A New Season

Here is to Late Night Sessions and Good Times

Sunday marked the beginning of a new season with a bbq and session on the wall. People came from far and wide to take part in the festivities. The glorious weather we had over the weekend was an inauspicious reminder that the Valley and Bishop are starting to get too hot for climbing. I have started to realize that summer time climbing is not the most ideal, but in many ways the most important. Last summer the time spent at Donor and on the wall, were the biggest contributors to the success of the fall and winter. Where as last summer I fell into summertime training with the guidance of Master Jedi Justin, this season I am making the conscious and “force” driven decision to use the next months to push new limits and train for those on the horizon.

Nasty Pete

The Flow

So I went to Bishop this weekend with two young ladies who were kind enough to let me tag along. This weekend was all about determination, mixed in with some physical sarcasm. The mornings started with a great tradition I hope to carry with me, espresso in bed!!!

Julie Turning the Lip on Sky Dance.

Vicki and Julie were my inspiration; both made progress on their perspective projects. Saturday we did the long hike up to the Druid Stones. On the way we met an awesome couple who were quite interested and taken aback by the fact that we were carrying up big pads of foam to the top of the steep hill. After explaining what they were for, I tried to gain a little sympathy by telling them they weighed 60-70 pounds, but of course, because she is tough. Vicki took the approach saying that they could not have been more than 15-20. Both Vicki and Julie continued the trend as they pushed themselves to gain more clarity in the solving of their problems, while losing enough skin to do a skin graft on my ass. It was DOPE!!!

Vicki Styling in Buttermilk Country

The awesome thing about working on projects is the spectrum of emotions one goes through in order to eventually achieve partial or total success. In many ways working on a problem is kind of like starting a new relationship. When an attraction speaks to you, the hardest thing to do is to be yourself. With people one has to trust that the person really just wants to find out who you really are; rather than for you to create a person who you think they want you to be. Similarly, when walking up to a boulder problem one has to allow oneself to come through, they have to trust that their physical and mental ability will “match-up.” When meeting a new interest it is easy to not trust enough to let it flow.

Let it Flow,
Peter