Throughout my years of climbing, I've never finished a V7 in a short period of time.
The reason is obviously because it's very hard, and also I never feel the urgency since
I can always just go back to my local gym whenever and try again.
But guess what?
I am visiting London right now and I will only be here for a few days.
There is an iconic V7 here in the Vauxwall Climbing Center, the Free Solo Boulder Problem
replica set by Alex Honnold.
For those who haven't watched the movie yet, this particular climbing sequence is
the hardest part of the entire 3000-feet free solo attempt by Alex Honnold at Yosemite.
I am very excited and hopefully I can get it before I head back to California.
Here we are at the Free Solo Boulder Problem!
The crimps look very small and the footholds look very slippery. ， 0:00:50.890,0:00:54.040 There's no foothold for the left foot on the corner here.
This is going to be challenging for me.
I am going to employ a few different strategies.
The first strategy is warming up longer than usual.
The second strategy is asking for beta from other climbers.
The third strategy is trying each move one by one.
For the first day, I discovered that there were 3 moves that I couldn't make.
The first difficult move is holding the small crimp with the thumb while reaching for the
slope.
The second difficult move is the famous karate kick.
The third difficult move is the stemming move right after the karate kick.
I decided to focus on the first difficult move.
I think I was falling because I wasn't trusting my left foot.
The left foothold is very slippery and it took me a few tries to feel comfortable to
put my weight on it.
However, I still kept falling and falling because I don't have the lock-off strength
for my right thumb like Alex Honnold.
I remember watching a video by Andrew recently, and he did it by moving the left hand to the
upper crimp first.
I thought to myself, Andrew seems to be climbing at a similar level as I am now, so his beta
should work better for me.
However, after a few tries, I have no idea why that is easier for Andrew.
For the second day, I decided to work on the karate kick.
I quickly realized that since I am not as tall and long as Alex Honnold, I had to generate
a bit of swinging momentum for my leg to reach the wall.
However, once my leg hit the wall, I felt totally stuck.
I had no idea how I could generate any force with that kind of stretched position and a
non-existent left foothold.
I tried and tried and tried, but still couldn't make any progress.
For the third day, I worked on both the thumb catch and the stemming move.
It seems like my thumb just simply isn't strong enough, and I am just not tall enough
to do the stemming move.
I tried putting my left hand on the wall and on the hold but neither of them felt solid.
I couldn't figure out where to put my left foot in order to generate force to stem up.
This green foothold seems to be at the spot where Andrew and Louis put their foot in their
videos, but there wasn't a green foothold there when they climbed it.
I know it sounds like an excuse but I was very frustrated.
I tried and tried and tried, but I still couldn't get it.
For the fourth day, I had a lot of fun shooting with the Bouldering Bobat in the morning.
Jake taught me a lot of good tips about dynamic climbing.
After the shoot, even though my legs were near dead from all the dyno-ing, my fingers
were bleeding, and the skin of my fingertips was super tender, I decided to head back to
the Vauxwall Climbing Center to give it another try.
Tom gave me a very helpful tip for doing the thumb catch, which is to pull myself in dynamically
with both the right thumb and left fingers while I reach out with the left hand.
The theory is the momentum will lessen the stress on the thumb for a short period of
time, and I can utilize that time to reach out with my left hand.
Sounds counter-intuitive, right?
But it worked.
I also had to remind myself to catch the slope with bent arms when I reached the hold dynamically.
The last move I had to figure out is stemming.
After hours of trying the move, I still couldn't get it.
While I was about to give up, a fellow climber decided to help me out and showed me how he
did the stemming move.
I replicated where he placed his left foot and left hand, and boom, just like that, I
became able to repeat this move with ease.
After a few attempts of climbing the entire route, this happened.
Yes!
Wo!
Yes!
Finally!
Thanks for watching.
Climbing a V7 in 4 days is truly a historical milestone for me.
My fingertips hurt now, my back and shoulders are super sore, but hey, it's all worth
it.
If you have a chance to visit London, be sure to check out Vauxwall.
The free solo route will be up there for a long long time.
As always, make sure to like and subscribe.
See you in the next video.