I really admire Said's drive and motivation. During our time here in Smith he's climbed so many routes. Regardless of the difficulty, he walks up to whatever he finds appealing and most of the times, does it in a couple of goes. He is by no means chasing numbers. In Smith he's rather been chasing classics. A route that he's been talking about ever since we left Sweden some weeks ago, is "Just do it" on The Monkeyface. It might be the best line in Smith and also happens to be that hardest. The route was put up by Jean-Baptiste Tribout back 1992 and has an iconic status among the gems of the area. Over the last almost two weeks, we made the heinous walk over the hill a couple of times for him to try the route. Each time, he dogged up it once. No more. He's been saying that he wants to save his skin for the redpoint attempt. Only to walk back over the hill to climb a couple of "easy" classics.
Today he met up with an old friend that offered to come belay him on the route. I was glad not to have to fill my legs with lactic acid and stay on the route I was working and get my forearms pumped instead. But when Said came back with a smile on his face, I wished I'd went along to witness an amazing achivement!
/DO
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