Knowing When to Walk Away: The Art of Tactical Retreat

You’ve just had your best go on a hard boulder or project, and you know it’s possible to send any attempt. So you rest and have that next attempt, and something is off. The next go, another little mistake. The next go, a crucial foot slips and you fall. You keep hammering away at attempts, knowing it’s just within reach. Each go gets you more and more annoyed. Next thing you know, it’s dusk and you’re now throwing out a last ditch effort to do the boulder. You pull on, climb well, and get to the last move. You drop it, proceed to rage for the next 10 minutes, and leave the session with no skin, and no feeling of contentment from the day. You’re pissed off, and borderline upset that you could get so close and just not make it happen.  

Sometimes, that last go comes off, and you do the boulder, but more often than not, it's a losing battle and skin and energy diminish with each and every go, making it nigh on impossible to climb at your limit.  

So what’s the lesson here? Is there a time and a place to go all in on a boulder?

Or should we be trying to make the experience as enjoyable as possible, sometimes foregoing the urge to send the boulder? Let's break down knowing  when to walk away, and why it's such a big skill.  

Situational Approach 

The key with knowing when to walk away, is knowing whether the battle needs to be fought on the day you’re trying to fight it. So in two extreme examples:- 

Example 1, I am on the first day of a week-long climbing trip. Does it make  sense to thrash myself for 4 hours on a boulder, regardless of feeling close to doing it? I would argue, it makes no sense to thrash away and potentially irreparably damage skin and tire out muscles I’m planning to use for the next week of climbing. Is it worth it to send one boulder, only to climb with tape on for the next week? Sure, it depends on the boulder, but on most boulders, the answer for me is a no.  

In example 2, it’s the last day of your week-long climbing trip. You’re flying home tomorrow and having a last session on a project you’re desperate to do and won’t get to try again for a year. Now in most cases here, I’m emptying the tank to do it. However, it’s still worth considering whether it makes sense to push forward. Is there a potential for that boulder to injure me? If so, I’ll walk away. Is there a chance going all in and not doing the boulder will mentally spoil my currently successful trip? If so, then I have another good reason to walk away. If I can’t control myself to be content and not become greedy, I’ll stop climbing.  

Signs To Look For

So how do you know if it’s time to walk away? A first sign for me is when attempts suddenly start getting worse. You can convince yourself there are mistakes or bits of bad luck involved in falls, but many times these are disguised mistakes, which you really don’t make when you’re strong and mentally sharp. If you start feeling overly tired or are getting lower on the  boulder each attempt, it’s usually a sign to stop. As well as physical fatigue, mental fatigue is often a factor. If you find yourself just having send goes, not learning anything about them and just thinking about ’the send’ in between attempts, then it may be a good time to stop. The process should look pretty similar tactically and technically when going for sends as it does when working a boulder. You should still be refining and optimising that sequence. When you feel that crux hold is digging in a little too much and costing you skin, it’s often  time to stop. This is one of the biggest indicators to stop, and the one that is  most often ignored. At the first sign of a thin tip which threatens splitting, walk away. A thin tip heals 5x quicker than one you’ve opened up like a tin of baked beans.  

Why Walk Away? 

Why would I walk away from the boulder and not even give myself the chance to succeed, I hear you ask? We’ve already highlighted a few of the main reasons in terms of self preservation for the rest of a trip, or avoiding injury or a poor mentality shift. But also think about the opportunity you give yourself to have a more enjoyable, and better climbing experience on the boulder at a later date. Exercising that patience gives you a chance to succeed at a later date, and lines up a good experience for you in future. Walking away allows you a fresh perspective on the boulder, but also a better performance on other  boulders during the rest of a day or trip.  

Walking away from a boulder is one of the hardest things to practice in bouldering. It feels like quitting, and nobody likes to quit. But in reality, it’s one of the biggest skills, and practicing it offers a huge number of benefits, as well as avoiding a bunch of very frustrating problems! There are many ways to practice this skill, such as project cycling or mental framing, all things we’ll look into in more detail.  

But until then, play it smart.  

Eliot.