THE NATURE OF THE GAME

Udo told me a story about how he witnessed two young Polar Bears in the Salt Lake City Zoo. Their cage had a waterfall that was fed from a pool in a sort of balcony about 3 meters above the water. First the polar bears threw a ball up on this balcony till. (They didnÕt throw very well, so it took them a while before it rested on the water.) Then they waited for the current to take the ball to the edge of the waterfall where it stayed. The polar bears could (barely) jump to the edge of this balcony and hang on. They spent the following hour or so jumping on the balcony and trying to climb (sometimes with heelhooks!) to where the ball was lying on the water. Now they tried to hang on with one hand and reach out for the ball with the other. Most of the times they were running out of juice and fell backwards into the water. The (human) crowd got really excited by watching the polar bears try and shouted at them to psyche the bears up. This seemed to help and finally they had their ball back. Of course they threw the ball again and the game started to repeat itself... At one point, the polar bears will have the whole thing wired. They will throw the ball so precisely that it rests on the water first try and immediately succeed in jumping and climbing for it. Hopefully the zoo management will give them a sloping edge of the balcony than, our hang the balcony higher to make the jump harder, but most likely the polar bears have to invent a new, more difficult game. This is what I would do.

I want to do the highest jump and the hardest climb in my cage. Primarily I'm not interested in how hard this might be for the other polar bears. Okay, it's interesting to see the others try, sometimes we get "Big Toni" from the ice if the jump is really high, or skinny Markus if the holds on the balcony are really bad. But to put a small number on so much fun seems to be a bit ridiculous to me. In my head, everything is clear: A "grauzone" of routes and boulders that (hopefully) have been pleasantly difficult, but where I never had a doubt that I eventually would succeed. And than the problems that kept me up at night, which I had to try a couple of days, always doubtful if they are really possible for me. These things I will call B1 from now on. And than the limit. If I eventually succeed on these I'm not even sure if IÕll be ever able to do them again, since too many uncontrollable factors are involved. Even I don't know all the ingredients of the luck-opportunity-mixture that allows me to climb these things. These climbs I call B3. I cannot imagine that I will have more than a handful of B3's throughout my life. Maybe somebody repeats my problem, maybe I can do it again or I just get doubtful about if it is really so hard... anyway I might downrate it to B2 to make new room for B3's.

Ich will den schwierigsten Wurf, den höchsten Sprung und den krassesten Hangler in meinem Gehege machen. Dabei interessiert mich nicht wie schwierig das ganze für die anderen Eisbären ist. Gut, es ist interessant, die anderen probieren zu sehen, wir holen z.B. den grossen Anton immer dann von der Eisscholle, wenn der Sprung an die Balkonkante sehr weit ist. Oder den schmalen Markus, wenn die Balkonkante besonders fies ist. Aber ein kleines Nümmerchen an so viel Spass zu kleben erscheint mir etwas albern. In meinem Kopf ist alles ganz klar: Eine Grauzone von Routen und Bouldern die vielleicht schwierig, hoffentlich schön schwierig waren, aber wo ich nie im Ernst gezweifelt habe sie hochzukommen. Dann Sachen, die mir schon so ziemlich den letzten Nerv geraubt haben, mehrere Tage mit Versuchen, mehrere Nächte mit Grübeleien und Zweifeln. Die Sachen nenne ich ab jetzt B1. Und dann mein absolutes Limit . Wo ich nicht weiss es je wieder schaffen zu können, weil es so viele unvorhersehbare und unberechenbare Faktoren gibt, die nur durch eine Art Zufall - Glück - Gemisch an einem Tag ideal abgemischt den Durchstieg erlauben - das nenne ich B3. Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, das sich mehr als eine Handvoll von B3Ôs durch mein Leben begleiten werden. Vielleicht gibt es einen Wiederholer des Problems, vielleicht schaffe ich es noch mal oder vielleicht kommen mir einfach Zweifel, die Zeiten ändern sich... der Engel ist gefallen... Auf jeden Fall wird das Ganze dann B2 und der Limitspeicher ist wieder frei!

When climbing with friends, of course I will still tell them how hard I think a problem is in the traditional sense, I just don't find this interesting for me anymore. I'm going climbing and not running on tracks and I realized that I can't find objective measurements for an activity so diverse. One last word about Pierre Bollinger's repeat and downrating of "Muadib" (rated 8b bloc by Toni Lamprecht after the first ascent, confirmed by Klem after the 2nd ascent, than downrated to 7c+ by Pierre Bollinger after the third ascent). If I could do Muadib that easily, I would have added the obvious and difficult sit-down start to it to have some kind of challenge. IÕm sure that's what the polar bears had done. But sometimes humans climb for different motives than polar bears, don't they?