have settled into a rough routine of day on day off in the arch. unlike back in the coop, sessions tend to be at least 2 hours and my body complains if i go multiple days on. realised today i haven't got up anything harder than V4 which makes me think i am a lot weaker than i was. Then again i never used any grades in the coop and equally i suspect i always punched above my indoor weight when i was outdoors, or under-punched indoors or whatever. I'm getting used to using the volumes on the wall here, the range of possibilities in approaching a problem are both intriguing and mildly frustrating. I initially was leaving them out of problems thinking they weren't "in".

I had forgotten that the coop naturally contained a sample of people who were into bouldering, and interested in the coop on some level as a means to an outdoors end. The arch is a sort of UCD of bouldering, with a lot of people climbing at lower grades (V1/2) and just there for the climbing gym element. This isn't an elitist observation more that in my billy-no-mates state I'm often quietly looking to other people's efforts on problems to help figure my way up them and i have found myself in weird ability gap with few people making repeated attempts on the problems i'm trying.

Also people keep referring to problems as routes. I'm not sure if this is cultural or just people who have never been into routes proper so don't distinguish, but it jars with me in a grammar nazi kind of way.

There are many more girls climbing here, which seems to increase the number of lads with no tops on, shivering stoically.