It’s November, and temps are officially cooling off. You know what that means: bouldering season. Or, at least, now it means that for me. But it definitely didn’t used to – last winter was my first bouldering season ever. This sport climber just layered up and tied in year-round before.
I’m sure lots of other sport climbers can relate. If you’re dead-set on sport, bouldering (don’t hate me) just isn’t that fun. But after every strong man, woman, and literal child told me “you need to boulder to climb hard”, I thought what the hell: let’s give it a go. And – surprise – it was very helpful for sport climbing. (They were right).
Now that it ‘tis the season again, I figured I’d lay out the main things that I learned from bouldering and the ways in which it helped my sport climbing. If I could encourage another sport climber to boulder for a season, I would.
But first: context. If you want to just get to the juice, skip ahead to What I learned from my first bouldering season.
My pitiful bouldering background
Prior to November 2022, I had ticked a handful of boulders up to a single V3/4, and I’d bouldered outside fewer than ten times in my whole life. And I had sport climbed a lot. Like, I’d spent hundreds and hundreds of days on a rope, sending my first 12b a year earlier.
Why? I just didn’t “get” bouldering. I couldn’t understand where the fun part was. I think I just didn’t intrinsically value boulders so sending them didn’t give me any sense of accomplishment. Getting to the top of a boulder had just always felt like “is that it?”
November 2022: Guess I’m a real boulderer now
I live in Las Vegas, where most climbers boulder during the winter. It just makes sense, conditions-wise. So for what felt like the millionth time, I decided to try outdoor bouldering again. Only this time, I had a crusher friend to take me out and hold my hand. (The crusher part is less important, but the hand-holding was absolutely essential.)
I was a total noob. I didn’t know how to fall, where to place the pads, or how to get down (seriously, downclimbs are hard and scary when you have no idea what you’re doing). But said friend patiently taught me the basics. I climbed up the downclimb first. I took some practice falls. You get the idea.
After getting shut down on some sandbagged V3, I noticed some other friends trying a V6 that looked cool. It seemed techy, which is very much my cup of tea. I got the spray down and tried the boulder. (Side note: yay baby me for not being intimated to try a V6 at this stage.)
I stuck the crux move first try. Then I did the rest of the moves. Then I stuck the crux from the beginning. I was very close to sending that day – as in, the same day where I described myself as a “total noob”. It was wild.
I ended up coming back and sending the boulder two days later. I had never sent a V5 – or even a V4. And between being able to actually send something somewhat hard, hanging out with my friends, and learning how to place pads and downclimb, something clicked: I had fun bouldering for the first time. And then I spent the rest of the season doing it.
What I learned from my first bouldering season
– You can try more hard moves in a boulder session than a sport one
People told me this forever, that it’s just so much more efficient to boulder. And I have to acquiesce: it is. You can bop around to a bunch of different climbs and try different moves very easily. No need to hang the draws, clean them, or even finish the route. This leads me to my next point…
– When you boulder, you can climb alone, and climbing alone is the shit
No need to have somebody on the other end of the rope either. Obviously, this depends on the boulder that you’re trying. (How high is the crux? What’s the landing like? Do you need a spotter?) But there are an awful lot of boulders that you can climb solo. When you climb by yourself, you can go out whenever you want and climb whatever you want for however long you want.
As a sport climber, this was absolutely wild to me. I could just pack up my things and be on a boulder within half an hour, whenever I wanted. No need to plan partners, no compromising on the crag, no apologizing for taking a long belay, and no giving long belays either (which also means that you don’t get cold standing around belaying).
I started to prefer climbing alone. Hours would disappear as I brushed and felt holds, examined nuanced feet, and meticulously repositioned my pads. You can really get a lot more done when you’re 100% focused on the task at hand rather than chatting with your friends. That’s not to say I don’t climb with friends – just that climbing alone is very useful when it makes sense.
– Bouldering lets you work on things at your own pace
This point is related to the previous one, but it doesn’t only apply to climbing alone. The nature of bouldering just means that you can time whatever you’re doing in the way that works best for you: you can rest as long or as little as you want between burns (without having somebody waiting on the other end of the rope), you can easily just work on a section of a boulder (without having to get a rope up there somehow), and you can dip in and out of problems and areas as you like (without having to wait for your partner).
How bouldering translated to sport climbing for me
– The intensity level that you get used to while bouldering makes route climbing feel much more chill
The difficulty of moves that you can pull on a boulder is generally much higher than what you’ll get on a route, simply because you also have to climb to and from those moves on a route. So getting used to the intensity of the hard moves you encounter bouldering really makes route cruxes feel much easier. Obviously, it’s helpful to be better and stronger and all those things – but, for me, the biggest difference was my tolerance to intensity.
When the hardest move I’d ever done was on the route I was working, it felt very fucking intense. And I’d be trying to climb to the move without getting too pumped, execute the move – again, the hardest move I’d ever done – and then make it to the chains. I now know that this is actually quite a big ask.
It’s much easier when the hardest move you’ve ever done is on a boulder – and you don’t have to have sent the boulder, nor does it have to be the crux move. It just gives you a higher intensity threshold, so that when you get to a route crux, it doesn’t feel like the most intense thing of all time. Because you already did that other thing that’s way more intense. See?
– Being able to solve hard moves faster = more sends
When you’ve practiced solving problems all winter and you get back on routes, you’re SO much faster at solving crux sequences. And the faster you get to the beta that works for you, the faster you send = the more sends you get in the same amount of time.
I used to hang around in my harness forever trying to figure out what to do. Bouldering helps make the options more apparent – and it helped me better order those options too, starting with the one that I thought could potentially be the easiest and working down. When I got back on a rope, I could get on climbs that used to take me multiple sessions, go up them and work out the beta real quick, and then send second go. That was pretty damn cool.
– Climbing cruxy routes is easier
Ever heard somebody say “oh, it’s just a hard boulder problem” about a route before like it’s a good thing? That’s because if you’re used to bouldering, bouldering on a rope isn’t really that different – and super cruxy climbs that require you to pull a Vhard move and then keep it together on 5.9 are easy for boulderers. Before my boulder season, they were impossible for me. Now, they’re easy sends.
These are just a few of the things that stand out to me as particularly useful from my first bouldering season, and there are many, many more. I’m imminently about to switch back to bouldering for the winter, and I’m very excited about everything I’m going to learn this time around. I hope that this was helpful and that maybe – just maybe – it encourages you to keep at bouldering. It took me a while (years) to get psyched, but it was absolutely worth it.
Image credits: Ryman Wiemann