Routesetting Lesson #4: The First (Half) Route!

It has been hard to make time for my routesetting apprenticeship over the past couple of months. The holiday season was very busy, and finding a day when I could dedicate a few hours to this has been tough. Last week I spent a morning stripping routes again for the first time in a while, and I found I had forgotten how to rig my ascender.

This week I again stripped a couple of routes, and at last was ready to try some actual setting. Dustin asked me to put up a 5.7 on the wall I had just stripped. In the end we decided that with the time I had before I had to be on the desk, it was more realistic to put up just the bouldering problem at the start of the route, and let Dustin finish the top half.

So I went off to the hold room and gathered some holds: big feet and fairly juggy handholds suitable for a 5.7. I set up the start jug and solid feet under it, and then tried to set up a couple of moves I liked working up from there. It felt like it went fairly quickly (though I’m sure still much slower than our real setters!), and it was a lot of fun. When I thought I was done, Dustin came over to take a look and forerun the problem. He suggested a few changes, removing one handhold, swapping a couple of others for more suitable ones (to bring the difficulty level back down to the intended 5.7), and moving a few around. When he added the top half of the route he also added a few more footholds to make the route work for shorter people as well.

In the end the sequence I had in mind pretty much survived, and I learned a bit about hitting the grade and making the route work for people of varying height & reach. I’m pretty happy with how it went. The route is the white 5.7 on belay bar #4.