The Perfect Climb.

I climbed slowly and timidly up until I was about five or six meters above the lapping sea below, here the fear finally tipped the scales against my forward momentum.

I froze.

Flustered.

My friends were up on the cliff to my left cheering me and encouraging me but I couldn’t overcome that psychological weight pulling back towards the water.

“Relax” I heard shouted from the sidelines.

“I can’t f**king relax” I screamed back before starting to climb down then succumbing to gravity and jumping into the blue.

As I got out of the water and scrambled back up the cliff I was in a whirl of failure and success. The failure obvious, I’d not climbed a climb that was miles within my physical ability, something I should have been able to do. My friends laughing at my funny inability to control my flustering during fear. However that wasn’t the full story, I was in reality quite happy with where I had got. I was infinitely higher than I had got before, I’d looked at and wished to climb this pitch of rock so many times but never previously got my brain onside enough to try.

This was really quite the success.

I returned a couple of weeks later with renewed abilities, still timidly but with something renewed inside.

I scrambled down quietly, traversed across to the starting ledge, looked up at what was ahead then pulled on once again. This time I kept my composure. I moved through each foot and hand move seemingly so smoothly and effortlessly, just like I always wanted to climb this climb.

I was climbing a climb called Perfect Pitch.

Perfect Pitch climbs a clean face on the lefthand side of an almost perfectly vertical wall.

The only section of the wall over deep water.

An obvious line to want to climb.

One you can look at clearly from the cliff to one side, the perfect view of your challenge ahead.

A ramp leads down from the top to the start.

The end of the ramp, a little ledge is where you set off from up and slightly left. It sits there seemingly beneath you as you climb, giving you a perfect tiny bit of doubt “will I hit the ledge if I fall?” In reality you're going nowhere near. But a weird part of me thinks this little niggle in your mind makes the route better.

One of the imperfections that make perfect, perfect.

The real quality comes however once you’ve set off from that ledge. The route gives you holds you never expected when you looked down upon it.

Holds that your fingers sit into just right.

Holds that you don’t see coming but then you get given them and they’re exactly what you were hoping for. They fill you with all the confidence you need but they’re not silly. You can’t be over confident.

Nothing is wasted.

Not too small and equally not too big.

The right amount of delicate is needed on each one.

That’s until one move about three quarters of the way up, you get one of those so correctly imperfect bits again. The crux. A big but not confidence inspiring side pull you need to reach really high on up and on your left, before working your feet delicately high then pulling to the good holds again above.

A few moves later with a couple of deep breaths in the mix to keep you stable you pull over the top and have two feet on stable ground again.

I’ve travelled half way around the world on adventures that have given me far less, taught me far less and grown me far less than these 12 vertical meters. All the highs and lows, fears and rewards, tangible connection to the world and you haven’t even moved on the map.

It’s just a rock until it's mixed with a culture carried by a few friends out one evening by the sea.

Jacob