Friday 15 May 2009

"The best climber is the one having the most fun"

Alex Lowe said this. He was good climber, well actually he was a great climber. Summiting Everest twice and putting up a new route on Trango Tower (5.11 A4), with others. He was killed on Shishipagma by an avalanche. I'm sure its easy to say the best climber is the one having the most fun when your at the top of your game, but I'd like to think he really meant it.

I went bouldering last night after work. Work was very bad, so I didn't have a great day. Newport bouldering centre is great. Seems to have loads of problems for such a small centre. I hope that they reset them quite often as I does have the potential to be exhausted over a few sessions. Its not too far too drive so I'll probably try and head there once a week (might even drag Toaf along). Anyway, so I went bouldering.

I'm not saying that I'm like a super hard climber or anything, but I'm sort of used to climbing the hardest among my group of mates I normally climb with.

Tonight I was pants. I couldn't do half the problems everyone else seemed to do, and just seemed to spend my night failing on problems. I thought about that quote while I was there. I'd have assumed that I would have been really frustrated and start feeling beaten (I'm pretty competetive). Instead I had a great time and really enjoyed myself. I spent my time concentrating on pushing myself as aposed to competing against others.

End of the day it doesn't matter what you climb. I guess the best climber is the one having the most fun, I know I was.

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