Weekend Whipper: This Hard Catch “Looks Way Worse Than It Felt”
Readers, please send your Weekend Whipper videos, information, and any lessons learned to Anthony Walsh, awalsh@outsideinc.com.
Kaitlin O’Boyle received a great memento from her first trip to the New River Gorge: this gnarly looking video.
Her friends had challenged her to onsight The Rico Suave Arete (5.10a), even though she had yet to send a 5.10 outdoors—and didn’t bother to warm up. “I had a hunch it wasn’t going to go well,” she wrote to Climbing, “but I figured I’d go for it anyway.” O’Boyle’s main goals for that trip were to “climb at my limit, be scared, and take a good fall, so I checked all those boxes pretty quickly.”
We doubt she’d planned for such a painful-looking whipper.
“A lot of people are saying my belayer didn’t know what he was doing, but the funny thing is that I actually switched to a more experienced belayer partway through the climb,” O’Boyle said. “My partner was belaying me at first, but he was still new to sport climbing, which was making me even more nervous than I already was. Another climber in my group reminded me that it was my climb and encouraged me to speak up about my concerns.”
When O’Boyle got to a prominent ledge low on the route, which some people choose to belay from, she asked her belayer to swap out with someone she knew had more experience. With that trusted belayer below her, O’Boyle felt permission to climb until failure.
“I honestly enjoyed the fall and was smiling and laughing right after,” she said. “I couldn’t understand why everyone was so concerned until I saw the video for myself. It looks way worse than it felt.”
That may be true, but we’d recommend reading this great article by Brent Smith for the ins and outs of the “soft catch.”
Happy Friday, and be safe out there this weekend.
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