Sent The Fugitive!!

Two days, six attempts, and a few very sore fingers and bones later, The Fugitive can be marked off of the project list. I have nothing but good things to day about this climb, it is an absolute classic!

The first time I got on it I was concerned it was going to take a lot more work than I was capable of putting in to get it to go.This is how I feel about most of my projects, and after almost every project I have sent I lower down and say something along the lines of "that felt really easy." Generally this is because I have worked the sequences so much I could do the climb in my sleep. So when I finally put all of the pieces together, it feels smooth.

On Fugitive I was not quite that lucky enough to have that satisfactory feeling. After I sent the climb today my general thought process was along the lines of  "ouch." About six feet below the chains my feet cut and I was left pulling myself up off of a hand jam that, due to the shape of the crack, put an enormous amount of force on one bone in my hand. By the time I clipped the chains all of my attention was on figuring out if I broke my hand or not. My brain was too busy for me to feel good about myself right away.

Thankfully, my hand is fine. As for The Fugitive, I am beyond happy that I was able to get it so quickly. That being said, it is a pattern with my climbing that climbs that are easy enough to screw up on and keep going, I will screw up on them and keep going. When I am working projects at the peak of my limit I have no room for error, so won't send until I have a near perfect run. A good example of this is a project I was working at Spire that I 1-hung something along the lines of 17 times before I finally sent. It had to be perfect. When I sent Fugitive, it was not perfect. This is made extremely obvious to me by the soreness of the bone on my left hand as I type this. A send is a send however and I am stoked about it. What I am even ore excited for is the fact that since I sent it imperfectly, that tells me it was not the peak of my limit. I can climb harder. Hopefully. I guess we will see how the rest of the summer goes!

A huge thanks to Joe for spending these two days on the climb with me and giving what I am sure were some of the most stressful belays he has ever given.