Ok, maybe the title is a little over the top but I'm going to go on a long tirade right now (less than a rant but not a question either).

I think pulling plastic is bar none, the HARDEST discipline to master in rock climbing. I give major props to those so called "gym rats" those little bastards are some of the fittest climbers on earth.

I'm quite serious (all my trolls have homosexual inuendos). I climb about 4-5 days a week weather permitting. This ranges from big multipitch routes, to fixing an entire sport crag and assaulting it with my mini-trax, to 9 pitch days in Indian Creek, to crack bouldering, campus training, slab climbing, ice, mixed, and even sport. Name the style and I'm pretty well versed.

By a long shot I'm not the best climber out there but I can hold my own. Except at the gym. I am usually too tired to pull hard after 2 routes. My personal best is three at my limit. On my absolute best days I have climbed about 2 letter grades below my best sends outside, and that is a very rare day. It takes about 1 hour to completely drain me and I will fall on routes with ratings I wouldn't think twice about free-soloing.

The holds stick out, they're marked, but god-damn gym climbing is hard.

I declare, at the onset of this post, that gym climbing is the most advanced form of climbing. I'm not talking about coolest location, beautiful routes, moves, or a drum circle at the camp fire. I'm talking about the most in-your-face fully hard place you can climb.

The motherfucking gym. Plastic has my utmost respect.