Ethan's Adventures: With eyes wide open

Recently I've seen things slightly different.
I've looked at myself and others in a much more outgoing way. Maybe I needed 2 weeks of none stop climbing to realise that maybe it isn't in itself the most important thing in my life. There have been times where climbing has made me hopelessly unhappy for days on end. Times when I just couldn't except defeat. In those times my life was only as good as the last climb I did, which regardless of how well you climb will lead to misery.

Chamonix changed my life. It was a different world for me. As if someone had opened a door to a magic world, that only existed in my head, and let me walk through it. It didn't matter where I was climbing, or what I was climbing, or how hard I was climbing, it only mattered that I was climbing.
There were times out there when I truly believed I was the luckiest person in the world. But that in itself meant very little.

What mattered was whether I could take that home with me. Even then I doubted it very much.

And so I returned....

Top of Telli two weeks before the lead

I tried hard, I climbed hard, I succeeded and failed, I discovered my strengths and weaknesses with an open mind. The Summer concluded with a high point of climbing Telli a Steve Bancroft route at E3 6a. After having toproped it a few weeks early I returned to stanage and hopped on it on the lead early morning, first falling before pulling the ropes through on the second go I committed to the crux and continued to the top. Perhaps that was the happiest I had felt topping out on a route since leading my first VS at the very same crag. But to me the real milestone happened 30 minutes later when climbing The Left Unconquerable, at E1 5b it was 2 grades easier. Yet I couldn't climb it cleanly. I had to hang on the ropes and dog my way up it. I had come to stanage, I had climbed an E3, in two days time it would be my 18th Birthday, a new chapter of my life was right at the top of that crag and I no longer cared how I got to it. I suddenly wasn't prepared to fight for it. Perhaps there was more to life than this very route I was on right now. And so I reached the top. I didn't know where to put myself, I had climbed an E3 and failed on an E1.

And so I consolidated it. And dwelled for the following day. So badly I didn't know who I was anymore. The following day was my 18th. I allowed myself to forget about it for one day only. And in doing so realised that my dwelling was the only thing holding me back. From it I saw my weaknesses as a climber and as a person. And I had new found strength in knowing that I could now go through life with the same attitude. Everyday was a new one, and everyday can always be better than the last. Any climb can defeat you if you let it, and that isn't down to whether you top out on it or lower down to the ground, or get up cleanly or hang on the ropes to take a rest. It's down to how you deal with it. I realised that when at the crag it doesn't matter how you climb at it, but how you walk away from it, back down to the car park and onwards to the pub.

I discovered that the happiness I felt in Chamonix was simply down to looking at the future and not dwelling on the past.

I'd done some fantastic routes in the last few months, regardless of grade or style of ascent.