Relax in Bruixes

Breathing fresh air and pulling on large holds on a crag away from home for a change - Bruixes, a little gem in the vicinity of Lleida, perfect for endurance-improving, tufa-pulling, yellow-colored start of spring.  Bruixes actually means witches in Catalan, this is supposedly a bewitched spot, and for me it symbolizes all the overhanging tufa climbing that I once ago discovered in Kalymnos, and so far have been totally unable to master.  

Following my strategy of antagonist forces, I flailed over all the untried 7bs of the area, trying not to get injured as I did a month before in a similar situation of recovery from training in Siurana.  Tufas were nicer to me, only trashed skin and tired muscles resulted from the trip this time.  It was also the week-end of too much food, over-eating dinner, breakfast, and dinner again at the Hotel du Lac, nothing like the local "cerranito" sandwich to get all the energy back in a mouthful.

Pau getting more than warmed up on Ansia, a polished 7a+

And Pau again, battering power-endurance on Orient, a classic tufa 7c+

{ rant }
Oh, one day, one day, I will come back and send those overhanging projects.  One day, I will not be tired, I will do Energia, try Primera Linea, cruise Occident, and maybe, oh, maybe, even have the power-endurance to go floating over the moves of Orient.  So far, those dreams remain dreams, and the hard reality made up of few pull-ups, insufficient core (body tension), limited endurance, and generally low power combine to make it another dream crag for the un-foreseeable future I still dare to dream of. Maybe a long stay at Rodellar during the upcoming season will help, maybe my training efforts will one day convert me into an overhang-climbing machine, maybe one day... I will give up on dreaming and start climbing long routes and serious mountains again instead of obsessing about 30 meters of juggy limestone.
{ end of rant }

A little of everything (una mica de tot)

A friend on the rocks

Strange ironic winter this is...Just when the cold finally arrived for a couple of weeks, bringing the un-hoped-for good friction to the project, i hurt my shoulder.  Just when i recover from the shoulder and get psyched for the project again, my skin gives way to bloody meat.  Unhelpful body, temperatures, and humidity going over the roof force me to digest the patience and humility pill, while contemplating (defeat) the possibility of climbing the project next year.  Oh well, maybe March will be colder, and maybe i will miraculously get stronger, or maybe like all the other mortals i will have to call it quits this time and look for another project for the spring time.  Not that there are few options.

*********************

In the meantime, between injuries and skin destruction, my journey of self-discovery continues, between empty spaces and full-blown inspiration, sunshine and icicles of short days and unending nights.  On the good side, i have started to enjoy running much more, as a relaxant rather than an obligation.  Having finally bought a map of my mountain, i have been exploring new places close to home.

Mysteries of the Collbato caves

Despite most of the time spent concentrated on the project (and my thesis), I managed to get on a couple of good lines outside it, such as the awesome Panxa del Bou in Desdentegada - a very highly recommended 7b+, one of the few overhanging lines in Montserrat.  The first part is very Margalef-like, and the surprise comes at the top, where a couple of heel hooks save the day when arriving at the anchor.  Or the classic Ultravox, another 7b+ in Vermell, much more of a pure Montserrat style.  This route used to be an eliminator project when a climbing competition was held once upon a time in Vermell.  Hard bouldery start leads to more relaxed, looong slab climbing past a roof, to the far-away anchor.  I am still not sure why the route has been prolonged all that way up, one has the time to count all the sheep and think about the history of the universe before reaching the top of this one - although the pure difficulty is concentrated at the bottom three bolts.  Finally, during a couple of cold days in Siurana, i sampled awesome 7as in el Pati and Coral Nou, and also tried the moves on yet another 7b+, Prado del Rei, that was less inspiring than i thought, with a boulder move at the bottom, and a crimpy escape 2/3s up.

Working Panxa del Bou, Desdentegada

Joan Maria on Prado del Rei, el Pati

Let's hope spring will be more relenting in terms of reaching the chains and finding new energy and inspiration for finishing old projects and starting new ones.  Let the game continue. In the meantime, thanks for belaying, sharing, and dealing with my good and bad humor days to Pedro, Andreu, Javi, Juan, Laia, Joan Maria, Robert, Albert, Patricia, Pau, and all other (virtual) friends.

 A random view on the run around my  mountain

Books of the year - 2011

These are the books I have enjoyed very much during last year (and probably most of the few books I got a chance to read, given the strong paper-focus of my current career), worth remembering and giving a 2nd and a 3d thought...:

- Rorty, "Contingency, irony, and solidarity" (1)
- Douglas, "How institutions think"
- Kunda, "Engineering culture" (2)
- Glaser and Strauss, "The discovery of grounded theory"
- Kidder, "The soul of a machine"
- Rumelt, "Good strategy, bad strategy"

A very diverse bunch again, from philosophy, to anthropology, to ethnography, to strategy, but then again there is also a common thread to them as well.  Interesting to see the progress from 2009, 2010, and another 2010 as well (at least for me) - one of the big ones is the total lack of fiction, for good or bad that is.  As Mary Hatch says, academic writing strips us from any kind of creativity...Let's see what the future holds :)

and some of the more memorable quotes:

"To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations" (1, p. 5)

"The process of coming to know oneself, confronting one's contingency, tracking one's causes home, is identical with the process of inventing a new language - that is, of thinking up some new metaphors (1, p. 27)

"The ironist spends her time worrying about the possibility that she has been initiated into the wrong tribe, taught to play the wrong language game.  She worries that the process of socialization which turned her into a human being by giving her a language may have given her the wrong language, and so turned her into the wrong kind of human being" (1, p. 75)

The “organizational man, Whyte (1956) says, “must fight the Organization…for the demands for his surrender are constant and powerful, and the more he has come to like the life of the organization the more difficult does he find it to resist these demands or even recognize them” (2, p. 227)

A climb for a dream

When there is nothing to report on the personal climbing front except for injuries, recovery, and finally coming back to try the project all over again, there are always other people climbing and inspiring enough.  Thank you for being there and reminding us mortals to dream all over again.

Here is the Australian Monique Forestier, as shot by her as gifted husband-photographer trying his hand at the video production, Simon Carter:

A run through snowy Montserrat

Running, breathing, the soul of the mountain giving me strength, life inside it being so full, so strong, keeping me amazed, curious, always inspired.  Pulling the head up, out of the broken body, only up and away, counting the spires, breathing in the cold.  Breathing out.  The snow has come.

Only once every year, in a rare moment of weather indecency, it snows.  It is New Year, Christmas, and all other holidays at once.  It is snowing in Montserrat!

The blue is incredible, it eats up everything else, it destroys the little remains there are of the fluffy, white stuff.  Even the moon is curious, it also wants to check out this incredible feat, to participate in the party, to welcome the sister-white inspiration, the sugar-stardust covering the nude Goddess in a newly-embroidered wedding dress.

The needles-maids are all dressed up, every one of them with a proud white gorro, its own adornment, its own symbol worn for the dinner-party to be had at night, with Mr. Moon as the head guest.

Montserrat in snow, insanely beautiful, still green and welcoming.  Still ready to open its door and share everything it has, leave one wonder its trails in peace, look up its needles in solemn awe, dream up a little dream or suffer in silence, letting a sigh blow with the wind.  The scenery as the background, a still picture for a life passing by.  Stand by and look.  Sit down and paint.  Run away and take a picture, lasting figment of imagination, disappearing memory of a snow that will come back, year after year, century after century.  When we will be, when we will not.  The mountain looks and sees, a runner, a pink jacket, reflected in its mirror of infinity, as nude and cold as the rock, bleeding water over and over, sending a river, a tickle, a stream, all the way to the sea.  Al mar.

Time to forget, time to remember, time to smile, time to take a dive, down into the intestines, inside the mountain.  Infinite time of simultaneous forgetting, instant remembering, circles and ellipses in the air, the total lightness of being.

Curves, lines, diagonals, up, down, and over.  Vertical mountains, horizontal clouds, only shady people that come and disappear.  That domesticate, that leave, that dissolve in the cold air, or are erased, deleted, with one click of a mouse, with one word, with one email.

A chance encounter.  The surreal encounter.  Like home, like back in Ukraine.  Are you from TV3? No, I'm from the internet.  Don't worry, you will be famous anyway! Let's go, continue the ride.  The red wheel of fortune will turn and the white-faced horse disappears on the white-peppered road to infinity.

And the road remains, calling forward, looking backwards.  Frozen, immobile.  Full of sunshine, full of cold. Alice, where should we go from here?

I Am Vertical
by Sylvia Plath

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.


Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Dancer in the dark

Fanatics in Montserrat

Fanaticism does not die at Montserrat during winter days - while waiting for the new guide for Montserrat Sur from Luichy, who himself is lurking around the conglomerate needles these days, the team is trying Lourdes, 8b,  - and I take pictures:

 Pedro en Lourdes

 Pedro en Lourdes 2

Uri en Lourdes

 Uri en Lourdes 2

and finally myself, lost in the ocean of Sprint, picture by Pedro...

Escalade au feminin

During these cold winter times, when the new Ondra movie is just out, it has been interesting for me to watch the old feature on Isabelle Patissier, a French climber, one of the first women to climb 8a, and then 8b, who became famous during her competition in WorldCups, especially when being a rival of the not less famous Lynn Hill.

Interesting old times, when French brought climbing and aesthetics as close together as they would ever come to date, reminding one of Patrick Edlinger and pink lycra, but - au feminin.  Without further due, here is Isabelle, a little surreal, climbing bambou...and other media:



Not bad for a movie already 20 years old...More update on Isabelle's life for Spanish readers here and French ones here...

Climbing for life...

Another Catalan artist, Marc Parrot, that reminds me of Da Silva with his appearance if not his optimism...

How to look for a yeti

To Jacques Prevert

First find a mountain, so beautiful, so steep, so incredibly cold and full of morning sun, reflected by the glaze of the crust on the top of the serracs. Then choose the highest point you can see, as high as you can aim at, as rocky and inaccessible as any point on earth. Look at it for a long long while, until it becomes amorphous, deformed, jagged and unreal. Only then show it with a pointed finger to a friend. There, on the top, in an invisible cave, a yeti lies. Curled into a fetal position, his beard running all the way to the glassy door, dreaming one black and infinite dream. Only then can you imagine the yeti, can you help him in your mind to fight the loneliness, the sheer cold and emptiness of that cave, abandoned by the generations of cosmonauts and time travelers, forgotten by journalists and sleepy poets, forsaken by scared parents, and only glimpsed by a few unsocialized children. Only then can you start to draft a plan for a heavy weight expedition that will go and rescue the dreaming yeti, that will wake him up from his sweet slumber, that will remind him of his loneliness, of the infinite sadness of being, the infinite joy of dreaming. He will hate you forever, for the centuries to come, and the decades to go. And then he will turn his head and go back to sleep and dream of a real expedition coming to his rescue. Only then will you finally become a figment of his imagination, and happily dissolve in the morning sunshine of another day on the infinite blue mountain.

Photo shoot: Pedro on Lourdes

Today was another inspirational day at Montserrat, spent figuring out more details on the project (Sprint Final), and shooting pictures of Pedro, oh so close to sending Lourdes, a mythical 50-meter monster 8b on Agulla Fina...Just a little bit more effort for Pedro, and maybe it will go on Thursday.  To figure out where Pedro is, look for the shadow on the left wall, then look for the climber :)

 Pedro starting the long journey up...

 Almost there...

And done!...

By the way, anyone knows what route goes in the center of the Agulla - there are two long fixed draws, down low, and just below the prominent hole in the middle of the sunny face (Poco Loco is NOT it, as it is just to the right of Lourdes, and there are no fixed slings (or many bolts for that matter) on that one...)???

Climbing for the New Year

Jenny enjoying a rest with incredible clouds all around the Raco 

Mystic place, a bluish symphony sculpted in air and stone, to be enjoyed alone or in good company, once a year, or without moderation.  Catalunya boasts many incredible places, more or less known,  more or less visited by the hoards of freedom-seeking, nature-inspired, seldom-washed, and hairy warriors of the rock.  It is still as incredible to be part of one of these places, to enjoy the solitude, to listen to the howling wind, to be burnt by the unrelenting sun, to savor the mad exposure, and to abandon the body to the pleasure of the movement on infinite lines of conglomerate towers, as the first time ever on the rocks.

The first time I heard this same call of the wild was around 2003, during that unforgettable hike in Zion, getting soaking wet on the descent of the Angels' Landing hike, and spotting a couple of aid climbers on the opposite wall.  Hanging in the air, moving all their belongings along, like snails, but on a vertical terrain.  Lizards of the infinite, escaping it all, them and the effort, them and the nature.  Eye-opening experience for me, making me realize that yes, other things were possible, anything was doable for the life, opened like a wide door at the time, inviting exploration and curiosity.  Some water has flown past since the day, maybe a lot, maybe not that much.

I was already here once, in this other sacred place, in 2010, what feels like infinitely long time ago, with Sergi, Monste, Pau, and company. Sergi snapped a picture of me, toproping what then seemed impossibly difficult 7b+, appropriately called Llarg.  I kept this secret spot of Montsant in a corner of my memory, based on the image of a sea of rock, bathed by the evening sun.  More water had to pass by, but here I was, two years later again, back to the place, with a very different company, but with as much motivation and inspiration.  Having learnt a thing or two about climbing, now I was leading instead of top roping.  Maybe not getting to the chains of them all, maybe still as scared in my intestines as ever.  Maybe just a little bit more free.  Definitely going up.

Myself leading Curt, 7b+, Raco de Missa, pictures by Jonas

May we all come back to old places, share warm memories, but also grow as climbers and humans in the new year, discovering more new places and creating new memories, following the sun along the sunflowers for centuries without end...Thanks for belays, pictures, and great company to share the climbing with to Uri, Jonas, Jenny, and Jaume.

My aging , more reflective self immortalized by Jonas...http://www.flickr.com/photos/wiklund/

Maybe not

There's a dream that I see, I pray it can be

Look cross the land, shake this land
A wish or a command
Dream that I see, don't kill it, it's free
You're just a man, you get what you can

We all do what we can
So we can do just one more thing
We can all be free
Maybe not in words
Maybe not with a look
But with your mind

Listen to me, don't walk that street
There's always an end to it
Come and be free, you know who I am
We're just living people

We won't have a thing
So we got nothing to lose
We can all be free
Maybe not with words
Maybe not with a look
But with your mind

You've got to choose a wish or command
At the turn of the tide, is withering thee
Remember one thing, the dream you can see
Pray to be, shake this land

We all do what we can
So we can do just one more thing
We won't have a thing
So we've got nothing to lose
We can all be free
Maybe not with words
Maybe not with a look
But with your mind

But with your mind