A Guide To Chapel Climbing

  5/24 It was a good day. I got back out on the chapel and it just felt so good. The holds all seemed nice and the moves flowed together. I looked at probably the most climbed 5x10 stretch of wall. Last week Buz had told me about a route he used to do years ago. The route revolved around a sketchy side pull toward the top. The route itself is forgotten, but knowing the crux is enough to make something in its shadow. I came up with something much easier, but still fun. I decided to take a video of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s27cqy2fJPE In the evening I started work on the reflection paper for my senior project. I really like writing about the process. It is a good chance to step back and evaluate why something works which has been fun. I have a lot of work to do on the 25th getting everything prettied up to present, but it should all come together. Daily Hours 5 Total hours 52

  Week 2 Review The second week is done. At this point I have 2 days left to work before we present and I only need I believe 3 hours, so I am planning on going over a bit. Most of this week was spent writing. A mix of hot humid weather and black flies and mosquitoes made being out climbing not as desirable, but I am glad I still got out some. Writing about climbing has been an interesting experience. Climbing is such a visual and kinesthetic thing that capturing it in words takes a much better poet than myself. That said I think a decent amount of what I have written could be legitimately useful to someone if they read it. At the same time though, I would rather people at the chapel be climbing as opposed to reading, but at least it is there. With just about all of the writing done, my hope is to spend Monday and Tuesday as fun days making a few more routes for the book. Over all it has been a good time, and I think I am heading into a strong finish.

  5/22 What a day. My last Saturday on campus. My last time preforming on the proctor stage. Hot, humid, and swarming with mosquitos. At long last, amidst the bitter sweet chaos I managed to just about finish the written portion of my guide book. This means I should be able to spend my last two days of the project on the chapel having fun and climbing and making routes to my heart’s content. As for what I completed today, I spent a lot of the time coming up with exercises people can do climbing that train specific skills. It was an interesting task. Many I knew and just had to write a description and my personal advice and recommendations for. Also today I got some of the photos from the photo shoot I did with my friend Gunnar. Daily Hours 3 Total Hours 47

5/21 11pm Do you know how to describe the motion of climbing in a meaningful way? I don’t really. Today I tried writing a section on climbing technique. Trying to broadly state what makes for good technique is really difficult. Fortunately you can extract specific tips. Little concrete things someone can do to help their technique. Like stepping with the toe of the shoe instead of the heel or the ball because it lets you be more precise, and most shoes are designed with standing on the toe in mind. Of course I love writing thousands of words about visually simple things, but sometimes I have to use the shortcut of a picture. I think in these cases a thousand words just can’t quite cut it. This one is an example of the full crimp. A way of gripping a small hold to apply the maximum force. It is often overkill, but when you need it there is no way around it. Daily Hours 3 Total Hours 44

  5/20 Senior project aside, today was a great day. Performances of the musical have begun and it is overwhelmingly fun seeing it all come together. Speaking of things coming together I am getting close to having the guide book in a working condition. I need to write a bit more, but then all I will have left to do is add routes to my heart’s content. I will be totally transparent in saying that for the moment senior project has taken a little bit of a back seat to the rest of the exciting chaos transpiring. I will still get all of the hours and produce a good product, but today wasn’t the day to grind it all out. Part of why I think this is ok, is because today I learned we get 2 days of next week as part of this. I was under the wrong impression that we only had 2 weeks, and I was on pace to hit 50 hours in that time. Having a bit more flexibility means I can focus on more pressing matters for the day.  I know this really isn’t a great blog post, but I just want to be open. Daily Hour

  5/19 11pm Today I finally really got to work writing the written section, and figuring out what I need to say. I came out with this table of contents that I have been working through. It’s funny. I am actively writing things I kind of hope people will never actually read. It is all good information, and I need to state all of the safety stuff, but I think if people are at the chapel they should really be climbing, and I can’t imagine people seeking it as pleasure reading through their day. Some technique pieces could be valuable for someone while climbing so I want to put a lot of time into making those not just descriptive but useful. I hope to get back out on the wall tomorrow but I need to actually make the guide book before I get too carried away making more routes. After all, even if I don’t come up with a lot of great routes just having somewhere people can record their own might help proctor climbing a lot. Daily Hours 4 Total Hours 39