Jaded Senior Syndrome

Climbing in winter sucks. There is no doubt about this. In a perfect world we would be content to just sit in coffee shops and shmooze all day from the months of December to February. We’d talk of last night’s daily show and laugh about strange and unknown things. You know, I would even settle for drinking a beer and doing my homework in my bed. At least it would be warm.

But no, the relentless desire to fling myself up rocks (real or fake) is ever-present. And let me reiterate: Climbing in winter sucks. The skin around your fingernails cracks and bleeds. Every aching tendon or pulley acts as a collection of old rubber bands, threatening to break at any time. It doesn’t even really matter if you’re inside or outside; it’s all the same in the winter.

So let's assume you’ve overcome this crux and somehow mustered up the requisite amount of inspiration needed to move at all. Climbing in winter goes a little like this:

You sit on the floor and look at your climbing shoes. Then you look at the climbing wall. Then you look back to your climbing shoes with an increasingly furrowed brow. With much distain, you slowly unlace your shoes. Once barefoot, you start the process of using your warm and wet breath to preheat the inside of your climbing shoes. What the fuck ever.

There was a time when you could just start climbing at this point. You could just walk up to your long-term project and cruise it in front of all the cutest girls. But now your tendons and muscles know better than to give you that luxury. So they require you to slowly traverse back and forth the bottom of the wall, still wearing the down jacket you wore during the walk. Your ankles turn as white as the winter you’re running from.

Then you climb. Blahblahblahblah, it was totally radical, blahblahblah. Inside, you climb the same greasy routes you put up three weeks ago while blasting a mixtape of only Wu-Tang and Jedi Mind Tricks. Outside, you try desperately to warm up, but instead just lie around on the crash pads with all your favorite dawgs and giggle.

People often bash climbing in summer, saying “I’m too hot. It’s too humid. I’m a super wuss. All the cute girls went swimming.” But really, that’s all a bunch of melodrama. Excuses are excuses, no matter what season. I roll my shorts up to my crotch in summer; I tuck my long underwear into my climbing shoes in winter. The temperature is always changing, but the feeling of vitality you get from any climbing at all is always constant. Winter climbing is a special sort of hell, but at least it’s climbing at all.

Afterwards you put your down jacket back on. The skin on your fingers is red and thin, just as it looks in summer, except this time you’re wearing boots. Life isn't that bad, it's just that climbing in winter sucks.

I’m going to re-set the climbing wall this weekend. Expect Wu-Tang.

Riley.