Yesterday I went to Mt. Lemmon with Halo and co. (Noah, Paul, Kim, Carmen, and Dom) and we got spanked pretty bad at Windy Point West. We spent most of the day sketched out on 5.7 slab and sandbagged 5.10+ (looking at you Life and Transfiguration!). That being said, it wasn't all too bad. What we lost in climbing, we made up for cute pictures of Milo and beautiful viewpoints of Lemmon.
I didn't really understand it before, but granite climbing is a whole other beast, so much props given to the Tuscon locals. This thrashing makes me want to talk about certain climbing styles and what they require from my limited and personal experience. From what I can tell, I'm more of a "hold" climber. I like to grab certain grips and move from one grip to another. The movement here is usually more athletic and straightforward. Some types of rock, like limestone and volcanic tuff have that kind of terrain. On the other side of the spectrum, there's "feature" climbing, which doesn't really have holds as it is more of having your body fit into a box. It's much like climbing on volumes in the gym, which is probably why I'm so bad at it (as I avoid volumes heavily). This seems like it falls into more of the granite and sandstone type of climbing. Additionally, I realized that my eyes are not trained to recognize how to read granite rock. Learning to recognize crystals is a hell of a lot different than recognizing how to hold a certain grip. It's such an interesting game and it's humbling to be so bad at it. I'm looking forward to coming back to learn this style of climbing, but maybe not at this particular crag. I think if I had a choice, I would like to climb at some crags that supported more straightforward movement, like Raycreation, Ireland, or the Orifice crags until I figure out how Lemmon climbing works. Then, I'll return here and perhaps the experience will be more manageable. That, and maybe slab climbing won't be as scary.
Just gotta keep learning and trying.
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