Friday glee is on the road

[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: Ashima Shiraishi goes bouldering in Colorado for the first time. And climbs V13, as she does.

Comments

[emperor]

New Routes! Better still, lots of them in the plausible-for-me range! Even better still, I managed to onsight half a dozen of them (one of them on lead, no less, though that was only a 5). We had fun on Wednesday :-)

[wpadmirer]

Ooo, sounds lovely!

[rydra_wong]

Ooh, yay onsight leads!

[wpadmirer]

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I'll be climbing with my unofficially adopted daughter Kim and her boyfriend Nick. They climb at a different gym. In September they climbed El Capitan in Yosemite. Climbing with them is always amazing because they are really great climbers. I take pride in the fact that I introduced Kim to climbing. She's far surpassed me in skill and experience, but she wouldn't be there without me!

[rydra_wong]

Your unofficially adopted daughter sounds amazing. How did your climb go?

[wpadmirer]

It got cancelled. (sigh) Unforeseen circumstances. So I'm going to head out in a bit and use the auto-belay at my gym. There's a 5.8 with a bunch of bouldery moves that I'm going to try to conquer next. I suck at bouldery moves, thus the 5.8 is actually harder for me than the 5.9 was.

[rydra_wong]

It got cancelled. (sigh) Unforeseen circumstances.

Woe! I hope the auto-belay session is fun, at least. By "bouldery", do you mean powerful, technical, or what?

[wpadmirer]

Power moves. I'm a decent technical climber, but power moves are not my strength. I'm STILL trying to build the upper body strength to do moves that require lots of shoulder strength.

[wpadmirer]

Wow. I used strength a lot in that answer, didn't I? (grin)

[astridv]

Beautiful climbing, in that vid!

I just got back from the gym (regular, not climbing). I think I'm getting a feeling for that new pegboard. It's really challenging and fun. I'm using a different technique from all those muscle guys though... I don't see the point of even trying to keep my arms at a 90° angle while moving; that burns strength like nothing else. I'm keeping my arms extended, it's a lot easier that way.

[rydra_wong]

Ooh, pegboard! I've seen pictures of them, but never been to a climbing wall or gym that has one -- they don't seem to be common over here.

[astridv]

Ours is brand new and it made my gym about 200% more appealing to me. I more or less joined for the winter so I'd have a place to train and sauna on cold, rainy days, but now it's become a real alternative to my climbing wall (where I have to pay for each visit).

[wpadmirer]

I have never seen a peg board. What is it?

[astridv]

This is the basic principle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMjboACdI5c
(Holy shit, the guy in that video is a machine!)

[wpadmirer]

Oh shit. Yeah, I would suck at that.

[astridv]

It's only, I'd say, 50% grip strength, the rest is coordination. It's very interesting.

[wpadmirer]

Really? Only 50%? Huh. I'd have thought much more. Coordination I've got. Strength, yeah, I'm not the best.

[astridv]

Yeah, I'd say that coordination/technique is at least as important as strength, because it's already become a lot easier after the fourth or fifth short training session and there's no way my grip strength has noticeably changed in that period. In the beginning one kinda wastes a lot of physical and mental energy on flailing and not stabbing the holes right on the first attempt. But once you get the hang of putting the pegs into the holes cleanly, it suddenly feels a lot more comfortable.

[mongrelheart]

Wow, that looks like fun... Very challenging fun...

[astridv]

Really, really fun!

[mongrelheart]

Late to the party as usual ;) That girl in the video is amazing! And she must be like, 12! Holy moly...

I have some glee to report: I was visiting my mom in Hawaii (where I'm from originally), and got a chance to check out a local gym called the Volcanic Rock Gym. The owner was super cool & even gave me some impromptu coaching. Some things that I learned: how to switch feet by stepping on top of the foot & sliding bottom foot out, & also how to roll your shoulder towards the wall to make gravity work in your favor... Hehe I'm sure there are words for these things. Anyway it was really fun & I was sooo stoked.

[rydra_wong]

And she must be like, 12!

She is, in fact, 12. And one of the top women boulderers in the world; at 10, she became one of the handful of women who've climbed V13.

This is why she has her own tag in the comm: http://disobey-gravity.dreamwidth.org/tag/ashima

[mongrelheart]

Hot dog! She is awesome! How inspiring :):):)