Bumble 7b - rock climbing Hữu Lũng, Lạng Sơn, Việt Nam

It is a route that danced with power and grace, steep and demanding, yet inviting in its beauty. Each hold felt solid in my hands, each movement a conversation between balance and strength. The overhang hit like a truck, yet somewhere within that chaos was a strange, magnetic elegance. Some moves felt compressed, others familiar, echoes of muscle memory from board sessions past. My body remembered the tension, yet here I was, floating - suspended between effort and ease. The pump, sly and merciless, crept in like a thief to steal the send away.

On my first attempt, I deciphered the dance, but the whole sequence refused to merge into one continuous song. I stood at the base replaying the micro-decisions. Doubt whispered in the spaces between movements: to knee bar or not, to bump left or right,...

Attempts two and three blurred together, moments of revelation and frustration. I peeled off from the overhang, swung past the bolt, brushed the air with disappointment. The high undercling match, the desperate bump to the tufa, the final pump, all within grasp, yet just beyond control. Subtleties blockaded me from the send. Overcaution and hastiness,...overcome them I had to.

When I fell from my high point, it wasn’t exhaustion that took me down but numbness of worn fingers and skin. The thought of stripping the draws and returning another week didn’t sit right. Laughter and encouragements filled the air, the stoke still alive. It felt like the right moment to give it one more go.

So I tied in. Something shifted. There was no power scream, no frantic battle, just the rhythm of movement and breath. The moves flowed despite the shaky worn out body. Before I realized it, I was there — at the anchor. Out came the sound of joy, a breath escaped me, half laughter, half sigh.

Video by me
Audio: Resolution Or Reflection - The Grey Room _ Clark Sims (Youtube Audio Library)