The Southerly Way - Final Day

It seems that grades are the cool thing to talk about lately so I'm gonna make an effort to talk as little about them as possible cause I just don't care anymore. I think I used to care about grades, and to a certain extent I definitely still do. I just can't handle this much talk about whether a V15 is actually a V15, and what the standard is or isn't. It just doesn't matter.

On to better things now!! Radness!!!

After a slight delay and a bit of a snow day we got up on Saturday to possibly the best forecast all trip. 40 and mostly sunny. Fantastic!

I'm gonna change the name of Tennessee to 'Tennesconsin"

We decided to do a split day with the morning at Dayton and the afternoon at LRC. A quick drive found us at the parking lot at Dayton and we hiked directly up to the roof. All three of us did some pullups on the jugs on Recollections and called that our warmup.

Katie and RV immediately set their sights on Torpedo and I made some more vain attempts to warm up. Katie hopped on and linked into her high point with ease and started working out the last two moves. RV did much of the same while he kept on warming up.

After a bit of time I finally decided to hop on the Torpedo for a flash go. I really only wanted to give it one effort in hopes to save skin. In fact I told myself I was only gonna give it one go. No matter the results.

I walked around it for a bit and after a minute or so found what looked to be a possible heel hook. I was delighted. Soon after I stepped on and made my way through the crimpy slots. In no time I was matching the rail before the jug and the heel hook I found proved key!! I made one big move to the jug and surprisingly stuck it! A couple more moves brought me to more jugs and I came down.

Very psyched about that one! The problem was surprisingly more fun than I thought it would be and I was glad to have flashed it.

RV and Katie both hopped back on, each one looking closer and closer. Then it happened. RV sat down and looked up at the sky, presumably at the same J. Henry that smote him down before, and tweaked his shoulder. In agonizing pain we put as many warm jackets on him as humanly possible and watched as he slowly crumpled into a little ball of pain and hate.

RV, in loads of pain

It was so sad.

While RV tried to rub his shoulder back to health, Katie set forth to the task at hand. Armed with the new heel hook beta she made the moves leading up to the jug look like an absolute joke. She tried the throw a couple times but decided that she just had to try hard. Then, seemingly out of nowhere she stuck the jug at near full extension.

She tried in vain to get her feet up by her head and eventually came down, swore a bit and hit me once or twice. She hits hard. Right, Nic??

While she cooled off a little and calmed down I pulled the pads over to what I thought was the start of Honeycomb. Turns out, I have no idea. RV and I didn't think that the problem started right in the middle of the roof on the double undercling, but now I think it does. Either way I decided to check out the moves starting from WAAAAY down in the roof at the HUGE undercling. It was as far back as I could get.

I tried a couple moves but they were painful and kinda awkward. Soon I made my way back to the two moves we hadn't stuck. The big drop move and the move connecting into the jugs of Recollections. A couple of failed attempts later and I was pulling off my shoes, waiting for another day. My motivation wasn't high.

We moved everything back to The Torpedo and Katie gave some more all out efforts on the rig. 2-3 more times she stuck the jug but just couldn't muster her feet out right. Each time I got a punch on the shoulder for it. Fun.

Disgruntlement

On the Torpedo

Eventually she knew what she had to do but had wasted too much energy putzing around on the opening moves earlier that morning. A tough lesson to learn but one we all do at some point or another.

It's incredibly hard leaving behind a project you know you can do, but it's so satisfying going back and finishing it up. Very soon, that will happen.

A quick stop at Walgreens to get RV some meds and we were down at LRC. With no real plans in mind we walked to Cleopatra and Cinderella. Katie was interested in Cleo and I wanted to try and finish up Cinderella from last year.

Katie made some great, very quick progress on Cleo and was just getting stopped on the sorta reachy 2nd move. All the others felt pretty doable to her, in fact she did all of the moves but the last and the 2nd. Good on her!

In the meantime I started working on Cinderella in the hopes of finishing up that pile. I do not like those crimps.

I quickly had the moves dialed in, which is more than I can say for last year, and moved on to trying to do it. While I could do the crux heel hook over and over in isolation, adding 2 moves on to the start of it threw me off just enough each time. Either I'd over/undershoot the slot or I'd just plain miss the damn thing.

Each time it was the same story. I ended up coming home empty handed. Oh well.

On the way out we stopped by the Eliminator once more so Katie could give it some more effort. I stepped onto my perch and watched as she proceeded to absolutely hike the move that was shutting her down so badly a couple days earlier. The heel looked solid and the move looked fucking simple for her. Really inspiring to see such a turnaround.

Then on one go she hit the high rail and somehow moved her left hand from a crimp into an odd mantle. RV started yelling at her and I took pictures.





After getting to that position she started fishing around for the really good left foot but just couldn't find it and eventually something popped off and she was on the pads. It was absolutely sick how easy she made it look.

She ended up sticking the move a couple times more but wasn't able to recreate the magic. We packed up and immediately talked about how epic of a next trip she's going to have. In one day she primed herself to send three really hard projects, getting either all or most of the moves.

I can't wait to come back...it was so good!!!

Each year we plan a February trip to help us get through the long dark winter in the gym. It doesn't really matter if it's cold, snowy, rainy, crappy or whatever else. What matters is that right now I'm looking at a 40 degree forecast for the next week or so.

The season is here. I've got a pretty good feeling about this year. Shit will go down. I can't wait to see what everyone does!!