A BREAK IN A ROCK
High in the mountains of Northern Italy, in a densely forested granite-strewn valley carved by the Orco river, lies one of the most famous and historic test pieces in the world for those who seek out not the rocks themselves, but the cracks that break them open. First redpointed by Didier Berthoud in 2005, Greenspit has held its title as one of Europe’s hardest cracks ever since, attracting climbers from all over the world to test their jamming mettle against its steep jams and complex sequences, and no aficionado would even consider omitting it from their hit list of worthy cracks to at least try. The perfect dream route for someone inspired by iconic and historic hard cracks… and yet somehow it had never really been more than a passing admiration for me, like a piece of art in a museum that I could appreciate but would never buy.
Even now I can’t quite articulate why. In just looking at pictures and videos, the geometry of the climb never made sense to me; it was called a roof crack, yet visually appeared more like a traverse. Sometimes people climbed it feet first, and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they’d even switch between the two several times. Perhaps the other factor was envisioning climbing 5.14 on an international trip: a grade I have only ever achieved on my home continent where I had all the luxuries of time, comfort, and control over all of the elements that can be hoped to be controlled in the projecting process.
While I may not have ever had big intentions for Greenspit, it turned out that that climb had intentions for me.
TAKING A BREAK
Back during the previous fall, in the midst of another season on Stranger than Fiction with Tom, as he, Mary, and I sat around the kitchen one night, we let the topic of conversation wander towards the future, and our desires to plan another international trip together. As various schemes and ideas rolled off Mary’s and my tongues, we realized that the only opportunity for our schedules to align would be during the summer; aka the time of year with the fewest options for in season destinations.
“Valle dell’Orco is good in the summer,” Tom chimed in. With his name on many of the first ascents of cracks in the valley, and as a European local, we trusted his knowledge and jumped on the idea. After having had it feel like winter on my previous short trip in September a few years ago, it seemed to make sense. The final selling point was the presence of Greenspit, for even though it hadn’t really been more than the faintest blip on my radar, it was certainly on Mary’s.
By the following spring my heart had started longing for a grand adventure to free me from the turmoil of a soul-deep burnout. Our tickets were booked during a time where my deepest desire was to simply get on a plane and fill in a new corner of the map with whatever I found out there. The trip couldn’t come soon enough. At the same time however, trepidations over the idea of spending an entire trip on one project floated in and out of my psyche. Why hyper focus on a single piece of rock when there is an entire vast world to explore? Why sacrifice countless new life experiences in favor of just a singular one? It sounded like a lot less of an adventure, especially when that had already been all of my recent climbing endeavors.
As spring turned to summer, my burnout hit a breaking point as I fled to Index in search of change. It was a place I held synonymous with fresh starts from past identities, and June became a time of getting back to my roots as a dirtbag and letting go of the illusions of absolutes that had snuck their way into my climbing over the last few years.
Ever since I entered my 30s, my climbing, once an expression of freedom, had come to be defined by a strict set of rules. The game was trying to achieve my ultimate potential in the world of single pitch crack climbing, while there was still enough youth left in my joints to handle the abuse. It was thrilling at first, to have such glorious purpose in even the simplest parts of my life, such as the food I ate and getting enough sleep at night. The thought that every aspect of who I was could come together like pieces of a puzzle to complete the picture of my best self as an athlete gave me direction. It had felt like a breakthrough when I first set off down the path, so for as long as my actions were aligned with those values, playing that game became my way of life.
Events of the spring, detailed in my previous post here, saw a shift in my driving motivations however, and for the first time since I started playing that game, I needed to take a break. I needed a break from training, a reprieve from counting every gram of protein I ate, a pause on stretching an hour a day, a chance to stop constantly optimizing my life for athletic performance so I could just breathe for a while.
My neurodivergent brain craves structure to control the chaos of the world, so stabilizing habits like those bring me comfort. Now though, what had once pushed me forward was holding me back; yesterday’s solutions did not fit today’s problems. It’s just the natural cycle of growth.
When I got to Washington, I let it all go. I stopped training and stretching, and paying attention to what I ate and how much I slept. I stopped taking regimented rest days, setting goals, and getting on specific climbs that were meant to make me better. I didn’t just break every single one of my imaginary rules, I stopped playing the game entirely for the sake of letting climbing feel like play instead of purpose, and it was The Answer.
Freedom was the answer, so much so that by the time my trip to Italy arrived, my cautions over the idea of projecting Greenspit were front and center. After having worked so hard to find peace with my climbing, I knew the importance of trusting my gut if it told me to walk away. The only problem was how to navigate the social dynamics of being with friends who were all in if I wasn’t. The trip was supposed to be dedicated to doing the specific thing that I needed to be able to run away from.
Not having answers to these questions gnawed at me, but in the end there would be no point in going into the unknown if I already knew what I would find. Far better to show up with an open mind and see what the climb had in store.
BREAKDOWN
It was fortunate that I went into the trip without expectations, because upon our arrival, everything went wrong immediately. No sooner had we stepped off the airplane in Milan, and our rental car reservation fell through, skyrocketing the price of the trip. Bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived from the overnight flight, we didn’t even have the energy to buy groceries by the time Mary, Tessa, and I arrived at our accommodations in the quaint village of Sparone.
My jet-lag strategy is typically to just stay awake through the long travel hours. When I am finally allowed to sleep, I am so exhausted that my body is forced into immediately resetting its circadian rhythm to the new location. I can never fall asleep on planes anyway. By the time I laid down in bed that night, I felt sure unconsciousness would immediately claim me… except it didn’t.
A few short spurts of being fully unconscious were all I got, and things only got worse from there over the next few days. What started as jet-lag quickly spiraled into anxiety-fueled insomnia, as each night awake further corrupted my brain chemistry into more and more of the unhelpful thought patterns that perpetuate the cycle. ‘You’re already so deep in the red, you simply cannot afford to make this any worse,’ or ‘The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to ever recover and save the trip.’ Some nights I didn’t fall asleep until 5am; others, not at all. Occasionally I would reach a breaking point that would allow me a generous five hours, but even those only made the deficit worse.
After a week and a half of spiraling, I was completely broken in body, mind, and spirit. I could sometimes convince myself I was having fun, as I forced myself to appreciate new pitches climbed, or the beauty of the rugged mountains silhouetting Orco Valley. Mostly though I was a sponge that had been rung completely dry and left out in the summer sun until it was nothing but a shriveled, useless husk.
Not only was my own condition in shambles, but having long since lost my ability to regulate my emotions with cortisol flooding my system, my struggles were affecting the others nearly as much. Fears that I was ruining their trips too became another anxious thought to add to the soup that was sloshing around in my head each night, keeping me awake.
Eventually my sanity hit a breaking point on the morning of our third session on Greenspit, a week and a half into the trip. Lor and Leslie had just arrived the night prior, completing our group. The stakes seemed even higher to put on a brave face and have a good attitude on their first day, no matter how terrible I felt. If only my mask weren’t already too cracked to even pretend.
The devils that had been whispering in my ears thus far were screaming now, and they were all I could hear. I was trapped on a trip where I had no ability to control the environment that was making me so debilitatingly anxious, and stuck in a cycle of spiraling out about it. I was imprisoned in my own wretched-feeling body that served as a constant reminder of it all, as I struggled to breathe through the tightness in my chest. I finally had no strength with which to fight.
I arrived at the crag in tears. What a way to show up on Lor’s first day. What a way to support Mary’s dream. What a way to inspire Tessa and Leslie, who looked up to me. I retreated into the forest and sobbed, unable to do anything else. The thoughts in my head were not rational, but that’s the problem with anxiety taking over, and this was probably the second worst bout of it I’d had in my entire life.
Eventually Lor cautiously approached, as one would a wounded stray dog. How long we sat there together I couldn’t say, but it felt like hours as I drowned in my own head. In the depths of my despair, completely devastated by my own circumstances and the impact they were having on my friends, they threw me the only lifeline that could have pulled me back to shore. As I desperately tried to apologize for my pathetic welcome, they told me that they were happy to be there with me no matter how I showed up, strong or weak, psyched or burned out, put together or falling apart.
As I sat in the forest below Greenspit, slowly allowing my breathing to return to normal, I knew this devastatingly beautiful moment would stay with me for the rest of my days whenever I thought about what it felt like to be unconditionally loved.
I was hollowed out after that, but there was still a rock climb to be climbed. I roped up too drained to have expectations, hardly caring if I made any progress or simply moved my body around a little. The sleep deprivation was so intense that the slight movement of the leaves moving in the wind warped my vision in the same way the world looks on psychedelic drugs. I absently wondered if it was even that safe for me to be on the sharp end so impaired. I was too tired to even care.
The moment my feet left the ground, it was as though my animal instincts took over, because it was all that was left in me. I made links that had felt impossible the day before, and lowered off somewhat in disbelief at the strength I’d found in my fingers. As Lor congratulated me on a good burn, I laughed drily and replied, “That’s the one hour of sleep special, babeyy.”
It seemed that in spite of everything, Greenspit still had other plans for me.
BREAKING THE RULES
After that, my heart beat a little slower; my mind raced a little less. Having been given permission to struggle allowed me to accept my circumstances instead of fighting them, and that peace was what finally broke the cycle. That, or I had just emptied the tank so completely that I had no emotion left with which to feel anxiety. Either way I finally started getting some semblance of real sleep.
Nearly two weeks of extreme sleep deprivation has lasting effects however, and it was with deep fatigue that I slowly crawled my way out of that deep hole little by little, day by day. I had to accept the fact that I would probably be fairly tired for the rest of the trip. In a different time, on a different project, such a setback would have been devastating, but at that point I still didn’t know how I felt about Greenspit and spending all of my time on it.
As Lor tried to iron out a schedule to organize our time around projecting, I hesitated and tiptoed around any commitments. Taking things day by day felt safer, so I could always be ready to bail the moment climbing on the route felt wrong. I had gotten so used to following all those rules for athletic optimization in my ironclad Plan for Projecting Success, so being in a permanently exhausted state left me confused. I couldn’t follow the rules even if I wanted to. If there was one thing I was sure of however, it was that I didn’t want to.
I just wanted my climbing to be fun, and free, and playful. If that wasn’t enough to send Greenspit, then I wouldn’t send Greenspit on this trip, and that was okay. After years of sacrificing one for the sake of the other, I decided that I needed to reverse the tradeoff. I eventually made my peace that I could still enjoy climbing on an iconic and historic route without Playing the Game. The pitch was incredibly fun to climb on and I was still enjoying my days on it.
I had become so entrenched in my own narrative about this game that it felt illegal to break the rules. I did it anyway, as I ate cookies and gelato every day, never stretched, never visualized beta before bed, never tried to wake up early enough to get good conditions, and never pulled on my hangboard or attempted to warm up whatsoever before climbing. When Lor mentioned sending an update to their coach about their progress on the project, I did not even consider doing the same.
On paper, taking such a laissez faire approach may seem like a step backward as an athlete, but in reality it was just the twists and turns of growing. Taking up training and adopting all those rules had been a revolution at the time, propelling me forward through my previous plateau, but I had outgrown it. My past breakthrough had become my current setback, as Lor put it.
I was shedding my previous approach like an old skin I had outgrown to keep my climbing in line with my current values of fun and freedom, willing to sacrifice my performance edge if it meant being true to myself. I would rather be a worse athlete than stand for something I didn’t believe in.
When conditions were the worst at the start of the trip, with humidity above 70% and temperatures in the 80s, Mary and I had agreed that we would at least put 4-5 days into “Greasespit” as we were calling it at the time. At minimum we would get a thorough sample and lay the foundation for how to approach a more optimal season in the future.
With that in mind, on day five of climbing on the route I felt ready to walk away if it felt too far from reach. I was tired as usual, and made no attempt to warm up beyond swinging my arms back and forth a few times (as usual). Suddenly I had linked through the first boulder problem from the ground for the first time before sitting on the rope not because I was about to fall, but because I wasn’t prepared to try and take it to the end. I pulled back on and climbed through the second crux first try.
My heart beat a little faster with excitement: the stirrings of some actual psyche. The first real emotions I’d felt since my complete mental breakdown fluttered cautiously in my mind. Then on my second attempt I one-hung it again, even more tired. It was almost comical that no matter how bad I felt, this climb continued to pull me forward almost against my will. Like I said, Greenspit had its own plans for me.
BREAKTHROUGH
I had no choice but to be psyched now. We were halfway through the trip and I had already made such progress on the route. I was still too drained to feel like I’d won any battles, more like barely survived them, but at the very least I was still here. A new curiosity arose, of what I could do with the generous amount of time I had left.
As I thought about my past and present relationship taking on big climbing projects, a realization dawned on me: I could send Greenspit without Playing the Game. I’d never even bothered to conceive of such a possibility. So habituated to failure, I’d never dared to think myself strong enough.
The evidence was undeniable however: no matter how sloppily I showed up, no matter how much I held myself back from caring, Greenspit had continued to allow me to move forward. It was as if the route was saying the same thing that Lor had, when they told me I was allowed to be a complete disaster. Come as you are, it said, you are already good enough.
Two days later I hung from two hand jams, staring down my previous high point. What had felt like a difficult sequence last time was now a rest, as I spared a few seconds to spread extra chalk between my fingers and take a deep breath. I latched the slippery fingerlock, but this time I wasn’t slipping. I launched for the final sloper, a deadpoint at the end of the roof, and heard Mary yell, “hold on!” as my feet swung away from the wall but I was not about to let go. Laughter burst from my lungs as I floated through the final moves, babbling a stream of nonsensical words down to Lor and Mary as I clipped the chains in disbelief and euphoria.
On the ground I had been so tired I could have fallen asleep between attempts, barely going a minute between yawns, yet on the wall I had felt like I could hang on forever. My warm up was a few arm circles and nothing more. I did not choose the day with the lowest humidity, nor optimize for the send in any way other than deciding to try in the moment. I stayed true to my new approach until the very end and Greenspit welcomed me anyway.
The climb accepted me as I was, but in exchange I also had to accept it for what it was going to be too. I didn’t think I’d have a tale to tell about Greenspit, even if I sent, but it turns out that was never really up to me. It was going to be special, no matter how scared I was of letting it be. It was going to teach me about myself, even when I tried not to learn. It was going to help me evolve, despite not asking me to change. It was going to tell a story, even when I refused to pick up a pen.
Greenspit took all the scattered pieces of me and put them back together in a different order than I’d ever tried to assemble them before. I could treat my climbing like the expression of freedom that it’s supposed to be instead of another day at the office and still succeed. I think for now at least, it looks good on me. Today it’s a breakthrough, and I can’t wait for tomorrow, when it becomes my next setback.
