I have often heard people discussing boulder problems or the crux of a climb and calling the moves "powerful". What an image: bulging forearms and rock hard calves, rippling with tension. Wow. That's powerful.

Now consider this: Pasty-Thin-Solo-White-Boy pulls the final easy mantel to finish The Grand Wall. This last move probably "goes" at 5.8 or something similar, but in a momentary lapse he loses it and slips. Better yet, consider Balance-Challenged-Hiker-Boy, who lives true to his name at the South Summit. His last move is probably only 3rd class. Now we will see the true meaning of powerful.

Pasty and Balance-Boy (both unroped, of course) go screaming down the 2,000 ft face. Using a little bit of Newtonian mechanics, and avoiding realities like drag coefficients, we can figure that both will hit the ground at about 390 km/h. Pasty boy, with his 5.8 move and 110 pound frame will generate 1.2 million Watts in a quarter second impact; about enough power to equal the single-second vaporization of 1287 Power Bars (or, if you prefer, 1143 Clif Bars). Pretty good, considering he likely only consumed 2 or 3 on the way up.

Balance-Boy, on the other hand, with a paltry 3rd class move and 200 pounds to his name will generate 2.1 million Watts; equivalent to the energy derived from over 238 packages of instantly incinerated Country Cottage bacon. Not bad, considering he probably only consumed 2 or 3 on his way up.

We can see then that there is an inverse relationship between power and difficulty, although, strangely, the "hardest" climbers are the ones who use the term "powerful" most often. Perhaps it is nothing more than a poor understanding of the English language.

I once saw a hardman take his girlfriend climbing. I didn't know either of the them, but it was clear he was teaching her. For starters, he raced past me on the path to the base of the climb, beating me by nanoseconds only to stand possessively at the bottom and wait for his partner. A lesson in ethics, I suppose. If she wasn't learning, I sure as hell was. My partner, I will call him Tom (because that's his name), and I waited, racked and ready, while the hardman instructed her into the harness and then impressed on her all the inherent danger of him "taking the sharp end" (I leave the innuendoes to the reader). It was a very stirring account, and I feared for his life. She looked impressed too, and surely would have slept with him on that basis alone. When this hardman took to the climb however, the story seemed to change.

His shiny Hardman veneer was visibly shaken by the time he reached the second bolt, and he began to mutter about how tough the moves were. Was this all a part of his show?

By the third bolt I was sure it was no longer a show. He was bitching, whimpering, and nervously glancing down. After deliberating and shaking for too long, she dared to ask if he was OK. Visibly flustered, he pulled on a quickdraw to pendulum past the side step crux. Unfortunately, his partner was too close to the rock to witness this spineless act of cowardice, but feeling our eyes upon him, he mumbled a disclaimer about his using a little "French Free". When our Hardman finally groveled to the top, twenty-five minutes later (helping himself to a little more French Free along the way) he seemed a little disappointed with the impression he had made.

We watched painfully as he jerkily belayed, sulking and complaining as she struggled up a climb that her very own hardman couldn't do. After a half hour of failing on the crucial side-step move, she accepted defeat with some not-so-subtle prompting from above; once on the ground again, it was clear she was exasperated. While grumpy-boy set up a rappel above, we could hear him bitching about his sore hips, and how sweaty he was. While waiting, I casually asked the girl if she had ever heard of the term "French Free" before. She hadn't. Perhaps she should ask her Hardman some time.

No, no, not now. Later would be better.

He was a hardman, I'm more of a thinman. He would kick my ass.