Things to do when you’re injured – Re-bolting.

John Thornton (Go Vertical Athlet)

As most climbers, we obsess about climbing. We dedicate so much of our time to climbing, our friends are climbers and sadly, all we ever talk about is climbing! So it can be difficult to know what to do with oneself when you become injured. This is where I found myself this year.

Luckily (or perhaps unluckily) this isn’t my first injury and that gifted me with some knowledge of how to deal with it. That said, this one was particular tough. This is my third year in a row with an injury that has put me ‘out of the game’ for 4 months or more.

Despite the horrendous summer heat i’d made quick progress on a short 8b+ in the crag of Unterwald. I felt close and that my chances of climbing this route were high. However, with a heinous crux at the top on some pretty bad holds, I opted to deploy the use of a heel hook. It worked really well but after trying this method several times, I felt a sudden and sharp pain in my hamstring. I was forced to retire on the route. I continued to climb of course, just avoiding heel hooks on my right side. Sadly that only made it worse. Not long after I was unable to put any tension through my right leg. This left me with a conundrum of ‘what to do with myself?’.

The obvious solution is ‘if the lower body is injured, train the upper body’. However, having some recent issues with my fingers meant I couldn’t switch to a regime of hang-boarding and had to forgo my dreams of acquiring ‘fingers of steel’. I also couldn’t distract myself with other hobbies, such as running. So what was there to do? That’s when I remembered the joys of bolting.

I wasted no time ordering my very own drill (since I was always borrowing from others) and spoke to my friends at ReBolting who were great in providing bolts for restoring routes. I immediately began working on the right side of Unterwald where i’d spotted some potential. Cleaning the rock I discovered that yes, there are options for new routes there. In fact two new routes on fantastic rock! One of which I could climb already, Clash with Reality (8a+), and the other I look forward to returning to next year, hopefully in good shape and without injury.

As the summer heatwave started to eventually decline, we headed once more to Gimmelwald. My leg still wasn’t good and so I opted to check out some of the easier and lesser climbed routes there, such as Aktion Selektion (8a+). The bolts were terrible! Rusted and ancient quickdraws that were dried out and crusty from the relentless sun and water treatment over the years. I’ve never been genuinely scared on sport route before! But the route itself was fantastic and definitely overlooked by so many climbers. So the very next week I returned, brushed down the entire route, re-bolted it top to bottom and as a nice bonus, could successfully climb the route as well.

Discovering and creating have always brought me so much satisfaction and that’s exactly what bolting is! Cleaning untouched rock makes you appreciate the small details, perhaps more than in climbing itself. There’s always excitement and anticipation in not knowing if there are holds, or if it will become a good climb. And that’s just new routing. Re-bolting old routes that have perhaps been forgotten always brings so much joy. Maybe it’s knowing that you’re not doing something just for yourself, but for your friends and the others who climb at the same places as you. It’s certainly been a good distraction for me this year and something I look forward to doing a lot more of in the future.

Thanks to rebolting.ch for their support.

Photos by Alex Rohr.

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