Rain and Pastries: I'm a Rock Star

Gorgeous Swedish Coast

Somehow the experience of sheer panic makes your ultimate victory so much more fulfilling. Just like those moments on the Bornholm biking trip (where we did 70+km of biking in 1 day!), where I was so overwhelmed with this growing fear that there was literally no way we could make it home and would have to sleep by the side of the road. But we did make it home, and damn we were on top of the world.

So when you are hanging by mere fingertips and can see literally no place to wedge in a finger or a toe on the sheer rock face, and can feel your entire body trembling as you cling to the tiniest centimeter of a ledge, you feel utter panic because you know you are about to lose your grip and can sense you are about to fall away from the only secure thing around you into the dangerous open air. So many times I was ready to just call it quits and end the pain in my scraped up hands and sore arm muscles because I just couldn’t find a single way to pull myself up one inch farther.

The most difficult climb he opened for us, of which only maybe 4 of us made it to the top of, was the most difficult puzzle I have ever had to solve. You study how the people before you do it, but once you get up there you have no sense of orientation, and you have to try climbing from all angles, especially when you are in a sort of crevasse with two walls angled in, and also angled towards you. You feel like you are climbing upside down and putting your legs in positions you had no idea you were capable of. And of course I lost my grip so many times and had to just hang in the air in my harness for a moment to regroup and regain my determination.

But after 10 minutes of struggling to advance that 1-inch, receding territory, moving side to side, trying every angle imaginable, and then you finally find some way of pulling yourself up, and you push with all your might (so many grunting noises and being in labor jokes) and you feel like your legs, which seemed so useless and incompetent slipping and sliding 2 minutes ago, have such enormous power, and they push you up and you get a breath of fresh air as you feel the tautness of the belay telling you your moving upwards, and maybe you can do this after all. And then of course you do it all over again, inch by inch. Being stuck in a panic and then feeling the rush of power when you finally find a foothold.

And then there’s touching that metal carribeaner at the top and having a look out at the ocean almost directly below you. And belaying down :) And then being a trembling mess of adrenaline and excitement and cold (did I mention that of course it was raining for most of the day) and knowing you just kicked that mountain’s ass like a spider monkey.

At my lowest point on the hardest one, where I just felt too tired to carry on, one of the girls tried to toss me a peanut M&M from the ground! I almost caught it but failed. And then the instructor joked about how he was going to let go and go pick it up because it fell right in front of him and was tempting him. But that actually gave me this magical boost (even without actually eating any chocolate) and then I just did it and made it to the top! And I didn't do it too too painfully slowly :)

This is an unnecessarily large number of pictures of the hardest climb, but it's really fun when you slip through them all really fast