The system is holding.
The system is holding. A week of climbing out of the valley, closing easy 6c+, hearing the 7s call like sirens, and the reminder that the journey, and the pain, are shared.
Monday Momentum – Week 25 of the year · Week 10 of Q2
That is the first thing to put on the page, because for a few weeks I genuinely wasn’t sure it would. I have been climbing out of the valley of despair, the real one, the dip that every honest curve has in the middle, and what pulled me out wasn’t grit or a cleverer plan. It was the realisation that I am not making this descent alone. The journey, and the pain that comes with it, I am sharing with a lot of remarkable, like-minded friends and colleagues. I didn’t fall into the valley by accident, and I am not crawling out of it by accident either: I was lucky enough to walk in alongside people worth walking with. That is the whole thesis, isn’t it, the cost of going together is real, but the cost of going alone is the one that breaks you.
On the rock
Climbing is getting better. I’m still injured, still managing it, but I’ve closed a couple of easy 6c+ this week and that felt like proof of life. And now the 7s are calling my name, like the sirens calling Ulysses across the water. Beautiful, insistent, and entirely capable of putting a man on the rocks if he is foolish about it.
So I’m doing what Ulysses did: I’m staying lashed to the mast. I can hear the song. I’m not pretending I can’t. But I’m not going to throw an injured body at a 7a just because it’s singing. The call will still be there when I’m whole again. That is the discipline, not silencing the desire, but refusing to let it wreck you before you’re ready.
The girls aren’t at their top form right now, and they still climbed beautifully. Worth saying out loud, because climbing well below your ceiling is its own kind of strength.
The crew
The Fab Riders have gone properly latitanti, lying low, scattered to the wind. R is off in Wales. I’m not reading anything into it; this is simply what summer does. The group breathes out, everyone follows their own line for a while, and then we find our way back together. It’s part of the season arriving, not a crack in the thing itself.
What’s coming
The rock is calling, and I want to answer it the right way, not by chasing numbers, but by going back to the thing I actually love: real multi-pitch, classic routes, long days of honest fun on proper stone. The first Dolomite trad multi-pitch mission is set for July. And maybe a little after that, a multi-pitch up in Val Gerola. Why not.
One more thing to mark down: I called Marco Mil this week. So glad I made that call, and looking forward to seeing him again soon. Some lines you don’t realise you’ve missed until you go back and pick them up.
On the desk, a note, not a newsletter
A quick word on the noise. Claude 5.0 was in beta. It was there to be seen, for anyone who was looking rather than reacting, so I confess I don’t fully understand why everyone is quite so astonished. I’m writing a proper essay about it, because there is something underneath all of this that deserves saying carefully. But the noise, the immense, breathless, everyone-shouting-at-once noise, is, frankly, wearying. More on that soon, in long form, once the shouting dies down enough that I can hear myself think.