About a rock climb, told sloppily in the second person

From a mile out it looks bizarre, more than improbable, a stout lump of sweeping lines and pillars erupting out of the plains for no discernible reason, God's 8th grade art project. It was a distant silhouette the night before that could just be made out from the lawn where tents were sloppily erected by the light of headlamps, but it didn't need to make sense then, in the heavy darkness, separated from you by a night of dense melatonin dreams.

To get to those perfect, soaring cracks, that will today chew you up and spit you out slowly and methodically, you have to humbly scramble up sharp talus and brush for a few hundred yards that probably feels like much further, and it's like you're tiny worshippers swarming towards a temple, laboring up its slopes in a shadow of otherwordly nature. Which you are in a sense, your fingers and knuckles ready to spill sacrificial blood, packs full of ceremonial trinkets and attire well worn by ritual.

The different sizes have been covered, you've tried and finished a few. Hundreds of feet of unreal, perfect straight-in hands. Insecure fingers and ring locks. Steep, unforgiving fists and wider that make you sweat and swear and nearly weep. Here, stamina and pure grit are rewarded rather than flashy, technical movement; you have to dig deep. The line whose proud length you now nervously examine as you rack up and tie in in the beating afternoon heat is the most coveted in the guidebook. A grim, perfectly symmetrical chute of grey-brown igneous rock split by a continuous thin crack on its inside left corner. The chimney starts on a gentle slope and curves quickly upward, steepening to just shy of vertical for 130 feet and change. The crack is steep and discontinuous, undistinguished on its own, but this line isn't just another crack is it, no, it stands out because of a sobering geological coincidence the consequence of which you're about to know intimately: the width of the chute happens to match an average human being's wingspan all but perfectly. The idea is to spread out arms and legs and reach, push, scratch, heave, worship friction, up and up as the walls inch closer together mercifully and you're finally allowed holds and a stance atop a pillar.

This is a bit above your limit, you know. Just a bit. You could be stronger. Fitter. You could have done wall sits and lunges over the past few weeks to prepare - damn, that would have been a good idea. It probably won't go. It's too hard. Too sustained. You begin.

Inside the chimney as you move up the start, what you didn't realize from the base becomes searingly apparent - this thing has been baking in the sun all day, you've elected to climb in a microwave. Dumbass. It's a little after 4. The low sun hammers your back. The rack is leaden, augmenting gravity.

The first moves comprise shaky laybacking as you resist the dreaded full stretch. Submitting, you turn and reach, palming the opposite wall, then extending your legs outrageously. Your calves engage, feet pressing out and down, and a dull burn sets in. Tourists point and murmur, gawking from the distant walking path. It's comically, tangibly hot. Push out, scoot the feet up, do it again. And again. Claw and desperately try to jam in the crack when you can. Anything to take a fraction of your weight off of your screaming legs. You've made some progress up the chute, but it stretches up and away and you can't see the top, it's too far, you're moving so slowly. Each added second spent to hastily slot a nut in the crack yields precious ground to the advancing pain.

The moves are rhythmic, regimented; the back of the chimney moves slowly but steadily down through your aching vertical world as your progress accumulates. You taste bitter, dirty sweat. The climbing is singularly physical but you've nearly left your body, it's not helping, the legs quiver when they're planted for too long, calves rock solid lumps of pain. But the platform is there, and leading up to it are holds, precious holds, if you can reach them and rest your lower half for even a second, you know you'd have it in the bag. Growling, desperate groans and animal barks escape your teeth. Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. It hurts. You reach down to place a cam, you haven't done so in too long, fifteen, twenty feet, it takes eons, it's sloppy, but it will do, a few desperate seconds and the rope is clipped, you look up, wince, your left foot slips, hip rotates out, weight comes entirely onto your shoulder and arm, you're done, you can fall, take, no, a noisy exhalation and the foot is back wedged into the corner.

Up. Up, because it's the only direction that has ever made sense. Up, while your body is young, while time allows it, while the sense of urgency that chased you to the desert and the Rockies and jagged canyons and shitty slabs and bird shit-covered ledges and smelly cars with strangers hurtling through the night to suffer and sweat and fester in tents for a three day weekend remains unexpired. Up, because the pain is heartbreakingly worth it, more clearly, acutely worth it than you can ever remember until it's in you and through you and out of you in gasps and hoarse, croaking yells through peeling lips as your hands find the holds and you crawl onto the platform and collapse, your partner exhaling, the tourists on the road offering faint whoops and clapping, your muscles and skin a sad wreckage, the route done on sight, the accomplishment spectacularly meaningless in the grand scheme of the sport and in the world in general, the solitary satisfaction of which tears a gaping grin into your arid mouth as you lay on dusty rocks and breathe.

Image is from Mountain Project. Not me.