The Ascetic and the Hedonist: A Personality Disorder

Strange thing with me that I have never been able to find a satisfactory way to conduct my life for more than six months. With regards climbing, just to contextualize the subject, I go through major swings in motivation and interest, ranging from an all-consuming fiery desire to always be on rock... to utter indifference. The syndrome I have uncovered, however, encompasses much more than my climbing addiction; it permeates my day to day life to an extent I had never before considered.

My hypothesis is that I suffer from a strange personality disorder that manifests itself through the endless warring of two diametrically opposed philosophical precepts at the core of my being: asceticism and hedonism.

Asceticism is a way of life that embraces qualities such as restraint, discipline, rigor, frugality, sobriety, abstinence and austerity. It seeks to simplify and purify life from futile worldly pleasures. The goal of an ascetic lifestyle is not to deprive oneself of pleasure and happiness. Rather, asceticism is founded on the notion that self-restraint and discipline will lead to greater forms of happiness, and peace, and enlightenment, through the forsaking of vain and unproductive occupations. It may sound high-flown, perhaps even a bit religious (the concept does have religious origins I believe), but in practice it is rather simple; the idea is to cultivate the mental discipline that will allow you to let go of immediate gratifications in order to achieve goals that are more rewarding on the long haul. I believe in the righteousness of this lifestyle with all my being.

Hedonism, at the other end of the spectrum, holds that the greater happiness is found through maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain. It is brain dead obvious: pleasure, good. Pain, bad. Go for the former, avoid the latter. Hedonist thought does not see the point in spending any significant amount of time indulging in unpleasant practices, and will argue that the pursuits of the ascetic are pointless inasmuch as they involve imposing upon oneself unnecessary pains. In other words: life is short. You spend your life abstaining yourself from everything, and then you die--a wasted life. The classic example is that of the workaholic businessman who accumulates millions but never comes around to enjoying the fruits of his labor, i.e. an Aston Martin. It's labor all the way through. Hedonism argues that we are hardwired to pursue sensual and intellectual pleasures. Trying to hold them back is unnatural, and certainly unhealthy. I also believe in the righteousness of this lifestyle with all my being.

So you see where I stand. Following are the daily dilemmas that leave me forever wanting for peace, satisfaction, and a clear mind.

My ascetic persona wants a healthy lifestyle governed by a disciplined and rigorous weekly routine: regular training sessions that include the rock gym, the hangboard, and some form of cardiovascular exercise, meditation sessions twice a day, a healthy diet brimming with fruits and vegetables, early bed times whenever possible, etc...

My hedonist self thinks that training requires too much willpower, and the results simply aren't worth the time invested. The only training for rock climbing should only be climbing... on rock.

The hedonist thinks that evenings are the best part of the day, when the kids are asleep, and I get to indulge in whatever suits my fancy: watching South Parks, playing Guitar Hero, blowing money on Full Tilt Poker, Facebooking, or some other time-wasting leisure. It doesn't see the point in sleeping and depriving me of enjoyable moments. It doesn't believe that a good night's sleep will make me considerably happier the following day.

The ascetic thinks that leisure time should be spent on constructive activities. Instead of killing time in front of TV or videogames or the internet, I should catch up on my reading, perhaps even do a bit of writing. My ascetic self understands that greater long term satisfaction will be derived from practicing and getting better at things that have more intrinsic value for me, like writing, or climbing. Hell, I could even finish my PhD dissertation if I really put my heart into it.

The hedonist disagrees. Leisure time should be spent relaxing, avoiding stress, and just having a good time. If that means fragging people on Call of Duty three hours in a row, than so be it.

The ascetic believes that most of the desires and needs I currently have are fake, trivial, and unnecessary, and that the key to self-fulfillment lies in getting rid of them, and that I should find a way to raise my children so that these false desires never arise in them. The hedonist thinks that such endeavors are lost causes; that it is hopeless to try and rid ourselves of desires and needs that media overwhelm us with every second of our lives. Refusing to acknowledge these desires, the hedonist holds, is condemning ourselves to living in endless cravings for things we deny ourselves without really being sure why.

The ascetic says that the lifestyle choices it proposes are much better to live a long and healthy life, and that if I don't eat well and exercise a lot I'll probably die from a coronary disease before my time. The hedonist says there are so many ways to die, it is pointless trying to avoid a few of them, since it is probably one of the others that will do you in. The hedonist is also a determinist.

The hedonist says I should be reading up on Epicurianism, and that there I will find my answers. The ascetic says the Zen budhists had it down pat, and that's where I should be heading.

And it goes on and on. Whenever I listen to the ascetic, the hedonist laughs, like it's saying "dude, this is no fun, what are you doing to yourself?" Whenever the hedonist has the better of me, which is most of the time, I can see the ascetic in the back of my mind shaking his head in despair, and guilt takes over.

Funny how we think we have free will, but most of the time it seems like most of the choices we have are made on auto-pilot, like we are the protagonist in Vonnegut's Timequake, forced to watch ourselves playing a fool's game over and over again.


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Equilibrium

When the fall season shows itself around the corner, most climbers get into their sending mode: fresh temps, no humidity, no bugs, good friction. Send fest!

I, on the other hand, have to go back to work, and what I always find strange about this period is how good I actually feel about sidelining climbing for a while. I find it strange because a month earlier the prospect of not being focused on climbing all the time would have been ludicrous.

I still climb, don't get me wrong. But my attitude towards the activity is more laid-back; it's much less performance oriented for one thing. I've relegated my projects to next season even though there are still a good couple of weeks left before the temps drop below my tolerance level. My rock climbing mood switches gear to a more romantic mindset: I want to enjoy the autumnal atmosphere, the cooler weather, the tranquil ambiance, the colorful scenery. It's usually around this time of year that I'll feel like going on a long and mild multi-pitch trad route (and I'll bring some Robert Frost along). I know some of you will cringe at the following, but I would almost trade a climbing day with an early morning round of golf.

Come to think of it, I have always enjoyed how my mind seems to work in cycles. It makes having numerous passions bearable. Come April, I can't wait to close up the office, get all the paperwork out of the way, and become a full time climber. Around late June, I've completely forgotten that I once had a job, and that someday I'll have to go back to it. It's like a distant memory, overshadowed by a constant fixation on rock. I climb, I watch climbing porn, I read climbing lit, I browse climbing websites. But come September, if that mood remained, I'd be depressed as hell at the thought of going back to teaching while all my buddies are gearing up to rip through the Rumney Fall send fest.

But see, that's what's so great about it, as the term rears its head, my mindset switches back to a more intellectual (or literary, or romantic) mode, and I suddenly feel blessed to have my teaching career. I am happy to return to my office, greet the colleagues, meet my groups, figure out what I'm going to have them read this term. All in all, I'm just happy to be back in college, where I belong in September, just as much as I belong at the crag in June.

I read facebook accounts of the week end action at Rumney, of people planning Fall road trips, and it doesn't faze me a bit. I'm happy preparing my classes and reading good literature. More than happy, I feel grateful, lucky to have landed such a perfect job.

To be large, to contain multitudes, and to strike a balance between all your dimensions. This is equilibrium. I hope all of you can find it.

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The summer and the broke

Ok, so let me try to struggle through an update post, if only to make sure my retardnet brain doesn't fall into one of those comas you don't ever come back from.

It's not that I don't have anything to write about; I mean, I'm right smack in the middle of my vacations, and I'm climbing a lot, feeling stronger than ever, and there's a whole bunch of stuff happening on the Quebec climbing scene that would be worth a few good rants. So that's not the problem. Heck, I could even write about some non-climbing related things, as the sub-header of this blog mentions but I never bothered doing.

The problem is that it's summer and I'm not working and I simply don't need, or want, to use my computer that much. Internet detox. It's not really a problem, more like a good thing, but I ain't blogging much, no reading, no writing. So please all of you should keep your brilliant posts for the fall, when I go back to work and start keeping track of the blogosphere again.

Summer life is good. I drop the kids off at the daycare center in the morning, head to the crag, climb, come back home, play with the kids in the backyard, prepare supper, than in the evening I grab a good book and go read in my backyard, hypnotized by the gentle humming of the pool water pumps all around. Gotta love the burb life. Before I go to sleep I log on facebook to see where people are climbing the next day, and plan accordingly, and that's about all I use my pc for these days.

One cool thing worth mentioning: we finally have a decent woodie in my neighborhood. 16' wide by 14' high in the middle. Not much angle, but enough for a good pump. We built it on the side of my buddie's brand new shed. It's a ten minute bike ride from my place, so that's good, and it's outside, which is good for now, much better than a suffocating rock gym session, maybe not so cool in the winter, but then I don't mind the gym so much when it's minus twenty. I brought most of the good holds from my crappy basement woody, but it'll take much more to fill that sucker up.

One uncool thing worth mentioning: god damn are my summers expensive. I am b-r-o-k-e. broke. broke. broke. the thing with climbing locally is that the local pub is never that far, and I always come back from the cliff hungry and thirsty, and the crag is just far enough to make the pub much, much more appealing than the drive home. "Hi honey... yea, leaving the crag right now. what's that? pfff, of course I sent it. Listen, I think we'll skip a bit of the trafic and drop by the pub for a quick fix, do you mind? Thanks hon." Boom: thirty bucks gone. And it's like that every other day, I just can't help it. I am so brrroooke.

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Leveling up

The whole point of playing Call of Duty 4 online is leveling up. And what do you gain from leveling up? Well, for example, when one persistent fellow reaches level 36, he gets a new assault rifle: the G36C, which delivers more damage, has more range and a much better fire-rate than the dreadful AK47 most likely used for the previous 2000 frags. And what then, you ask? Well, fragging your way up to level 40 will get you a really cool sub-machine gun, and... well ok, I guess you get the picture by now; the pointlessness of it all is indeed mind boggling.

The whole point of sport climbing is also leveling up, with the small difference that, of course, the whole endeavor has a point. It does. It has to. Each new level you achieve in sport climbing will open up new venues for your activity: new moves you can do, new routes you can climb, new crags you can visit. All of these things mean more fun in the practice of your leisure activity. Of course, only the most dedicated climbers will keep on leveling up to the realms of the elite (in CoD4 it's called "Prestige Mode," isn't that nice). For most of us normal folks, leveling up will eventually become difficult for a variety of reasons, one of which, the most common, being that we simply don't want to, because contrary to CoD4 where leveling up only involves doing the same ol' thing over and over again till kingdom come, bumping levels in climbing involves doing harder and harder things and spending a lot more time doing these hard things.

The methods for leveling up as well as the distinct level each method will yield is very different from one climber to the next, depending on physical attributes, one's athletic penchant, the motivation factor, etc... And also, different climbers stop trying to level up at different points in their progression. This is all very arbitrary, and at the core of it is the Buddhist koan: why do I climb?

I always thought I'd stop trying to level up around 12+. That's still the plan today, even as I get closer. I find 12+ to be the ideal number for the discerning sport climber. Warming up on easy 11s, onsighting the odd 11+, the good day 12- flash, the proud 12+ send, and the once in a while "let's see what I can do" 13-. At that level, you can at least try most of the classics at any sport climbing mecca you visit. You can go to the motherlode and not only watch other people climb, you can spend a day at Waimea and not dog e-v-e-r-y--s-i-n-g-l-e--c-l-i-p. 12+ is the ideal middle ground, not stuck in the 5.11 "ooh wish I could try that awesome line" syndrome, and not caught in the "been there, done that, and that, and that..." 5.13+ conundrum.

Recently though, I came to some fundamental realization, and then realized I should have come to that realization much earlier in the game. The realization (don't you love the sound of that word?) is that if I don't change some of my climbing misconceptions, I will stop leveling up right here, stuck breaking into 12-. The misconception is that I would make it to 12+ without an even half-serious commitment to gym bouldering sessions. I always figured I could shirk the gym, keep on climbing through the seasons and make my way there slowly but surely. Not so (not for me at least). Without some serious punishments on plastic, my fingers (not to mention the rest of my body) will never develop the power necessary to pull hard 12+ cruxes. So I guess the lazy suburban climber will have to get down with the program (and stop wasting away hours on CoD4).

And how did I come to such wisdom? Simple, I've been working a long 12b with the pure power crux at the bottom. I can do that series of moves, no problem, but only once per day. ONCE, for cryin' out loud. Second go, I can't even get off the ground. Pathetic you say? I concur. Worse, a good buddy of mine (who I introduced to climbing) can run laps on it (3 gym boulder sessions a week is the only difference between us). So, if logic and rationality will not have brought me to the gym these past years, maybe my pride and competitive spirit will. We'll see next winter.

In the meantime, here's some lame footage of the aforementioned route. You don't have to watch it, but you can listen to the tune; it's pretty good, it's Mogwai. (mostly I just like having footage like that so I can track progress long term: I have similar footage from ten years ago, taking whippers on 10+ routes, with The Offspring as soundtrack. Time flies...)

Untitled from Steve Bourdeau on Vimeo.

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Far From Suburbia: the red river gorge trip report

It is done.
The original purpose of this blog was to record the process that would lead me to the Red River Gorge and back. I wanted to write about training and planning for our RRG road trip. As it turned out I wrote about everything but.

No matter, we went to the Red, me and John, and we came back. The three word summary: veni, vidi, vici.

I don't really feel like going through a typical day by day trip report. The journey was, after all, rather uneventful: we climbed, ate, drank, and slept. The goal was to fit as much of all these things as possible in the seven days we had (including the 15 hour drive there and back). Instead of going day by day, I'll detail the aspects of the trip that impressed me more, as a first time visitor to the Red, and as a suburban climber that doesn't have the opportunity to go on week-long road trips very often.

The road: was long. Driving through Ohio is booooring. The highlight was a big sign in the middle of a field that read "Hell is real" (I'll resist going on a tangent here). And also: Ohio highways are strewned with roadkill. This is gross. Aren't there people payed to keep highways clean? We left on Friday evening and drove through the night. I did not get any sleep. Maybe I was a bit nervous, but anyway it's hard to get some good sleep in a moving car. 15 hours later, Saturday around 11h00 AM, we parked at Muir valley.... and went climbing. No point in wasting a perfectly fine looking day.

As it turns out, the combination of strenuous physical exercise, high temps and humidity, and lack of sleep does not fit very well with my central nervous system. By the time we made it to the campground at Lago Linda's around 6h00PM, I was too tired to sleep and too tired to eat. I just lied down and waited for my body to stop trembling. My buddy John is a firefighter, so long stretches of physical exertion with little or no sleep are nothing out of the ordinary for him. By the time I was able to stand up again, he was already a couple of beers in. My short bout with delirium tremens also gave him the opportunity to devise our tick list for the week. It was a long list.

The climbing: Well, what can I say? The climbing was awesome. I had planned for 4 climbing days separated by a rest day in the middle. A reasonable proposition I thought. Out the door that went (remember that tick list?). We ended up climbing six days in a row (a record for me). How my forearms kept on pulling day after day is beyond what science can explain--a small miracle no less. We visited, in that order: The Hideout, Roadside Crag, Military Wall, Left Flank, Phantasia, Indy Wall, Inner-sanctum, and The Zoo. We climbed about 30 different routes, and we did not try any of them more than once. Of course, we did not send many proud lines. I came really close to onsighting a few 11bs and 11cs, but all the long 11s we tried (and the short 12s) necessitated at least one hang. But sending was not the point at all. We were there for quantity and quality. We only climbed 4 and 5 star routes.

The adaptation to the style of the Red was hard, and a lot of fun. Rumney routes are often about finding logical paths through contrived crux sequences. If you read it right the first time, chances are you can onsight that thing! But many of the routes we did at the red didn't seem to have a crux sequence considerably harder than the rest of the route. Mostly, it was about finding a way to not let the short business section of the route eat up the little gasoline needed to finish it up. We soon realized how much we sucked at finding rests that actually help on steep routes.

One thing I was worried about was that the climbing would be so steep, and the routes so long, that there would be almost nothing classic and worthwhile for us to climb with our early-season small time endurance and general lack of training. Not so. We spent the whole week climbing ultra classic 10s, 11s, and 12s. Only one route I tried made me regret some decent gym training: Twinkie, the uber power-endurance route. I'm pretty sure I could've dogged every single clip to the top, but I didn't. I took the little self-esteem I had left around the middle of the overhanging section and bailed. This is steep stuff indeed.

Apart from that, I can't really point to highlights. Every route we did was better than the previous one. It was hard for us to imagine people actually living nearby such brilliant climbing. The down side is that it made our local crags seem more like choss than they actually are. Well anyway, let's not ponder that any further. My favorite routes for each grade we tried:
best 9: Pogue Ethics (probably the best 9 I ever did!)
best 10: Creep Show (I totally owned this one)
best 11: Fuzzy Undercling (no brainer, with honorable mention to Monkey in the Middle, and all the other 11s we tried, they were all good)
best 12: Hippocrite (just because it was my style: short and soft. The serious 12 climber will find hundreds of better lines for sure)

The weather: did not matter one bit after all. This is what impressed us the most: it rained four of the six days we climbed, and not once did it bother us in the least. As long as you hike in before the rain starts, whatever falls from the sky once you're under the cliff is unimportant. No change of plans for rainy days, no "got rained out" excuses, none of that. Steep cliffs with big roofs on top: brilliant!

The camping: Lago Linda turned out to be a great spot. I had reserved a cabin, and though John did call me a princess over that, he was the first to aknowledge how nice that bit of comfort was. A fridge with cold beer, a TV with cable (we watched Top Gun on one of the rainy evenings), some AC to sleep like babies. This was truly a home away from home. Lago Linda was admittedly a bit far from the action, but it was worth every extra mile. Case in point: we had friends sleeping at Miguel's while we were there who spoke of drunken brawls, dumb stunts, parties raging well into the night, and an overdose of people trying too hard to look like they're not trying hard to look cool, or hype, or zen, or whatever. I was happy I made the right call. We were there for the climbing, not for the scene. We slept well, ate well, and spent really nice evenings exchanging stories with camping neighbors. Precisely how I wanted it.

We did eat a pizza at Miguel's, and I bought a t-shirt, and I drank an Ale-8. I took some pics of the ghetto. It was enough.

The Region: Of course we were there for the rocks, so the surroundings mattered little, but still wow: this is one destitute region to behold, and the shacks that lined the roads as we drove back and forth from the crags were hard to ignore. Our first stop at Jack's IGA in Beattyville (before we went to Kroger's) was by far the most wretched grocery store I ever set foot in. I only bought packaged food and even that seemed like a gamble.

Another noticeable part of the landscape we weren't used to was all the churches, and bible camps, and religious billboards. In Montreal, churches are sold to real estate developers and turned into luxury condos. We are rapidly becoming a completely secular society. Even country churches are abandoned, apart from small followings of elderly people. It seemed very different in that region of Kentucky to say the least.

This is pretty much it. I could go on about my impressions of the climbing and the trip in general, but I realize I have already written too much. At the Red River Gorge I had the best climbing week of my life. No wonder it is called one of the best sport climbing destinations in the world. I haven't climbed in many different locations, but I can't see how anywhere else could get much better than that.


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gumby forum post: now is the time

As posted on rrg.com:

sooooo, I never been to the red. I know, I know, sucks to be me, right? Right.

That's why I'll be making my way down there for the first time in a few weeks. It is a long awaited, and often postponed pilgrimage, and god knows when the opportunity will present itself again (maybe when the kids are off to college (my youngest is 18 month old)) Obviously I'll want to make the most of the week I have to climb there, and good beta is essential for that. And that's where that long rambling post half of you have already stopped reading comes in. Rather than asking for some general info that old forum users have already provided a hundred times before, I thought I'd come up with more specific questions to complement the info I've already found through the guidebook and this website.

Some background: We'll be driving down from Montreal (16-17 hour drive?) somewhere around the 25th of May and we have seven days total, including the drive there and back, so maybe five days on site. I've been toying with the idea of faking a serious car meltdown to extend our stay a bit, but it would be just like my wife to not buy it one second. The goal of the trip is to taste as much of the red as possible, so we won't be chasing numbers, we'll be chasing stars. And by "as much of the red as possible," I don't mean cracks, of course. And if you'll tell me that chasing stars and chasing numbers are the same thing at the red, I'll say "fine, I have a comfortable harness." sooooo, my puzzlements:

1. Crags to see, crags to avoid. After studying the guidebook, I figured these six crags to be the best for classic 10s and 11s (and easy 12s). I looked at the number of 3 stars + routes within our range, the approach (short is better, since we're not there for the trails), and the different styles of the crags (again, trying to make it as worthwhile as possible in a ridiculously short amount of time):
Military Wall, Left Flank, Phantasia Wall, Roadside Crag, Drive-by Crag, Bruise Brothers Wall.

I don't see how we would have time to visit more than five or six crags. Should any of these not be on my "not to be missed" list? Are there others I should definitely add to a first trip five day rampage instead?

2. Considering our style--we are mostly Rumney climbers, a bit low on endurance (euphemism), with ok technique and used to "awkward" climbing--Are there crags or routes that should be added/removed? (don't tell me to not bother showing up at all, it's not funny)

3. Crowds. We're trying to plan the trip to avoid climbing in the weekend. Will crowds be a problem at any of these crags at this time of year during the week?

4. Weather. We expect it to be somewhat hot and humid, but it shouldn't be worse than climbing around our parts in the middle of July during a hot streak. Right? Still, are there crags that are simply impossible to endure on warm days? Is there one crag in particular that can transform an otherwise "inferno" day into a tolerable cragging day?

5. Cooling down. Rumney is nice because there's a river within a fifteen minute walk from the cliffs where everyone can chill out on warm days, when it's too hot to climb in the early afternoon. Any such place we should know about?

6. Camping. So Miguel is THE climber campground, that much I figured. I wonder though how comfortable camping is at that time of year, compared to, let's say, renting a cabin. How is Miguel's campground around late May/early June?
6a. Are the evenings cool enough to sleep well?
6b. Is it easy to find choice campsites with trees and shade ( is it full of people during the week at that time of the season?)
6c. Are there so many bugs you can't even stay out of your tent come nightfall?
6d. Pretending for a moment we are not financially challenged, is renting a cabin a much better option to spend nice evenings? (Not that I need luxury, but besides being a climbing trip, this is alos my vacation, if you see what I mean) And if so, any place you recommend?
6e. Is Miguel's campground such a cool "scene" that it is part of the Red's experience and shouldn't be missed?

7. Say I could only do one climb in the 11a/b range and one in the 11d/12a range, which should they be.

Wow, thanks, really, for reading all the way through, now let's hope some of you are at the office and have nothing better to do than answer way too many questions from a tourist.




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Poseurism

I don't know much, but I do know sport climbers like to look cool (at least I do, and I'm a sport climber, the logic is incontrovertible). And for that, very little climbing is actually necessary.

One casualty from last season was my pitiful 8 ft excuse for a stick clip. The locking mechanism jammed up. There was nothing to do but build a new one. Which I did just now. Behold the mother of all stick-clips:

At a whopping 13 ft, this should make any notion of commitment in sport climbing laughable at best, if not completely irrelevant. It should also open up a whole new realm of poseuritude, and make the following tried and true method to pull the perfect poseur stunt much easier.

1. Show up at Waimea wall ridiculously early on a Saturday morning to make sure no one else is there.
2. Choose some unpopular but notoriously proud line at least four letter grades above your level. Something like that
3. Stick-clip the third bolt and proceed up to that point with a mix of doing some climbing moves that work, thrashing up like a noob, and pulling on the rope, all the while adding tickmarks in a conservative but conspicuous manner.
4. Once at the third bolt request aforementioned stick-clip, clip the sixth bolt, which, this being Rumney, may be the last, and repeat the previous process.
5. The key is to be back on the ground with the rope clipped all the way to the sixth bolt by the time the first "real" climbing parties arrive.
6. Eliminate potential suspicions by going up a considerably easier line that you have wired to death. Confidence and flawless technique are essential to eradicate doubt, so choose your line wisely. (failing here would mean leaving right away with your tail between your legs and your draws abandoned on "poseurised" proj).
7. Start spraying about how you've been working the line all morning, but the conditions aren't really ideal today to stick the crux move way above the sixth. Alternate versions may include claims to hurting your ankle--but not too badly--after repetitive whippers off the sixth bolt.
8. Around noon, once you have made sure all people concerned (i.e. everyone at the cliff) knows you're the mutant working that line, leave everything there and move up to Jimmy cliff to climb Lonesome Dove.
9. The tricky part: either you wait till nightfall to clean the route, risking to lose some serious campfire spraying opportunities, or you hope most parties previously impressed have gone and clean your sh*t in front of all remaining rock jocks. One possibility: you may claim to have been sandbagged by a friend, in which case, though you can forget the previous aura of coolness you felt around yourself, you at least don't look like a total poseur.
10. Evaluate how much cooler you feel, and decide the course for the next day. The amount of coolness accumulated is inversely proportional to how many climbers at the cliff that day could have, or already did, send that line, and did not care one iota (this being Waimea on a Saturday, it probably means a lot of people. Better choose another crag next time for full value)

:-)



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