Draw Chronicles: A Cosmic (Karmic) Lesson

A karmic cycle can be defined as a repetitious pattern of events that occur in your life, and that it may appear in your life as an opportunity to break the negative cycle and reap great wisdom. Bouldering has a very apparent karmic cycle. We look at a boulder, try, fall, and then repeat- until we smarten up and learn the lesson. It can also be very literal.   

The day before I went to Oak Flat with Bobby and Nadia, I was up at Priest Draw with Brett trying to get back into roof climbing shape. Brett was nursing a hand injury, and I wasn't in the mood to really do any harder pocket pulling. We did some warm ups at the Bat Roof, with us doing some quick sends on the Fin and Bat Cave. I decided to go for the whole enchilada and did the traverse of the Bat Roof as my fitness test. I was pleasantly surprised that I could still finish a lap of it, which meant that I didn't lose too much over the winter. We then went over to the Flying Saucer Problem and knocked out some foot first finishes to end the warmups.

Since we weren't planning on stressing Brett's finger, we decided to make a go over to the Puzzle Box roof. Puzzle Box feels like an anomaly to the usual draw style. It's similar to Monster Roof, where the holds are sloperish, with few tweaky holds as characterized by the Anorexic, Mars, or Bad Ass roof, and the individual problems are in the same difficulty range. One of the main differences between Puzzle Box and Monster Roof is that Puzzle Box has a plethora of linkups between the individual problems that drastically increase the difficulty. Personally, I think the climbs on this roof are far more enjoyable and flowy than those on the Monster Roof. One climb in particular that had both mine and Brett's attention was the Cosmic Bicycle, which is the stand start of the Cosmic Tricycle line. 

The Cosmic Bicycle is a perfect example of a figurative and literal karmic cycle as you start in a circular body position and are trying to get out of it. It's a finicky climb that requires a well placed heel-toe cam on a hard-to-see spike after an initial kneebar. I tried this climb last season, and didn't manage to get much progress. I was able to contort my body to hit the right hand pocket, but afterwards, I was halted by gravity trying to move out of the position, and trying to find the spike near the top of the roof. It's a maddening feeling trying to repeat my sequence in hope that it would just work. 

Stuck in a figurative, and literal, Karmic Cycle on the first two moves of Cosmic Bicycle last season

This season, I came back to Puzzle Box with Brett a bit wiser. I was able to figure out where the spike was, and surprise surprise, it wasn't on the top of the ceiling, but on the undercling that you start on. That finding, combined with a small change in start position by standing on a worse foot, broke my cycle and I was able to finish off the problem. What a relief. It's not every day that you would expect enlightenment from rocks. Brett came close to this one, and I'm sure he will get it when his hand heals. Unfortunately, I never got footage of it, so that'll be something I hope to fix in the future.  

After I sent Cosmic Bicycle, and Brett demolished Swordfish in a beautiful manner, we ended the day by hiking out to Super Roof, where I did some laps, and where Brett made quick work doing his first ascent of this amazing line. 

Brett doing some finger rehabilitation on Super Roof

We also intended to check out Drop Zone, but there wasn't as much time as the sun was setting. That's ok, it means an adventure for another time. Roof season is just starting, and it's going on a good note.