In the beginning of May, I booked a trip to Red River Gorge with Woohan, Ellen, and Alex. This would be the first new location I’d climbed at since Rumney back in September, and would also be my first trip with Ellen and Alex. Although I didn’t know the two very well, I knew from my interactions with them in the gym that Ellen and Alex were strong, and were serial redpointers. I knew this trip would be one where I could push myself alongside another group of similarly motivated climbers, and was excited to train hard in the lead cave for preparation.
I had heard that The Red was all about steep jug hauling through long, endurance testing routes. With this in mind, I spent as much time as possible in the month or so I had after coming back from Red Rock to train my endurance on steep climbing. I decided to not project anything seriously during this period (very rare for me) and just focused on getting lots of mileage every session, averaging around 8-9 long/cave routes a session. This included doing doubles on cave routes, where I would go up and immediately jump on another cave route with no rest in between. Although this was a bit more structured than I typically preferred, I was hoping that all this endurance training would pay off and give me a head start on the Red’s endurance style.
Before we even got to the climbing though, we had a few mini-epics, including with our travel plans. Our flight to Lexington, KY kept getting delayed, and eventually went from arriving at 11:30 PM to arriving at 2:00 AM. Unfortunately, the car rental desks close around 12:30 AM, and all of a sudden we were worried about not having a car to drive to our Airbnb in Slade, KY. We were lucky to have Woohan land before us, and he managed to both get the car and get some groceries before coming back to pick us up. With a few wrong turns on the drive to Slade, we arrived at the Airbnb at 5 AM, and agreed to try for an 11 AM departure.
Even though I slept decently, the travel debacle definitely crushed any hopes of productive climbing on day 1. We arrived in the Motherlode with high psych but little else. I have to say, this crag was truly a beautiful and surreal environment straight out of a climbing brochure/guidebook, complete with a waterfall in the middle of a massive cavern of overhung walls. I tried Ale-8-One 5.12b that day, which was around a 60 foot overhung slopey/juggy crimp climb. The conditions were okay at first, but after an hour of rain (where we all managed to stay completely dry due to how overhung the walls were, the holds became extremely slimy and I made negative progress with each attempt.
Climbing vocab word of the day: "Man·ky": adjective - Slimy, wet, worthless climbing conditions
Day two, we split up where Ellen and I went to Solarium crag to try Super Best Friends 5.12b, while Alex and Woohan went to try some harder climbs at a different location (Cell Block Six). Super Best Friends (SBF from here on out) was quite a long climb, but had a nice sit down no hands rest ¼ of the way up. Here, the real climbing starts, as you climb out of a cave on mostly jugs and heel hooks, culminating in a crux where you have to exit the roof of the cave onto the easier head wall. I made all the moves my first run up, and felt pretty good on my second go before taking at the lip of the cave. Unfortunately, this is where I got stuck for the next two days, as I continued to fall at the same place over and over.
In hindsight, I should have taken the time and really dialed in the beta at pulling the roof, but I felt so close each redpoint burn, and after I fell, there was no reasonable way to get back onto the climb. As such, I was still uncertain and trying new beta all the way leading up to my send go, and kept waffling in a general feeling of uncertainty (especially since strong people kept flashing SBF with different beta). Ellen was making good progress herself, initially being stopped by a bouldery move in the middle on each attempt. I was also trying to move through the crux by skipping a clip, and subsequently taking 40 foot whippers when falling afterwards. Interestingly enough, when I finally sent SBF, I was so calm and in control that I ended up clipping the bolt that I always skipped, kept my head, and pulled the roof by doing what felt natural for my body (which in this case was cutting feet and pulling them up high). I think that I chose a good project for my abilities and conditioning at the time, as I felt that I developed more and more endurance as I got “acclimated” to the route, but I would refine my redpointing process more next time and work the crux section specifically if I fell more than twice there.
Richard Zheng 