The Ongoing Story of Shorty, the Pimp

Shorty's been on my mind for a while now. I climbed it a few times, got close, then the weather got hot. Shorty's short, and the grade, .13a, tells you it's hard for a guy like me. I typically play around on .12s and used to think .13a was something just really, really strong climbers climbed.

Anyway, I walked past this climb for years. It didn't even cross my mind to try it really. I'd worked Red Corvette, another .13a two climbs to the left several times, and I knew how hard that felt. My best try was almost one-hanging Corvette, and that description alone tells you how close I am. Not very. I therefore assumed it was ridiculous to even try Shorty. Logical, right?

The climbing to the start of the crux isn't terribly difficult - some .10 climbing with an interesting move to a decent rest, then some .11-ish climbing (but not alot) directly into the pod. It's enough to get you somewhat tired though, and then Shorty demonstrates why he's the Pimp.

Let's get to Shorty's crux. Begin at a large flake, a bit hard to rest here (I'm shaking out in the vid)... then a big move to a left-hand shallow crimp/gaston. Here, I bring my right foot behind the flake for a nice heel-hook/cam (that nice hook/cam is also why my knee has been tweaked for the last couple of months). I then bump my left hand up to a relatively bad 2-3 finger pocket. Strong climbers (see Christian, Siebert in the following movie and others) dispense with the early heel-hook and bump first. Bumping first is hard. As in, "I can't do it" hard.

After the bump, a heel-hook, whether already in or not, becomes indispensable. I bring my right hand up to the shallow crimp-ston and then it gets interesting. With your right foot locked in, you bring your left foot up into a toe-hook, release the right foot and bicycle the flake. Cool. Stab hard to the left to a good pocket, then bring your right foot in a bit closer so you can clip. Sharp observers will notice that taller climbers (e.g. Siebert, below) can use the pod to do a drop knee instead of doing a toe-hook. It's probably similarly tough either way.

At this point, my arms are a bit rubbery. Reach up to a right-hand bumpy mess, high right foot somewhere (I use the crimp-ston), bring your left hand up to a tough hold, then stab hard to a good ledge. I fell with my right hand on the ledge twice on red-point attempts. You can clip here, or do a couple more moves to a more obvious clipping jug to the right of the chains.

So, to recap: Fun .10 climbing with a V2 move, rest a little, .11 climbing to a V3? move, rest even less, then perhaps a V6? sequence. I don't know if that means .13a, but it's a memorable sequence and feels pretty hard.

Here's a short clip Rick Holloman took of me trying the crux (I'm falling before the clip--obviously):

Calvin on Shorty the Pimp from Rick Holloman on Vimeo.

Here's much better clip of Siebert on the send. Nicely edited: