Improving in Climbing
Everyone wants to improve, to excel at their passion.
I dream of free climbing enormous walls. For the past ten years I’ve worked towards these goals.
My early climbing focused on getting up walls in Yosemite. Ascents of Washington’s Column, the Leaning Tower, Half Dome, and El Cap all came together quickly. Aid climbing involved a bit of gear and a lot of tenacity. By purchasing the former and easily supplying the latter, I learned to dial my systems. With my aid climbing skills in place, I focused on improving my free climbing enough to make free ascents. My early climbing improved quickly.
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| Double Rainbow over Jailhouse- What does it mean? |
I learned to crack climb, to clip bolts, and then to redpoint hard traditional lines using a combination of the two skills. Improving my climbing skills slowed while my goals expanded.
The theme of improvement runs through the climbing community. Everyone wants to climb their best. Alex Honnold voiced identical concerns. When I asked if he had any clues on improvement, he laughed in response, saying, “I wish. I’ve been worrying about the same thing. I've basically been climbing 13+ for a decade.”
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| Cosmic Debris |
Hitting plateaus presents an inevitable challenge in climbing. What can be done to break through? Train harder, remain positive, get motivated… Cedar Wright’s suggested something totally different. “I do have some advice on how to improve at climbing... move to Boulder... The water here makes you stronger.” My attempt to move to Boulder stopped when my Saturn Station wagon aborted mission at Fruita Colorado. I returned my Saturn to California’s orbit. Boulder water scares me but perhaps the mountain folks are clued into some tips towards improvement.
For some, breaking through plateaus takes time. Beth Rodden addressed the challenges of improving at climbing. “I think it's just best to take it as it comes and be psyched with little victories and not let the other things get you down.” The gains in climbing definitely shrink but slow and steady optimism helps through the slough.
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| Working Public Mayhem photo by the person with the huge watermark |
For others, it’s about finding the correct motivation. “There are many ways to improve on climbing, like training, weight loss,” said Randy Leavitt. “But I think the most important thing is motivation. I had lots of it because I loved doing new routes…. I found that I was more inspired to try hard and raise my game when new routes were involved.”
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| Clay Usinger on a boulder problem Stanley, Kenny, Clay and I put up behind Camp 4 this December Last of the Miwok v6 |
Luis “Lucho” Rivera added a similar note, ”I don’t really train, i just go climbing and try to have fun. What inspires me more than anything is new routing.”
Finding new routes in winter provides a challenge. Winter presents short days and poor weather in Yosemite, a hard time for first ascents. Since my Yosemite season started this fall, I have struggled with climbing harder. I track my ascents on an 8a score card, which is slowly thinning. In November, I came close to sending Cosmic Debris. Bad weather shut me down. Through December, I worked on bouldering harder and climbing at Jailhouse. I’ve had few successes this winter. Still, in some small ways I must be improving.
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| Walking out from Jailhouse |
A few more days of Jailhouse and then I’m heading to Hueco for a couple weeks. I’m hoping to send something before I leave, to find some sort of improvement in my climbing.
I like climbing. I really like climbing well. I do the former all the time. It’s about making the latter happen all the time as well. Then, I’ll be exceling at my passion and meeting some of my dreams.
Happy New Year!
On this, the first day of 2013, I find myself looking ahead to the new year and wondering what it will bring for our family. Hopefully more blogging.
Lucas just celebrated his 5th birthday. The weekend of his birthday fell exactly the way it did at his birth, so I did a lot of reflecting - the crazy blur that was his birth 5 weeks too early, and of course, all the health issues in the days and weeks to follow. If only I knew then what I know now, I could have saved myself so much heartache. The only word I can use to describe my feeling of understanding is perspective. Five years have brought me a lot of perspective when it comes to parenting and hearing loss.
I was home to celebrate with him on his big day (because it was on a Sunday!), and celebrate we did. We spent the afternoon at Dutch Winter Wonderland, with our dear friends who live down the street.
Nora is 14 months and is a really sweet little girl. I'm having so much fun watching her grow! Her natural language milestones are also incredibly fascinating to me, along with her acquisition of Spanish. We're teaching her ASL signs with Spanish, and she uses quite a few already: milk, water, cheese, grapes, eat, daddy, cat, more, bath, sleep, all done, please and monkey. She doesn't talk much, but says mama, dada, "ga" (for gato = cat), up, hi, uh-oh and tickle. She growls for a lion, and quacks like a duck. She waves hi and bye, likes to give butzers (raspberries), LOVES to read books, and is obsessed with our cats. She just started walking (as her chosen means of getting around) at Christmas, although she's been knee walking for about 2 months. Check it out... it's pretty amusing:
We had family portraits taken at the end of October. Here she is at 12 months:
Lucas just celebrated his 5th birthday. The weekend of his birthday fell exactly the way it did at his birth, so I did a lot of reflecting - the crazy blur that was his birth 5 weeks too early, and of course, all the health issues in the days and weeks to follow. If only I knew then what I know now, I could have saved myself so much heartache. The only word I can use to describe my feeling of understanding is perspective. Five years have brought me a lot of perspective when it comes to parenting and hearing loss.
I was home to celebrate with him on his big day (because it was on a Sunday!), and celebrate we did. We spent the afternoon at Dutch Winter Wonderland, with our dear friends who live down the street.
Nora is 14 months and is a really sweet little girl. I'm having so much fun watching her grow! Her natural language milestones are also incredibly fascinating to me, along with her acquisition of Spanish. We're teaching her ASL signs with Spanish, and she uses quite a few already: milk, water, cheese, grapes, eat, daddy, cat, more, bath, sleep, all done, please and monkey. She doesn't talk much, but says mama, dada, "ga" (for gato = cat), up, hi, uh-oh and tickle. She growls for a lion, and quacks like a duck. She waves hi and bye, likes to give butzers (raspberries), LOVES to read books, and is obsessed with our cats. She just started walking (as her chosen means of getting around) at Christmas, although she's been knee walking for about 2 months. Check it out... it's pretty amusing:
We had family portraits taken at the end of October. Here she is at 12 months:
Lucas celebrates his 4th hearing birthday in just 8 short days. I haven't decided what we're going to do yet, but something fun. I don't know why, but I'm even more excited for his hearing birthday than his real birthday. It makes me almost giddy just thinking about it. Lucas continues to progress beautifully. He was tested this fall and is scoring at and above age appropriate levels in all areas of language. He will start Kindergarten in the fall at our local elementary school, and will be completely mainstreamed. This is what we've been aiming for for the past 5 years.
I would really like to blog more this year, and I'm going to try and find time to do so. I want to chronicle Nora's bilingual journey, as it is almost as fascinating as Lucas's hearing journey. Lucas is learning Spanish too, just not the same as Nora. In the middle of the night the other night, he asked me for "más agua" (more water).
May your new year be blessed with new experiences!
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