5/18 11pm Today I thought about what the point of this guide book really is. On one hand I want to make a catalogue of routes for climbers to experiment with and enjoy. On the other hand, I want to provide a platform for everyone to make routes and have them preserved for the next year's team. Today I considered the point of all of this. I want to help new climbers find what makes climbing the chapel interesting and fun. It has a lot of potential to be great fun, and a practical tool to improve as a climber, but not everyone comes to see it that way. The chapel isn’t approachable and I want to make it more so. So I thought about how I could reach that end directly. After some encouragement from my mentor I spent part of today writing up this little story of how the chapel has evolved in my eyes over the years. I think with some revision and shortening it could be kind of an introduction to the book. Here is the first draft. It is awful but it has to start somewhere. Back in the f...
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5/17 11pm Ah yes, another day. Part of me I was hoping for rain today, but I realized that is totally silly of me. I can take a day to not climb any time I want to work on all of the writing I still have to do. I actually need to take a day for that some time this week, because it really is the next step for me. However in the meantime I have come to a few conclusions. For one, I had for a while been debating about the format to represent climbs, and I think even though it is not too clean I am going to go for drawing on the photos to indicate the holds and what parts of them to use like I showcased a few days ago. It is a bit messy, but it is to the point. and clear. and practical and, Ties into my second conclusion. I want a way for people to add routes of their own to the catalogue. I thought about different ways but I just want something simple and robust. I am just going to make a separate google doc with a link to edit usable by anyone at proctor, on the good faith no one ...
Week one review
Week one review Time sure flies. Already a week in but I feel like I have made good progress and I am on schedule with my expectation. Going into this I wanted to front load making routes in case of rain, and I have come up with a good selection and variety of routes so far. I would like to keep making more, but now I really need to start formalizing the documents and doing all the writing. There is a decent chance of rain on Monday which would be the perfect opportunity, or with black flies getting worse and worse I might only climb for an hour or so some days and spend the rest of the time getting everything else set up. Overall I am not worried, things are going pretty much as expected. I have a lot of work to do, but I have a decent amount of time to get it done. I know that so long as I am staying productive and focused this has the potential to be something really cool and useful for a long time to come.
5/15 10pm Did you know the black flies are out? I know the black flies are out. I am not certain of much in this world however, I am certain beyond any shadow of a doubt it is now black fly season. Yeah, despite 3 springs here in NH this is the first time I have actually noticed black flies and wow, they suck. Anyway, when I am on the wall I am typically too focused to really pay them much mind, but the second I get down I am swarmed. I am finally looking to make hard routes instead of easy ones and it is much nicer. Something I have had fun doing is mimicking climbing styles from out on real cliffs, here on the chapel. For example, crack climbing is one of the most popular styles of climbing, but there aren't any cracks even remotely climbable on the chapel. Despite that By only using the sides of hold you can get a similar effect. This route uses only one side of holds to kind of emulate climbing the side of a crack. Ultimately it is not too faith full to the form but none the ...
5/14 10pm Yet another solid day on the wall. Here nearing the end of the first week I feel like I have fallen into a steady rhythm. I get up at 6, climb from 8:30 till 12:30, and either climb more or do back end work for an hour before going to theatre in the afternoons and evenings for the mounting rehearsals as the musical performance nears. It is weird how things feel really busy and really still. I spend the first half of the day climbing where I can take all the time in the world trying to move 5 feet for an arbitrary goal. This is followed by 5 or so hours of the stress of learning lines and hitting notes and imagining a world in which I was not cast as someone with a British accent. It is just an interesting lifestyle for the moment. As far as climbing goes, I am pretty done trying to make easy routes. I am glad I spent a while doing it, but it is surprisingly hard to do. My talk with my mentor yesterday inspired me to try some of the hardest parts of old climbs and see if...
5/13 11pm It has been a long day, but for the most part a good one. Today was just as nice as you can ask for. 60s, sunny, gentle breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. I spent the first part of today with the routes the climbing team made my freshman year. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was pleased with what I found. A lot of the routes were tricky and interesting. I also came to a seemingly obvious revelation as to why so much of the climbing on the chapel feels awkward. It is the only place I have ever actually climbed a perfectly vertical face. If a face is slightly over hung or slightly less than vertical really dictates how it is climbed and when the face is strait up and down it doesn’t quite fit either style. I want to try and figure out and verbalize what the vertical style is like. Toward the end of the day I spend an hour or so with my mentor walking around and talking about the project and he shared some of the routes he remembered from decades past. I am going...
5/12 10pm Today was good. After talking with my mentor I decided to take it as a more mellow of a day. Trying to climb hard for hours every day is bound to be a fruitless endeavor. After a certain point your arms are just tired and the capability to do something interesting kind of goes away. I still put up some lines but mostly I looked around and did some prospecting on where I might put an interesting route. I discovered some interesting holds that despite years of climbing on these walls I have never used. Later in the day I did some digging to find something I was worried I had lost. My freshman year the climbing team actually made a book of routes. I think I have the only one left around and I want to scan it all soon. Tomorrow I want to try most of the routes. My hope is to include most of them in the book I am making for a bit more variety from my style, and because a lot of them look like really fun routes. Daily Hours 4 Total Hours 14