Thanks to all who have participated in my endless walks up and down to Senglar during the last three months, belayed, cheered, found a word of encouragement, or a friendly tap on the shoulder that kept me going. Oriol, Mark, Ville, Philip, Bernat, Ernest, Pau, Marieta, JuanAn, Carlos, Juanjo, Ruget, Esther - to all of you and others I forget - thank you.
One of the main walls in Sta Anna, sector Exploradors on the far right.
After Santa Linya - another Santa, Santa Anna this time. A new sector is always very interesting to visit, especially in good company. Although already rather hot, Santa Anna proved to be a good choice - a couple of warm-ups on the left, (especially Classic Climbing, 6b+ and el Rei del tonga, 6c+), very good 7as (especially Laia, Scotty, and a bit harder Trinity), and incredible 7c+/8a Esfinx, with a crux move of one-finger undercling to big jug. 7bs were strange though - both Livingstone and Fills de Buda resisted the efforts of many, and made some unhappy on our team. Updated topo here and in Lleida guidebook.
Ville and Victor discussing the 7c, Magnifica in welcome shade...
Overall, a great week-end where all four of us redpointed the first pitch of Esfinx (flash for Marc, first 7c for Ville), and Ville and Victor finished the w-end also sending the Magnifica, another 7c that looked pretty good through the camera lens...:
Ville sending his second 7c of the week-end and of his life, Magnifica, way to go!!
Mark enjoying the evening sun on the same, Magnifica, 7c
Overall, a good relaxation for my body and mind before attacking again the project of this year, that has to be spelled in capital letters from now on, if ever to be done. But whatever it takes - I am not giving up, i wish i were stronger - i wish i were different, but let's just keep at this one...
A little strange, surreal w/end full of rain, caves, mud, flowers, and spring sun. Despite torrential rains, we were able to find a safe harbor on Saturday inside the Santa Linya cave - an impressive formation reminding one of Grande Grota in Kalymnos or Surgencias sector in Rodellar.
Mark belaying infatiguable Ville on his (9th?) try of the day
The climbing itself is very powerful, bouldery, and basically hard. Not my style at all, and bearing all the training in mind, I kept happily to the camera and took pictures rather than trash myself on the routes. This place is definitely for another generation, but worth at least one visit for curiosity's sake.
The incredible cave of Santa Linya
Second day finally brought the sunshine back to the thirsty, and we enjoyed it fully at Futbolin, more likeable sector with humane routes, orange coloring, and much less steepness. Mark impressed us all almost flashing Opium, 7c, and I followed by redpointing, feeling strong and weightless on the slab despite days of intense training.
Myself on crux of Opium, picture by Philip
Thanks to Albert Cortes for equipping the route we all enjoyed, and many more in the area :)
"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world." - Desiderata, by Max Ehermann
I have been preparing to teach a case on Patagonia company recently, for once intersecting my professional and climbing life. Yvon Chouinard has founded Patagonia in the 60ies, as a result of his experimentation with climbing equipment and blacksmithry. From company history website:
"Chouinard, after meeting John Salathé, a Swiss climber and Swedenborgian mystic who had once made hard-iron pitons out of Model A axles, decided to make his own reusable hardware. In 1957, he went to a junkyard and bought a used coal-fired forge, a 138-pound anvil, some tongs and hammers, and started teaching himself how to blacksmith. Chouinard made his first pitons from an old harvester blade and tried them out with T.M. Herbert on early ascents of the Lost Arrow Chimney and the North Face of Sentinel Rock in Yosemite. The word spread and soon friends had to have Chouinard's chrome-molybdenum steel pitons. Before he knew it he was in business. He could forge two of his in an hour, and sold them for $1.50 each.
...
By 1970, Chouinard Equipment had become the largest supplier of climbing hardware in the U.S. It had also become an environmental villain because its gear was damaging the rock. Climbing had become more popular, but remained concentrated on the same well-tried routes in areas like El Dorado Canyon, the Shawangunks, and Yosemite Valley. The same fragile cracks had to endure repeated hammering of pitons, during both placement and removal and the disfiguring was severe. After an ascent of the degraded Nose route on El Capitan, which had been pristine a few summers earlier, Chouinard and Frost decided to phase out of the piton business. This was to be the first big environmental step we would take over the years. It was a huge business risk – pitons were then still the mainstay of the business – but it had to be done. "
"I've been a businessman for almost fifty years. It's as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer. I've never respected the profession. It's business that hast to take the majority of the blame for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the ppor and giving to the rich, and for poisoning the Earth with the effluent from its factories. Yet business can also produce food, cure diseases, control population, employ people, and generally enrich our lives. And it can do those things and make a profit without losing its soul." Yvon on business...
What if business was also about ... letting the people go surfing? Maybe productivity achieved would be lower, maybe more people would be able to find their passion in life - in surfing or otherwise. Or maybe this is all a utopia, and Patagonia is happily screwing its customers by making them pay important premiums on Patagonia products to cover Chouinard and his team's "surfing" times and environmental dreams...?
True or not, the rhetoric has it that North Africa is rising above the water lately, is there hope amidst of centuries of humiliation? As for me, I have been impressed by Hindi Zahra's music lately - reminding of Jewel, Lhasa, of Norah Jones, - but with a spark of her own. Awesome, sensitive, simple. I like...!!
Redpointing Vox Populi, 7b, Vermell, photo by Martin
Montserrat in spring is amazing. Maybe I am too emotional and naively romantic, but it is incredible - these last days I have been coming back often and each time enjoying it more, in detail, in bloom. Seeing the tail of a goat this day, breathing in the Mediterranean smell of plants the other, touching the smooth rock and following the flight of a huge and hairy bumble bee the third. It is my type of climbing, it is my type of place. No, I don't feel like going to other places, why bother with crowded and over-trashed Margalef, popular and too-orange-for-its-own-good Siurana, or the tufa-enchanted Montgrony - when Montserrat has it all, 15 minutes drive away. I do not want to escape anymore, I want to stay. I have done my part of escaping the last twelve years of my life - and somehow the spirit has left me, the move is no more. I do not need to go far to be free anymore. I want to stay and come back, live into the habit, enjoy the feeling of touching the same rock again and again, of walking the same rocky road, uphill first, and then downhill. Of seeing the seasons change, and trees wake up from a sleep in bloom, and olives getting fat and plumply in Catalan sun.
Walking towards Vermell, picture by Martin
Then there are the people - and climbing is so much about the people as it is about the nature. Montserrat is a royal place, a wonderful island in the sea of our civilization, an igloo in the middle of polar circle. But it still would be nothing without people. Climbing is a fulfilling sport in this sense - it is so incredibly good to share it with outstanding surroundings, but especially with others that enjoy it, that are obsessed with it, whom you can stop in the middle of a walk up or downhill, and tell them "oh, look, how gorgeous", "how incredibly beautiful is the view", "what a scenery". Or simply smile and receive a smile in return, filled with the atmosphere, with the fresh air, flowers more abundant with each visit. The pink of almonds below, the blues of rosemary higher up, and other small beauties I don't even know how to name that pop out here and there, just when you think you've seen it all. It is fulfilling, it is like a prayer to me - a day out, in the sun, feeling every cell of my body vibrate to the music, to the tune of the place.
Redpointing Vox Populi, 7b, Vermell, photo by Martin
And then there is my project - feeling my body adapt to the rock, take its shape, my fingers identifying with the crimps, my tendons becoming one with the holes, my fear ebbing away. It is again and again such a surprise, such an incredible surprise to see oneself progress on a route that seemed unbelievably difficult just a couple of weeks, even days before. Doing another move, flying off despite the instinct to hold on, listening to myself making little Sharma-cries, pushing on. From having only 1 good try a day to having 2 good tries, from suffering like crazy and having 50% chance of getting the start right to figuring it out, to breathing through the moves. From not being able to relax, to getting to the first rest in a respectable shape. To rest 2 minutes at the tufa, to rest another minute 4 moves above, to rest 1 minute before the move. To doing 1 move more. To doing 3 moves more. Only 2 moves more to go - and I might be able to clip the next draw. And then - the rock is my limit. The route is the masterpiece.
And it is same old Senglar again, again and again. I feel like home - like I have been climbing here forever and will climb more. There to the left is Ernest and Carlos trying Trenquem el Bloqueig, Pedro joining the bottom of Viatgi, the top and traverse to the right of Discordia and the ultra-hard exit to the right of Viatgi (8a+?), there is to the right Manolo and JuanAn working on Sprint Final, there is Ester, Fredrik, myself trying Ben Petat, and all the others, Bernat, Marieta, Oriol redpointing the route and showing me how it is done. There is Martin on Vox, Ville trying out Rush, there is Philip flying up my project. And there are those that came before, and that will come after.
A move before falling off Sincronisity, 7a at the Totxos, picture by Victor
And then there are other places in Montserrat, so many remaining, and calling to be explored. Such names as Xulum, Spok, or Unicorni keep me dreaming just a little more, just a little further into the wild. To see how much one can train one's body, how much one can train one's mind. How much is possible - and what is the limit. This year I managed to climb my 6b project at Sant Benet - maybe one day I will do a harder route - but oh, how good the climbing is there.
Why travel? Maybe I have arrived...maybe I just travel light lately...
Given that my last post about the books of the year was pretty meager, i decided to update my reading list (note to self). Thus, my favorite books from 2010 were:
- Steinbeck, "The log from the "Sea of Cortez" (1)
- Weick, "Social Psychology of Organizing" (2)
- Hofstadter, "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" (3)
- Polanyi, "The great transformation"
- Kornberger "Brand society"
A very diverse bunch, but all very interesting indeed - from anthills to Mexican sierra, from English peasants to imagining organizations and brands as an interface between production and consumption. One has to read them to give them justice - but some good quotations go like this:
"This is not mysticism, but identification; man, building this greatest and most personal of all tools, has in turn received a boat-shaped mind, and the boat, a man-shaped soul. His spirit and the tendrils of his feeling are so deep in a boat that the identification is complete. It is very easy to see why the Viking wished his body to sail away in an unmanned ship, for neither could exist without the other. (1, p. 14)"
"No one is ever free to do something he can’t think of. (2, p.193)"
"The resolution [of Epimenides paradox] involves abandoning the notion that a brain could ever provide a fully accurate representation for the notion of truth. The novelty of this resolution lies in its suggestion that a total modeling of truth is impossible for quite physical reasons: namely, such a modeling would require physically incompatible events to occur in a brain. (3, p. 585)"
Dancing up the rock, so light, so weightless, so incredibly good...
Those sweet and sour project times...
- still there, still falling off the move, but getting stronger. Above, one move before falling off... I have faith, it will come. But for the moment - back to the training board. Pictures by Marieta - thanks, boua, girl power :)!!!
These strange times, between eying a line for the first time, figuring out you like it, figuring out it is challenging enough - just enough to keep your interest - to saying oh, it's sooo good, to coming back, trying the moves, again and again. And the positive feelings of the first serious attempts - starting to believe in the possibility of a send. Overcoming the fear, from doing the separate moves, to leading up. From leading to clipping all draws instead of grabbing them, from clipping to doing a couple of draws at a time, up. Forcing yourself - cold days, tired days, standing below with no energy left - and coming down full of excitement. To serious tries, where you surprise yourself, you get over another move, and another move. You set goals, and get there - maybe not today, but tomorrow. Another miraculous foot appears, another climber sends the route. You watch, you think, you analyze, you try to optimize. When your brain says "I can't", but at the same time your will power pushes you on. Project times.
Then the slope gets steeper - excitement is replaced by days of no progress, of cold, of "why am I here", "i can't", of grabbing the draw, of self-humiliation in your head, of fear. Black humor days, watching people send, always feeling inferior, not having boulder power, lacking resistance, pumping up, the miraculous foot slipping just when you thought you were really going for it. The days when you feel like quarreling with the whole world over, when nothing goes well, when even climbing gives up on you, when you wonder about caves and dark places, when justifying, rationalizing, and waiting simply do not make it worthwhile anymore. The clutches close, you slumber, you go down.
Then sun comes out again, the circle turns. They come, they go, they repeat themselves over. The dark times. The bright times. Project times.
New year, new worries, but also more climbing. To start it right, I have been campusing at the gym, or rather simulating, as well as pulling myself up on two fingers. Otherwise, life is complicated, as usual, and as usual, climbing is there when there is not much else left.
Into thin air, below, redpointing Conxoirxa with the Gresca finish, 7b+ in Cabernet, one of the exceptional sectors at Margalef. It bathed us in the sunshine the whole last w-end, offering incredible blue skies and summer temperatures. These long routes take you on a journey into the air, into the rock-land, where only endurance and power gets things done. Maybe this is a good enough preparation for the project? Maybe not, but it is definitely an awesome way to spend a week-end after hard training.
This year will be remembered as the tipping point, consolidating my conversion from alpine to sport climbing. From struggling to lead 6as the year before to onsighting 7as and redpointing 7cs. From lame socializing at the climbing gym to serious training three days a week. From not being able to pull myself off the ground with both hands to doing 3 decent pull-ups on jugs and 2 pull-ups with 3 fingers on slopers. That's as much progress as my mind can fathom in a year - and i am still struggling with the consequences (tendonitis, triumphalism, and hubris at the rocks). I have also worked a little bit on my head skills - although long way remains to decrease the gap between onsight and redpoint grade, or to increase the amount of accumulated flying miles. The psychological aspect of climbing is the most fascinating and the hardest to challenge through direct action. I have tried - and hopefully will keep trying, although I do not believe fear could - or should - ever go away.
Otherwise I'm afraid I have not progressed as much in other domains - .i remained stubborn, self-centered, closed as a marmot, and alone as ever. Oh, I did get a Masters' degree, too, so that is another accomplishment I tend to forget. I also started giving classes and improved my presentation skills to the point of feeling comfortable presenting my own work to the audience of serious professors in front of me. Maybe climbing helps me in a way in this not that related field - i started to tell myself that if i can deal with the stress and panic of a hard climb, if i can assume the risk of flying and still give it my best, if i can try that hard - and survive - i can also master the critical eye of the other. I can expose myself - maybe just a little bit - take the cloth off and share my world - invite people in, or at least move the curtain a little aback. Having a blog is also my way of sharing. Let's hope next year i will have more things to share, more motivation to improve, and more dreams to look up to and possibilities to imagine. Or not. The black hole is always there, ready to swallow the elephant, the giraffe, or any other prey walking with their head high and spirits low. Hit me, may the new year begin.
And last but not least - my first try at editing a video, cameraworks by Pau, myself redpointing Viatgi Imaginari...Happy holidays and loads of inspiration to you all.
After redpoint day and super-cold, at least for Catalunya's standards, weather, the rest of the climbing days were spent South - first under the rain in Siurana, trying out the hard moves on Crema, and checking out the new - and it has to be said awesome - guidebook of the area by David Brasco, and then in Margalef.
2010 will be remembered as the year of new guidebooks for sport-climbing in Catalunya. The Siurana guidebook is not a photo album, as the Lleida climbs one, but still a very good and informative, not to say comprehensive, guide to more than 1200 routes in this incredible spot. Not only mentioning the length of climbs, the number of draws, the orientation and interest of the area, it has very good (and time-consuming) drawings of all walls and good approach descriptions (tried out the one to Siuranella South - perfect). Nevertheless, as usual, there are some problems with grades - several climbs have been downgraded (i.e. Dema les inocents, 7a+, Papagora, 7b+, Crema 7c+), maybe to keep up the mythology of the area and show how hard the + routes could be. Anyway, it is not the place to rant again and again about the grading, kudoos for the guidebook, David - long in coming, but very good indeed. Thanks!
Finally as for the climbing - with the returning warm temperatures we enjoyed 2 incredible days in one of the most scenic spots in Margalef - Cabernet. The two pictures taken by Pau, with Ville's camera don't make it justice, but here goes again, myself finally redpointing Califato Coach, a 10-star 7b there.
What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?
Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl?
What if I stumble, and what if I fall?
I still don't know, and I'm as scared as always. We fall, we get up, we reach the chain, and life continues. Getting to the chain is good though, oh so good!
This composition by young Corse singers (more here) made me think of Pikardijska Tertsia, a group that used to be popular during my time in Ukraine. Similarly disappearing culture and language. It made me think of Lviv, our old yellow-red trams, meetings at Mitskevich monument, old bookshops, coffee houses, dark churches, and basement beer joints. Looking for a video I was not able to find anything too decent - the best one is this one from a Polish TV, with young Tertsia singing their best song...Memories, I am almost ready to read up on Proust...
I have traveled wide and long, over many years no place felt like home. Now, since a couple of years, I have stopped. In this place, Catalunya, that I now call home. Other climbers make me feel a little more justified in my choice - here is Sharma talking about his choice of home, friends, and family. Imaginary or not, the journey goes on, we choose where we want to be, and we go. Or we don't. For me one of the benefits of this new age of freedom of movement is the possibility of choosing - I want to live near the rocks, so i do. I want to define my identity through climbing, so i do. Have i finally reached port? I don't know, but sedentary life is not necessarily an unimaginative one. The journey can be real or virtual, dreamed through or real to the core.
Identity is so fluid, so good - and so wrong. It is not there, or it is. You would die for it, and than it is all empty. A journey is an escape, escape from self that never gets it right, always looking for the zen - the stone master who wanted to be the sun, the wind, the mountain - and then the stone master all over again. More years means just more circles - there is no more first time, only a deja-vu, an again and another retaliation of the same tune. Purification, authenticity - or all lies, all pretending, all artificial intelligence, artificial flavor. Only color, only smell, only concentration, only way is up. Another route, another project, another repetition of same old routine. Even climbing succumbs to it, gets dragged into the mud - the cold, the body, the head, all the same, all over again. Imaginary journey, a different setting - or all the same, all over again. Making sense of it, finding meaning, giving meaning. Lines, rock, relationships, conversations - needs and necessities, nothing real, all imagined, all of it in the head. Images - the boy with lama, the dying girl, all of it sensemaking, making sense, giving meaning to the world, in search of an innocence, the forgotten island of the past, the never-ending journey to the future. Why would it matter? There are no more rats, only ravens - crowing on the tombstones, tombstones of the dreams, the ones we've never been free to dream.
Viatgi Imaginari is a 40-meter feet of imagination indeed, orange, grey, bouldery, slopery, holdy. It has a roof, it has a pillar, it has a slab. It has a run-out, it has a hidden save-me bolt. It even has three key heel hooks to get the pressure down and give your arms back the needed strength. A route to imagine, a route to climb.
Not exactly related, but an example of another parallel imaginary journey, Oksana started to make Lyalkas, or dolls in Ukrainin, when she broke her leg and did not know what to do with herself for several months. Now her dolls are a success and a pleasure to look at. There is always more to be imagined, the journey that goes on...
A discovery for me - the Bruixes crag, well-known by the hard-climbingCatalan girls, inspired me this w-end despite the cold, tiredness from training, and aching ear n' throat. After redpointing Jam Session on the second go and onsighting Pasta sin Agua following good advice and quickdraws in the right places by Pau and Lluis, I spent the rest of the w/end trying out Occident, a good, well-overhanging line for me - polished jug haul with the tufa ending for the strong. I think we'll be back...
Moreover, now with the new Lleida Climbs guidebook the menu of North-bound climbs from Barcelona has been increased substantially. Good work, Pete, Dani, & Albert, and nice picture album. Although some errors in the guidebook have already popped up - i.e. Cobra Canaries on African Wall in Cavallers is rated 7b+ instead of 8a, a stretch even for the strong guys!
