Coveted View

For those who traveled the winding Highway 1 with me after a day of ripped fingertips on Sawmill Creek Dome to sounds of an incessantly ringing Volvo, I write an ode to your select membership.

The particularities of a view come to mind. One can almost jump back to First Street from the boulder, I opt not to shoot this angle from behind the steel railing angling downwards to Whoopee Wall. Twelve feet below me the brush obscures the view to banality though the litter around the base changes. Two lawn mowers, some mattresses today. Chalk remains on the obvious holds. Match me here from this view and the freeway changes will become apparent as you’ve been away.

I took the easy way to get up to this view. Gradewise, there is a much harder (V4) and more moderate challenge (V2) to climb this boulder. Do you follow the certain sense of lesson from this old stoic boulder? Technique and movement - today I was misbranded to climb with a pair of Red Wing boots and khakis on; PraNa and Evolv had been left at home. I took off the boots and socks and attempted to climb barefoot, making the V2 seem even more difficult. I insidiously blamed it on my feet for failing to ascend the problem but I know my forearms and upper body is withering away.

Mid-edit I run to the laundry room and ensure my psyche I can still do ten pull-ups. I sometimes forget that I like to climb so much. Climbing is always challenging.

The Santa Fe train below sounds, reminding me of all the VIA’s whistles through intersections in Saskatchewan and Manitoba during the dark prairie nights. Part of my draw back to Squamish was the same climbing I honed on this merciless V2 erratic Duluth boulder.

The train focuses my attention downwards on the vast woodpiles below. I think back to the first time I made it up the hard way. All it took was a visual model of success: a climber who had done the problem before gracefully maneuvered his way up the problem I had spent the entire summer on. With beta and wisdom behind me and I stepped up with new confidence. Immediately after watching Steve send the problem I was able to move past the personal crux of the problem and see the route from a triumphant perspective. Sometimes those piles have dwindled away; I have no idea where they go. Soon the freeway below will change in appearance. What has not changed, as I sit here alone atop this rock, in the midst of all the pensiveness, is ambition.

Ambition for this view, one of Duluth’s many testpieces, for those who know its coveted aura comes with a price in pride, ethic and sanity.