Calladeta fas mes goig...

From long routes to short routes, from granite to conglomerate, from easy onsights to hard project work.  The good line remains what attracts me to climbing steep and hard.  Calladeta is one of them, an old friend by now.  First tried with Juanjo last spring, I courageously put it up with clip stick and then fell in love with the second half, a technical slab that goes on relentlessly for 3 endless draws, and finishes with some psycho-time on the last roofs.  I hated the first part though.  I still do - first jump that people with just a couple of centimeters more do in static (mmm Dani, you ARE taller...) leading to the roof, where a physical 3-move wonder finishes with a mini-rest, and then another 4 moves finish with a real rest.  So far I have fallen many (and I mean MANY) times on this sequence, although not more than 7b, but as hard as anything for me.  Not sure what made me finally stick it - the pull-ups I've been relentlessly working on since July, the little contortionist rest after the clip I came up with lately, or just seeing all those other guys (Jose, Bernat, Pau, Dani) fly over the starting moves without even realizing any of it could be hard.  But I did.  Now the falling is happening higher up, first on the traverse, now on the final slopers at the last hard sequence.

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Today it rains across the beautiful Catalunya, the project stays lonely and untouched.  With another glass of wine, I celebrate the half-way point, the usual state of climbers, of life, - half there, but not yet.  Almost done it - but not quite.  Looking straight at the arrival point - but always falling off at the last mile.  Dreaming my dream and wishing upon a star, nothing changes, all changes, clouds go by, nights go by, projects stay.
Climbing stays there, the only tangible, grounded reality that keeps the (in)sanity going.  As long as motivation stays, sending will come, - if not this month, then the next, if not now, later.  If not in the real world, than only in my head.

In the meantime, thanks to all the people involved with my climbing lately, - Juan, Txema, Dani, Juanjo, - for their tireless belays and encouragement on the project during the many spring, summer, and autumn months, as well as to the prospective belayers to come, if ever I am to clip the anchor on this one...