The thing that I love the most about hard routes is that the harder they get, the better the moves become, and the easier they are to remember. This is because as routes get harder, there are fewer options, fewer holds, fewer ways of doing it. They become incredibly simple in their increased difficulty, because you strip away all the tick-tack bullshit.
Nowhere was this more apparent for me than at Smith Rock.
When I first started climbing, we were working on the 5.10s at Smith, perhaps the most difficult grade at Smith since the traffic on these is so outrageous that they’ve been polished to a fine China.
There are way too many holds, and the movement is as awkward as a 7th grade dance. It’s enough to make the kids give up sport climbing and turn to bouldering, and why you hear all those hippie sayings in the old Masters of Stone videos about how bouldering “climbing reduced to its purest form.”
(In many ways that is true. Strip away filler, and you have incredibly difficult and fun gymnastic moves.)
Years later, I returned to Smith when I could get on the 5.13s and thought, “Wow! This place is actually fun!”
Hard sport climbing for me has become bouldering on rope. Sure, there is still filler, but my perspective has changed. Hard routes are simplified to a series of fun boulder problems; the moves are big and there are fewer holds.
As life gets more difficult, it actually becomes incredibly easy (in its simplicity) because you only have one (or a few) options. The only way out is through.