Friday glee has slaaaaaabs

[rydra_wong]

The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee: Caff goes to La Pedriza.

And since this is the first post of glee of the New Year: anyone got any goals for the year they'd like to share? Climbing-related resolutions?

Comments

[emperor]

I went climbing this week after what seems like ages off eating mince pies. There were new routes, and my achilles is behaving itself much better now :-)

[rydra_wong]

Yay new routes and better-behaved achilles! And hey, most top climbers recommend taking at least several weeks off a year for recovery purposes.

And mince pies are a well-known sports nutrition supplement; personally I have been carb-loading with Christmas pudding.

My glee: went to the opening day of the new Arch bouldering wall in Acton! And actually got myself to a cinema to see Free Solo! I usually tend to watch things on DVD/download (don't like crowds, cinema volume is too loud for my ears), but I figured that El Cap was one thing that'd benefit from a big screen.

[emperor]

Cool! I'm rubbish at actually getting to the cinema to see things, but I had heard good things about Free Solo.

[rydra_wong]

Yeah, it absolutely lives up to the hype. Amazing stuff, both in terms of the cinematography for all the climbing but also the verite stuff on Honnold and his relationships with the people around him (including the film crew, because co-director Jimmy Chin and most of the climbing camerapeople are all friends of his, and they're visibly wrestling with the ethics of filming soloing and how the stress is affecting them emotionallly).

I'd definitely recommend catching it in the cinema if you can!

[sara]

Dittoing this. I saw all of two movies last year and this was definitely the better one.

[rydra_wong]

Cool piece on the other co-director, E. Chai Vasarhelyi, and her thoughts on the making of the film:

https://rockandice.com/features/chai-vasarhelyi-on-the-making-of-free-solo-with-alex-honnold/

[sara]

Oh, I liked that, thanks! That was one of the parts of the film that I liked best, as a person who spends a lot of time taking various kinds of risks in the outdoors, was how it really focused in on that piece. It's sort of a climbing film but I think a lot more of a film about people who love being outside and what that does to your head, both healthy and unhealthy.

[rydra_wong]

Also I loved this, which was recorded a month or two after the solo, and has fascinating geeking out about the intricacies of the route and fascinating stuff about the filming process (and is generally delightful and hilarious):

https://enormocast.com/2017/07/episode-133-alex-honnold-kind-of-a-big-deal/

[rydra_wong]

I'm definitely going to watch Meru now -- mountaineering per se is not that interesting to me, but I was really impressed by the directing on Free Solo.

[sara]

I didn't climb-climb anything this week, but I did check out a new bouldering gym in Eugene with my daughter and niece (we will have to go back when our schedules are more amenable) and my kids and I had some very good snowshoe hikes up toward Mount Rainier over New Year's.

I think my climbing-related goal for this year is to get over to the climbing gym and take a top-roping class. I've been bouldering at the gym at the college, and while that's great fun there's nobody there to teach rope stuff. Also, continue to hangboard regularly.

[rydra_wong]

Yay new gym and hikes! Learning roped stuff definitely gives you some extra options, and I found that starting as a boulderer made it much much easier for me to transition from top-roping to leading (when I wanted to) than it is for many people who start out top-roping as their first form of climbing -- when I fall off, I expect to go somewhere!

[sara]

Yeah, I used to have a terrible inability to cope with heights but I have to climb a lot of stuff on the job and it's made that easier for me.

On the job I definitely go somewhere if I fall off. Usually into a creek. Sometimes the creek is frozen.

[rydra_wong]

What's your job, if you don't mind my asking/are happy to disclose on the internet?

[sara]

*cough* Not something I can discuss in public.

[rydra_wong]

No worries! I know lots of people can't discuss their jobs in public/online because of reasons. I was just curious as to what involved falling into frozen creeks. *g*

Anyway, expecting to go somewhere if you fall off definitely helps with transitioning from top-roping to leading, if that's something you want to do.

[hermionesviolin]

I got to climb twice this week (6 walls on Tuesday and 5 walls on Friday) and wasn't exhausted.

[rydra_wong]

\o/