Ingalls Bail Reflection - 6/15/25
On Sunday June 15th 2025 Margot and I set out to climb the South Ridge of Ingalls. It’s a 5.4 trad route of about 4 pitches. I had followed Fede up the route in 2022, also with Margot.
In the past three months leading up to Ingalls day I had climbed indoors once and outdoors once. A strained right bicep and a shift in focus to some more general strength and fitness turned me away from climbing for a bit. I wanted to test my climbing confidence on an alpine route where the climbing was easy and I wouldn’t have to pull hard.
As I got off the ground leading the first pitch I immediately knew I wasn’t comfortable. I placed a cam and climbed towards the low angle crack I was supposed to be in. I placed another cam in the crack and looked up. It’s tough to describe the feeling I had in the moment. It’s happened a few other times on routes in Squamish. I lose all confidence in my ability to go up. It’s not great. My lead head melts away entirely and typically if I have an easy way to bail in those moments, I take it. I punched the rock a couple times, looked up once more, told Margot I didn’t want to climb it, and lowered back to the base on the route. Margot lead the pitch to clean the gear and rappelled down and we hiked out.
I was very bummed the rest of the day and still am. Definitely felt like a failure.
Yesterday on Tuesday evening I went to a talk with legendary climber Wayne Wallace. At one point he said something along the lines of, it’s irresponsible to be out there if you’re not excited to be out there. On that Sunday I was definitely not exited to be out there. Part of me is still glad I made the slog out to Ingalls to find out, but I also know I made the right choice to turn around. And turning around earlier would have been fine too, but I was a bit too stubborn to do that.
Anyway, I’m hoping to find that stoke again because I think I like climbing. And I’ve had that stoke to get off the ground before. But I have to actually do it in order to like it, it doesn’t come naturally for me. Maybe go to Exit 38 a few times and build up.
