Color Blind

Last weekend I was wrecked from climbing every day in the great weather and my old body finally forced a rest day. I heard word that Paul was going to give a go at Color Blind so I hiked out to Endless with the camera, poked my head over the edge, and saw him racking up. I barely had time to drop a rope, slide down it into position and hit record as he started up. As usual, I fumbled with the focus, ISO, and everything else, and by the time I got settled, he was getting into the meat of the route.

Color Blind was a route I put up last October and when I did it, I was in a good headspace and felt quite solid. Jonathan Siegrist punched up it right after me and, after the whole experience of everything that went into it, the closure of it felt really clean. I wrote more about it here.

I have to admit, I was not in that same headspace watching Paul send it! I know it looks like he hikes it in the video but the climbing is hard and the gear is good but still questionable since it's all slider-nuts. When Paul botched the first placement TWICE, I started to shake a little bit. I was way more nervous than him. Leading out into hard climbing over nothing but sliders is way more intimidating than he makes it look. It took some stabilization editing to get the shakes out of the footage. But like I said, he was way less nervous than me.

After he sent, we shot 5 minutes of interview and I threw this video together that evening. I suck at filming and editing in general but I'm happy to have some footage of this route and I like the way it turned out. It's pretty raw footage, just one take of the actual send, and it actually shows all of the route. I also like how it accurately depicts Paul just fully going for it over gear that might have some people a little nervous. This was a great send to witness.

Click it.