Pride and the Divinity of Toproping

Maybe you were born with the ability to flash V13, but I guarantee you still have days when you can’t keep a grip on the milk carton while pouring a bowl of cereal.

It is a certainty that all climbers have good days, bad days and average days. This doesn’t make the bad days any easier for me to swallow. For one thing, I tend to expect my good days will last all summer long and that the periods of poor performance – the “bad days” – are just that, a single day, a fluke. I struggled to cope with this misguided outlook on a weeklong trip to Joshua Tree National Park last month.

“I SUCK!” I screamed, slapping the monzogranite as I dangled from a small Stopper for the umpteenth time in five days. The frustrated yell faded across the desert like a stray gunshot.

Before the trip, I was climbing as strong as ever, sending everything from steep limestone to Wingate cracks and boulders.

“You’re going to crush!” my friend said the day before I left for Joshua Tree.

I’d never been to J-Tree and I was making a conscious effort to approach the area with humility, but I felt in every muscle fiber that my friend’s assertion was correct.

My girlfriend and I rolled into the park on a Sunday afternoon. I rope-gunned a 5.7 near the parking lot called “Toe Jam.” I bumbled to find the right gear placements and misjudged the best stances to place the gear. Obviously I needed more familiarity with the rock before I hopped on any test pieces.

We rappelled over a steep 5.10 called “Bearded Cabbage.” Since the toprope was already set up, I figured I might as well run up the 5.10 while we were there. I’m used to onsighting 5.12 and had just seen the crux of “Bearded Cabbage” – a traverse from an overhanging flake into a crack – on rappel, so I didn’t think I would have any trouble hiking it on TR.

A moment later saw me swinging in space, grunting in disbelief that I’d just been shut down on 5.10c. The last time that happened was so many years ago I don’t remember it. In fact, I’d failed so completely on “Bearded Cabbage” that I fell too far away to pull back on. I lowered to the ground, shaking my head.

At least it gave me an opportunity to redeem myself. I fired the route smoothly after finding a key heel hook. The crux was only three moves but it was the most aggressive sequence I’ve encountered on 5.10. I told myself I’d merely underestimated the route and vowed not to let it happen again. Yet day after day, climb after climb, I found myself skidding off the rock onto small steel nuts and shallow cam placements. “Bearded Cabbage” certainly set the tone for my trip.

I should have done more toproping, but I was too proud. It was only after five days of getting slapped down that I admitted it would be more fun to toprope. My girlfriend became my role model.

As climbing partners, Mandi and I have an unusual relationship to the sport. She will hop off the couch to climb a nine-pitch 5.10 in the Black Canyon, but she has little interest in training or leading. She has no qualms about onsights and redpoints, or any pride points, really. She doesn’t feel the least bit bad about yelling, “Take!” Sometimes she seems downright wimpy when it comes to pushing her climbing limits. Then she’ll blow me away with her tenacity. I, on the other hand, am obsessed with perfection on the rock. I probably remember all the routes I haven’t sent more than any others. I train. I strategize. I plot redemption for every foot slip.

If I wanted to salvage any fun left to be had during my last day and a half in the serene, historical land that is J-Tree, I needed to change my mindset. Even after realizing this, I quietly cursed myself for being a gumby coward while setting a TR on a 5.12 dihedral called “Scary Monsters.” That attitude sent me skating from the crux on my first try. My anger became a perpetuating cycle that spun out until I couldn’t stick any of the moves I’d already done several times. I lowered to the ground to finish chewing a fresh bite of humble pie. At least Mandi and I had been alone in the middle of nowhere for all my tantrums. I was truly grateful for that.

“My goal for the rest of the trip is to not care about onsights or redpoints, or any of that magazine bullshit,” I told her. She just listened. I’m lucky to have a partner who is so tolerant and understanding of the emotions I have for climbing that she doesn’t.

I finished a snack and tied back in for another go on “Scary Monsters.” Floating up the blank stem corner provided the sensation I crave whenever I climb: moving up golden granite like wind over a landscape; fluidity without thought. But it didn’t count because it was on toprope. I toproped a few more world-class climbs that day and those didn’t count, either. There was no check box in the guidebook for “TR.”

“I can’t believe I haven’t been able to climb anything this whole trip,” I said to Mandi at the campfire. Thinking back, I roll my eyes considering that I genuinely felt I had climbed “nothing.”

A 5.12c finger crack called “Equinox” was my big goal for the trip. I’d put it off until the last day, hoping that would give me time to gain confidence for an onsight attempt. As I stared into the fire, though, I had less confidence than when I arrived a week earlier. I decided I would rather sample a world-class dream crack on TR than not see it at all.

The hike out to “Equinox” was beautiful and just scrambling up the back to set the toprope was an adventure. At last, after years of imagining what this perfect crack would feel like at my fingertips, I was knuckle deep inside it. I flashed it on TR (or as I like to say, I TRashed it). It felt so good; I lowered to the ground and did it again. Maybe I should have led it, but I didn’t. I was enjoying myself and leading sounded like painful work. It was time for something else.

Mandi and I went over to Sports Challenge Rock for the afternoon. I tied into the sharp end and styled a classic 5.12a called “Leave it to Beaver.” I was finally in the zone! Every move was bliss. A peanut gallery of climbers looked on, and Mandi told me later she heard them talking in admiration.

“It must be nice to walk up to a route like that and say, ‘I’m going to climb this,’ and then just do it,” she overheard one guy say.

I can’t help but chuckle at the irony. No one saw my ugly fits of failure. Then I have one good performance and someone assumes it’s that easy for me all the time.

Thank you, sir. I’m flattered, but it took me 20 years of climbing, plus a lot more, to reach that fleeting moment.

Next time your confidence is so low you’re dropping the milk carton, don’t underestimate the effectiveness of toproping. It leaves nothing to brag about, but maybe that’s why it helps – it can take ego out of the equation and remind us why we climb in the first place. And that’s not “nothing.”

Derek Franz writes a blog for SplitterChoss.com on the first Monday of every month.