Mountains

The allure of mountain climbing came pretty natural, one of my childhood friends introduced it to me and I dove in! Climbing and living simply. Growing up my mother became handicapped, her physical freedom stripped away. So, she encouraged me to live actively.

The need to explore the physical world hit me hard a few years ago when I sustained a random injury to my leg, where I couldn't walk more than three blocks. Fortunately, I had my mother's optimism and found happiness in other things.

Amazingly, I could still climb. My friend Will had been wanting to go to Spain for sometime, and convinced me that Spain was the place to be; as there was tones of climbing with no approaches. Spain is truly a sport climbers paradise, with easy access to innumerable bolted limestone and granite faces. Here we warmed up at Montserrat, explored as far south as El Chorro, as far east as Cierro Del Hierro and La Pedriza, as far north as Riglos, Rodeller and the Pyrenees. This proved to be a great distraction and Will was a great porter!

Back home in Canada I decided that lack of movement from an excessive amount of work and school caused my injury, so shirking school was a must and another holiday was in order. We headed south to the Sierra Nevada and with constant activity my injury started to dissipate. A little help from a friend at the Whitney Portal store encouraged us to climb the Peewee Route on Mt. Whitney, 14,494 ft., in October. We hiked up and made camp at Upper Boyscout lake. Mt. Whitney is high enough to cause people to be affected by altitude, but climbing slows progress enough that the altitude effects are barely noticeable. The climb was amazing, runners and all; you should have seen the booty (free gear) on that climb! What shocked me the most, other than the booty; was the size of those Americans packs, they were double the size of our 31 pound packs! Isn't Mr. 'Go light' from the US!

After Whitney we headed to Utah to climb at Indian Creek. During the day to climb the South Six Shooter it was apparent that Whitney broke the curse. I could now walk several kilometers with weight. Some people have hiked Mt. Whitney on a healing pilgrimage, maybe it works!