02/16/2024
Me flexing at the top of a mountain in the Pyrenees is only half the story…
The full story?
It was an arduous day when this photo was snapped but what I didn’t know is that the difficulty was only just beginning.
With two heavy packs filled with climbing gear and a dog carrier for my pup, my partner and I embarked on the “20 minute approach” to the bottom of the rock face for a day of what we hoped to be epic climbing in Tarrascon-Ariege region on this one sunny winter day.
We navigated the faint trail, guided only by a frustratingly vague description from our climbing book. “Go up, go through the burnt trees, turn right at some point when the trail completely disappears” 😭
We got lost on the way up, scrambling up horribly treacherous goat paths only to have to come back down and try another route. Arms and legs scratched to hell from the thorny plants.
After an hour, we found the climbing crag and began our warm up climbs. At this point, I felt accomplished and strong getting through some manageable adversity (⭐️see photo).
Like I said, that was only half the story. Rushing through our warm up climbs in easy grades, we started making dumb mistakes. First, I snagged the rope on a tree when I tried to pull it down. Forcing us to climb the route again on the tail end of the rope to get it unstuck. Bad luck I guess.
Next, we went onto the harder grades. This time, my climbing partner was so anxious to climb, he pulled the rope before I could untie my figure 8 knot 😣. Never done that one before and we were damn lucky there was another climber in this isolated region whose rope we could borrow to climb up and retrieve our stuck rope. Mentally I was getting tired.
This is when I started thinking about 🌟Allostatic Load🌟 — A.L. Is the impact of repeatedly activating the body’s stress response. I’m sure you’ve felt it yourself.
(Rest of the story in the comments & at coachsofi.com)
