caigoose9

He went up Slimline from bolt to bolt, doing the moves by the skin of the north face denali jackets. He tried to imitate what it would be like to clip the second draw on the lead, but he couldn’t actually hang on to the left hand 2 finger pocket with 1 hand, meaning he couldn’t actually clip the rope on the lead! James came down and declared he wasn’t even doing to bother with having a redpoint attempt. I wasn’t willing to accept this and decided I had to step up to the plate, not in the role of a climber, but in the role of Mr Motivator. I’m a firm believer in P.M.A. (positive mental attitude) and it’s power to make the impossible possible. I’ve known James for a long time, since the beginning of both our climbing careers north face jacket, so I’ve got a major advantage when it comes to trying to motivate him and help him to get the best from himself. I told him that his performance was simply not acceptable and neither was his attitude. I knew he could do this route and all I needed to do was make him believe it too. If I could do that I knew he could deliver the goods on the sharp end. After a pep talk or two I told him that he needed to have a redpoint go to warm up again then have another go afterwards to actually send it. He eventually conceded and dug deep within his soul to find the energy to tie on. He set off, made it to the second clip with the clip he hadn’t been able to do on the dog, but psyche powered him up and he clipped it without a problem. He cruised the next few moves getting to the final undercut before falling off due to his power reserves hitting zero! It was an unbelievably good attempt, north face denali,going from zero to hero just by using a bit of PMA. I knew that he had it in him to do this route and by trying super hard he’d proved it to himself. It was so great that it inspired Gaz to get back on the route, where he managed to do the moves by utilizing his back 2 in all of the pockets due to his sausage fingers being way too fat. He was able to do the moves like this but it required him to really squeeze his fingers in and that was proving difficult on the redpoint. By now both Gaz and James were really getting tired.