The Whipper Challange

My goal for Sunday was to take falls on Latin lover (12a). It's a super fun route: balancy, thin, and sustained. The crux for me is to stay cool and climb above the bolt. None of the moves feel individually hard, just insecure, sustained and some of the clipping stances are not great. I tried leading the route a week ago and couldn't get past the third bolt because I got scared. This Sunday I climbed past the third bolt and took about five intentional falls before clipping the anchor. Progress!

Mike is having fun belaying me?

I'm getting after the Latin lover!

The route is 21 meters tall and is protected with 6 bolts plus the anchor so it's a bolt every 2-3 meters. It's standard. The headline for this post is a little misleading since my falls also are very standard. I just like to call them whippers because it sounds more rad. But they are just falls. Whipper is a long fall. I weight about 53kg and by adding a grigri, belay glasses, belay gloves, and a belay puffy I can make 54kg happen. Barely. If my partner takes a whipper I often find myself dangling right below the first draw. Max took a whipper on Heinous (12c) yesterday. He fell right at the 8th bolt so about 8 meters in the air (4 meters between bolts) plus rope stretch. I went up 3 meters. So it was a 11 meter fall plus rope stretch.

Next I challenge you! This pre-clipping epic was captured in the Cocaine gully Saturday evening. What went wrong?

Que?

Solution: pull the rope and stickclip the next bolt instead (the hanger was too small to fit two draws).