The CragBaby

After the Red River Gorge I hit the road again with my friend Pierre (from Quebec), with the destination being Boone, North Carolina and its abundant gneiss boulders.

My whole vacation, which started on August 1st, has been a little “off” with lots going on at home and on the road for me to worry about.  Problems ranging from moving, car wreck, dealing with insurance companies (and in this case it was particularly long taking about 2 months to solve), looking for a new house and new car, breakups, job interview, car problems while on the road, the climbing accident and one of my dear friends at home being extremely sick (I actually considered calling the trip for the last two reasons.)

I usually climb to forget about my worries, but even climbing became stressful as being a sole traveler means that I am climbing with new climbing partners daily who I don’t know and who I am unsure know the technique of the soft catch. Add to that the fact that the bolt placements are more sparse in Rifle and the Red in comparison to home, and I catch myself really NOT wanting to fall.  Falling is always scary (my head still being messed up from the broken ankle) but knowing there is a potential for a big fall on a belayer I don’t know is even more stressful   On top of all that, there are so many strong climbers on the road and especially in the Red that my projects are often everyone’s warm-ups, resulting in me really starting to wonder if I truly am a “climber” since I am unable to climb 5.13.

But the past two days have started to turn around with me being truly happy each morning and excited to be on the road. I think it is because a lot of these worries have started to clear up:  my car is working, the girl in the accident is doing real well and I am starting to mentally recover, my good friend at home is home from the hospital and it is just real nice not to be stressing about rope climbing. Though I’ve never considered myself a “boulder-er” since my focus has always been more towards sport climbing, I have loved my time here in Boone and perhaps the end result of all my worries will be me also loving this form of climbing. =)

Tags: boone, bouldering, climbing, RoadTrip2008

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 6:59 am and is filed under Destination: Boone, NC, RoadTrip2008, climbing, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.