Climbers are special, because they optimize everything and especially time 🙂 . When is the right time for a rest day? First, you check the weather forecast to decide when to have a rest day. How to productively use the rest day? By driving to another climbing location of course. The landscape didn´t change that much during the six hour drive, but we changed state and came to Nevada. However, the drive wasn’t that grey all the time, there were also some colourful moments.
The view from the hostel 
Solitary Trump tower 
Need sun glasses 
Seeing the city lights in the middle of the desert makes you realize that the city survives on tourism and gambling alone. Because I didn’t want to freeze anymore, I decided to book a room in a hostel. I realized, that hostels aren’t that popular in USA, because there was not so much choice like in EU. It is more common to book an Airbnb or take a room in a hotel, but with a small budget, you need to look for reasonable options 🙂 . One day I took a long walk down the Las Vegas Boulevard and I must say, it felt weird to see the recreated great attractions from Europe. The street was crowded and it was like walking into an amusement park for adults. It all just feels fake, everything just supports the gambling industry.
No I was not in Paris… 
or Venice… 
or Rome… 
or Egypt… 
I was in NY, but the real one
After an exhausting walk in the society, I was ready to retreat and I was so glad that Red Rock National park is just half of hour away from the city. I was looking forward to going climbing… but again something new…. SANDSTONE. Once again getting to know new rock and experiencing what to hold and what not. I´ve never done a lot bouldering outside, as I prefer to go for multipitch, but from time to time it´s nice to try something new. So Peter and I went to Kraft boulders. We didn’t have a crashpad, but there were soo many people hanging on the rocks, that we just joined some groups once we saw a nice line.
Peter wanted me to do the ´Plumbers crack´and by seeing the boulder I thought hm… looks high and without a rope… NOPE. But he was persistant and at some point I said “OK, why not”. So I went to the crack with tight starts. Moving like a worm and pressing my body against the wall brought some really awkward feelings, but I was learning some new body jamming techniques. Once the crack got brighter I could do a knee jam, which creates this safe feeling of being stuck 🙂 . But in the middle the crack got even wider and my knee couldn’t touch the rock anymore… My thoughts were “Shit, where the f*** is the rope?!? Damn, I’m half way”. I got scared, but I didn’t want my fear to take control over me, so I decided to fight it.
Climbing the boulder was like a reflection of my life… Doing this for the first time and without having the knowledge of how to do it, the body started to search for a position that will solve the boulder problem. And it came naturally, once I had calmed down and the same is in life. We aren’t prepared for everything, but once we overcome the fear and start believing in ourselves, we are capable of pushing the limits we create in our mind. If I knew that the boulder was about 12m high, I wouldn’t have gone for it, but sometimes it’s good not to know the grades, the NUMBERS… because once the mind gets them, it starts to calculate and create limits. But I want to ´viva´ it 🙂 .
Planetina 