Routesetters across the world use the RIC scale when evaluating competition climbs. R=risk, I=intensity, C=complexity. Ideally, every round of competition tests the competitors equally across these three components. However, within one boulder or one section of a route, a setter might decide to make the moves extremely risky, intense, or complex.

Last summer I attended a championship routesetting clinic at Blochaven in South Carolina, led by Aaron Davis, a USA Climbing Level 4 Routesetter. While setting a boulder for the mock finals round, I was struggling with the opening sequence. It was a little bit balance-y, a little bit intricate, and culminated in a dynamic move with a tricky catch. Aaron walked over and asked me what move I wanted to get out of the sequence. I told him I wanted to prioritize the jump. We discussed ways to force the move: make the set up uncomfortable, make the catch hold further away, change the angle of the foot plant, etc. What it came down to, Aaron told me, was that I needed to “make the move more ‘the move.’”

Make the move more the move.

This, he said, was how I could up the intensity of the boulder. By leaning into the essence of the move. What did I want the climber to experience? How did I want them to feel? How did I want them to approach the wall? What did I want them to learn between attempts?

Over the remaining course of the clinic, I reminded myself over and over again to be confident in my setting and to make each move more that move. This framework fundamentally shifted the way I saw setting and climbing. What is being asked of me in this moment? What am I asking of the climber in this moment?

Ceuse has been called the epitome of sport climbing. It has also been called the best sport cliff in the world. What I think these superlatives are capturing is that the Ceuse experience is intense. It’s as if you took everything that is “sport climbing”, and, essentially, made it more sport climbing. The approach is a 2-mile uphill battle, the routes are run-out and scary, the sequences are precise and intricate, the routes are somehow both relentlessly pumpy and cruxy, and many of the pitches are 35+ meters long.

Whether or not Ceuse is the best sport climbing destination in the entire world, it is very likely the most sport climbing sport climbing destination in the entire world.

Every day we climb, I trudge the hourlong journey up the hill. I get scared on a route; my feet 5-10 feet past my previous bolt. I get lost in a sequence; the holds look the same or there are none at all. I get ridiculously pumped; my fingers frozen in place. I can’t even make it to the top of the wall. I can barely hear my belayer on the ground. I don’t trust my feet. I grab the quickdraw, for the fifth time that day. I look down, asking myself “what would happen if I took this whip?”

If Ceuse was designed by a routesetter, they certainly succeeded in making me feel every emotion of hard sport climbing. Always in the same day. Sometimes on the same route. Never without teaching me a lesson.