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Fifteen years ago, when I was a lean and hopeful youth, I set my first replica boulder. The problem was located on a 30-degree wooden wall in a dusty storage closet next to my high school’s locker room, and I projected it for weeks. I started matched on a vertically aligned sidepull edge and a small left foot. The first move was a left-hand deadpoint to a small down-pulling crimp. The second move was a low-foot dyno to a three-finger gaston with your right hand. After that, you thrutched across a right-leaning series of small edges (simulating a seam) and ended with a dyno to a jug.
Sound familiar?
That’s because my tweaky masterpiece was based on The Swarm, a classic V13/14 in Bishop that—as it happens—I still haven’t stood beneath in real life, much less sent. Fifteen years ago I desperately hoped that I’d someday be strong enough to do it, but my decision to set and siege its simulacrum was mostly just an expression of boredom, a way to keep things interesting during a long dark New Hampshire winter. I might have been coordinating my body towards a specific style of movement, but my replica couldn’t have helped me much on the real thing. It was, after all, no harder than V7.
But after I sent The Swarmish, as I called it, I went on to set other hardman replicas, first on that wooden high school wall and later as a setter in college, re-creating classics like Ode to the Modern Man, Jade, New Baseline, and Off the Wagon—none of which I had any realistic expectation of ever doing.
Why am I talking about this? Because now that you know this about me—that I like doing easy replicas of hard boulders—you’re better equipped to imagine just how UNREASONABLY DELIGHTED I was when I learned that Aidan Roberts (certified bone-crusher) has teamed up with Core Climbing (suddenly my favorite UK-based hold manufacturer) to build and sell highly accurate 3D-scanned replicas of the holds on Burden of Dreams (if you’ve read this far but don’t know what BoD is… lord help you).
This is not an ad. I promise. This is just me being psyched about the fact that you, me, and anyone else who’s willing to shell out $530 for the set can now test ourselves on a plastic version of history—or at least fondle its holds.
“But wait!” I can almost hear you thinking. “If Bosi said the replica was even harder than the original, how the heck can I be expected to hold on to those crozzly grips?”
One option would be to take a creative cue from Will Bosi and rig a hangboard-style pulley system to take weight off. But even though I’ll probably give it a try, just for kicks, that’s not really a practical solution if you want to do more than one move at a time.
A better option would be to set the problem on a less steep or adjustable wall. When Emil Abrahamsson and Josh Hadley set a vertical version of Burden of Dreams at the Lattice Training Center in Chesterfield, England, they found that it was only about V2. So I’d guess that if the problem was set on a 10-degree wall, it would be in the V6-7 range. On a 20-degree: V10. On a 30-degree: V13. And on a 40-45… well, then you’re training for the real thing.
The Burden of Dreams holds manufactured by Core Climbing are not pure mimics of the first-generation mimics used by Bosi at Lattice and Roberts on his home wall. Instead Roberts says that he and the Core Climbing team have played around with the texture a bit, making the holds stronger (i.e. longer-lasting) and “more comfortable.” Hopefully “more comfortable,” in this context, means a bit less slippery, since even Bosi, a lover of polished limestone, complained about the textureless finishing “jug” on the Lattice replica. But since Core hasn’t yet responded to my questions about this, we might just have to wait and see.
The no-good-very-bad news?
Core Climbing—as I learned while trying to place my order—does not currently seem to ship holds across the Atlantic. My solution to this, I think, is going to be to ask my wife to ask her ex-boyfriend, Felix, with whom she hasn’t spoken in a decade, if I can order them to his London flat and then Venmo him a small fortune so he can one-day-airmail the holds across the Atlantic. In the meantime, I’ll be frantically tearing the ceiling off my garage so I can build a tall enough home wall. I think I’ll play it safe and go for two degrees overhanging. I’ll post uncut footy of my send.
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