colorado.

[jetjackson]

That's what I thought. I'm looking at a move to Melbourne this year. I'll be 3 hours from the Grampians, so it will be good for weekend trips. That's perfect for working on one of my long term goal routes - Eye of the Tiger. If we go, we'll be there for 3-5 years at least, so I'd say I'll have a reasonable chance of going from 5.11+/5.12- to 5.13b in that time frame. At the same time, we're thinking about kids 2-3 years from now and that'll take a huge chunk out of my time. Eventually I'm thinking I'll have to try and get back to the US and live somewhere within an hours drive of a sport crag if I really want to excel.

Or maybe I'll just have to find somewhere undeveloped close to Melbourne that I can convince the local trad heads to let me sport bolt.

Thanks for the feedback.

[avaserfi]

I just got back from 3 straight days climbing in Hueco Tanks and had a huge realization about proximity to crags and projects. In the past year, marked as my last trip to Hueco in early 2016, I've gotten to climb outside 3 times. None of those 3 outdoor climbing trips were during a peak phase, so I ended up climbing for mileage focusing on v4-v6 boulders and routes under 5.12. All the while, I trained hard and was sending indoor projects that I thought were miles away (unknown grades on my home woody).

I went to Hueco with the intent to climb my first v10, Power of Silence. Training wise, I felt strong enough to climb v10. My big concern was skin, skills and time. 3 straight days of projecting a route at my limit was going to be very taxing and as it turned out Hueco was very hot while we were there (65-70F).

To expedite the process and give myself a slight edge on time and skin, I looked up some beta on the internet. It looked like there was essentially two sets of beta tall person and short person. Not being too tall, I thought the short person beta would be my go to. My first day on the problem, I discovered that I am slightly too tall (or inflexible) to work the short person beta and too short (or weak) to use the tall person beta. The intermediate pinch felt impossible to hold and moving off of it unfathomable, at first. Since my borrowed beta wasn't going to work, I ended up spending most of my first day developing new beta that added an extra couple foot moves to the problem, including a tenuous movement while holding the intermediate pinch. Figuring out this movement was extremely taxing. I gave the next move to the pocket a couple goes, but had nothing left for the day. Holding on to the pinch and repeatedly working the same foot movements until I figured out a beta that would work for me took too much energy. Aside from working POS, I had only climbed a v5 (Springtime for Hitler) and v6 (King Cobra), not getting on anything else to save myself for the mega-project.

Day 2 was starting, my skin was slightly tender and a specific set of muscles were sore from doing the same moves over and over the previous day. After a couple of attempts and refining my previous day's beta I was getting close to sticking the move to the pocket off the intermediate pinch. I slipped and was rewarded with a split tip on my middle finger. It wasn't bad enough to stop attempts, but certainly didn't help. Slightly more progress and a new beta idea popped in my head. I found out the idea wouldn't work for me when I slipped off and got a huge blood blister on my pointer finger. That ended any hope of sending, despite feeling extremely close. 1.5 days into the trip and my hopes for sending were done. Not only that my hopes of sending anything crimpy or with small holds for the trips entirety was pretty much lost. Between the split tip and dime size skin explosion on my left hand slopers and compression routes were my only hope.

My friends and I went off and worked some other more moderate routes. I was forced to be fairly selective on the routes I climbed and still had a great time. That said, I learned that planning to project a route at my absolute limit for three straight days might be overly ambitious. I think, the overall smarter move would have been working hard routes and getting more mileage in the v7-9 range. In contrast, the goal to climb a classic v10 has not gone away. I am hoping the move to Denver and gaining proximity to climbing will let me spend a reasonable amount of time working the problem. This extra time will let me properly respond to my body, skin and mental states. Rather than rushing the processes because of limited time, I will be able to relish the experience take my time, and learn all the while getting stronger!

Moral of the story - if you want to climb hard, you need relatively easy access to hard climbing. Or, at the very least, occasional long term access to hard climbing.