The sun is creeping round and will be on the face within minutes. With it comes heat and sweat -  something that could easily kill you on this climb. But it also burns off the morning dew and lowers the risk of my fingers numbing out mid-route. Numb fingers could also kill. Timing is everything. I’ve rushed to get everything in place for this slightest of weather windows. Carry enough up so that I can stay up here, fresh for the lead, but not so many shuttles that my legs are too tired to perform. Everything is completely down to the wire. But for once I’ve had all the luck. A hundred decisions and chances taken over the past two weeks that have all turned out in my favour and now, with minutes before the sun rips away my chance, I have seconds to make a decision. Everyone is here, everything is finally in place. It feels a little hot. I promised myself I wasn’t going to climb it if it was so warm I needed to go tops off, but I know this is a chance and I may not get another this year.  

I’m terrified. I don’t want to climb this route. It’s not the craziest climbing I’ve ever found, but it is outrageously complex. From the first move stepping off of the pinnacle, you are in the no fall zone and busting out hard technical moves, ‘British 6c’, move after move, for 84 crucial foot movements. And it is the feet that count here. The hand holds aren’t the smallest, but soft rubber skates across endless vague depressions and scrittly smears. The calves burn and each foothold acts like a little grenade, demanding a tight tempo and even pressure for the whole one hundred feet of climbing. And as I stand here, looking up at the line, I can visualise the whole piano recital in front of me, but only in fractured pieces. I’m kidding myself that today isn’t the day. I assume that it is too rushed and lull myself into a kind of security, in the knowledge that I am going to chicken out. But as the seconds tick, my mind quivers on the yes/no. And then the final piece of luck: the faintest of southern breezes picks up and cuts the heavy morning air. It is only a couple of miles an hour, but I know this is the final piece in the jigsaw to tip me back into ‘lead mode’. I know that now is my moment. 

I can’t believe my own ears as I hear myself say the words. “I’m going for it.” But as soon as the words leave my mouth, I suddenly feel that there is no turning back. A fresh wave of doom seems to drop from the impossible-looking wall and washes all over me. I still can’t comprehend the whole line. I only see snippets of the many tenuous sequences flash across my mind, all out of order and all fantastically complex. I can’t do this. I kid myself that I can just try and lead to the hook, somehow giving myself a challenge that I can comprehend. But I know full well that if I get that high, I will be too scared and committed to lower off it. I set off.  

I float up the easy pinnacles at the bottom of the route and before I know it, I’m balanced right at the top of them. The first move is a huge and wide step off of the pinnacle, implausibly far. I stretch my foot out in a high yoga move to the left and stand in the disjointed position it demands. I am motionless before the great wave of this buttress. If I pull into this move, grasping the tips of my fingers across the sharp flakes of rock by my face, I will have begun. This is the moment of commitment where I have to decide. Once the dance routine begins, I will be locked into the inescapable tempo of performance: no half measures. My bare back can already feel the sun’s heat and with my feet pressed hard into the toes of my shoes, I am ready, as soon as the brain decides, to catapult my body into the gauntlet. And in that moment, I commit.