Entering Betsy

A few weeks ago, just before going down to Hueco Tanks, I went back up Middle Elden with Danny Mauz and Matt Laessig to climb on some sharp crimps, to try Entering Betsy, its stand start The Hole Show, and the canyon’s project, Broken Symmetry.

            It’d been just long enough since I’d been in climbing at The Buttermilks that all the callous’ on my fingertips was peeling off in great sheets thick as a couple pieces of paper. We warmed up at the mouth of the canyon and with my fingers oozing sweat, walked up to The Hole Show.

The Hole Show, and its dynamic low start, Entering Betsy are easily the finest established problems in the canyon, and among the best of their style in Flagstaff.  Middle Elden is, despite constant bouldering traffic over the years, a relatively obscure, seldom visited area. The rock is not as consistent as it is over at the more popular Glorias, but when it’s good, as in The Hole Show’s case, it can make for some very good climbing.

The problem starts is an anomaly of a hold for Elden, a large, perfectly smooth Hueco, (most holds are jagged and sharp) and moves left to a small crimp. Both Danny and Matt weren’t sure what happened next, but it was definitely hard.  Danny, a few weeks before, had scoped out the holds on the top of the boulder and found a small, sloping crimp on the lip he’d missed before. I fooled around with a bad sloper on the face and some variations in footwork, and then realized that I could just swing up to the crimp on the lip with a high heel hook in the starting hueco. I climbed The Hole Show a couple tries later and while my fingers were starting to throb, decided to try Entering Betsy next.

This problem starts on small sidepulls below and to the right of The Hole Show. While it only adds one strange all-points-off move to the stand start, I think it improves and adds some difficulty. It isn’t so much of a pull and jump, as most dynos are, but just a jump. It’s all in the ankles and man, that move feels cool to do. It seems impossible and bizarre until your hand is in the hueco and your feet are swinging out.

Daylight was starting to ebb and the already rust-colored rock was turning orange. I put my climbing shoes back on, tried the dyno, fell, tried again and surprised myself by doing the move. I wasn’t really prepared, at least mentally, to climb the rest of the problem and left my heel too low in the hueco and fell back to the pads. I rested a couple minutes, put my heel in the right place and did Entering Betsy in its entirety. I’d been thinking of this problem since Matt first showed it to me about a month before. Standing on top, looking out over east Flagstaff swallowed by dusk I felt like I was starting to get stronger.

Since then, Matt has been able to do The Hole Show and both Danny and a guy I know as Noah-who-broke-Broken-Symmetry have climbed Entering Betsy.

 Now I’m working on Broken Symmetry, which never saw a second accent before the break and none since.  It reminds me in many ways of a problem California called Bang On. They share a very similar crux move, but I think Broken Symmetry is harder, especially after Noah broke it. I’m sure that after a few weeks of work muscle memory will start to pick up and with a bit of luck, I’ll cross that one off my list as well.