Snipers.

A little over 3 weeks ago I went to this bouldering area that is about 5 minutes from my house. The area consists mainly of one problem, you may have heard of The Marietta Mangler V10. Well, I wanted to take a closer look at that problem but also see if there were any other undone lines on the 45+ degree wall. Visualize this, a very steep wall about 35+ feet on top of a cliff with a decent flat landing before the plummet. It was a school day so I went alone right after school. Upon my inspection I came to two conclusions, one that The Mangler is not that cool (I personally enjoy climbing up, as opposed to traversing shitty crimps) and two, that there was a sick line straight up the middle! I was alone and didn't have my stickbrush but I decided to see if I could suss out the moves (without falling off the cliff to my death.) That day I did what I thought would be one of the hardest moves. After a couple of attempts I was sticking the move to the shitty right hand crimp pretty consistently however, moving off of it was clearly proving to be the crux. Last Monday night Wes and I were at a bar when I told him about this rad new line I was working. If you know either Wes or myself then you know it doesn't take much to get us psyched so we went out to the boulder around 11:30 with a lantern and an ominous sky. Nonetheless, we charged it and worked the problem by lantern light. We cleaned the shit out of it and thoroughly chalked all of the holds. It rained on us, but in between showers (and sometimes during) we tried to figure out the moves. I got super-close but the wet topout crushed any chances of a send that night. Nevertheless I was confident that I would do it the next time I went back. Two weeks ago was the Horsepens Comp and I mentioned to Senya (thekid that I got into climbing) that I was trying a new problem at the Mangler boulder. He lives two seconds away from me and I was trying to get him psyched to come work it with me. So the other day I sent Senya a message saying that we should go to the Mangler and work my project and take photos, I got no response. So I went solo. When I got there I still had a considerable amount of light and started to see other holds, so I tried some other beta but broke one of the new holds and reverted to the original plan. Well, remember that cliff I told you about? The move off of the shitty right hand crimp goes up to a good flat edge however, your feet cut on the move and you take a pretty big swing away from the wall. I decided that I was going to try and pull through to this hold. I hit the crimp and pulled through and hit the edge but there was a pebble or something in there and I came off once the swing was in full effect. HOLY SHIT! I completely missed my pad and the last life-saving tree! Somehow my right foot stuck on the edge of some boulder and I was able to turn around and not fall off the cliff. Adrenaline pumping I picked up my phone and called Wes to let him know that this thing was about to go NEXT TRY! So I chilled out for a second, tied my crashpad to that last tree so I could have something to grab on my way down had I missed it again. This time I stuck it! I pulled up and after some suspect holds I topped it out, I was so proud of myself. It was one of the coolest problems that I'd ever established!

Last night I went to the gym and told Sierzant about it and he started describing the problem to me. We agreed that it was the same line and the next thing out his mouth was, "Senya did it three days ago." My heart dropped, my virgin had been deflowered and I hadn't even gotten to court her properly. He then said, "Man that sucks, second ascent, oh wait, third ascent, I did it too. (with a chuckle)" Talk about twisting the knife! Pretty much after that I didn't feel much like climbing so I went home. Is that what this game has come to, teaming up and letting greed take hold? Just because you know you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. Shit, I know I could steal Wes's girlfriend but am I gonna do it? FUCK NO, because I have values. I understand that eminent domain is "kind of" the name of our game, or that pretty much "If you're there you can climb it." but I just thought that there might be a bit more loyalty and ethics abound between friends and "mentors." THE END.

-SG