Started the climbing season by going to the Utah Hills outside of St George this past weekend with Chad, Tamara, and Polly (always nice when zie schedule lets me climb with my wife). Honestly, at first I wasn’t that excited about climbing there. I’d heard that the climbing wasn’t that good, the forecast was pretty darn warm considering I’ve been skiing the last several weekends, and I was intimidated to start the season with steep sport climbing.
All the photos are in the Climbing 2011 set on Flickr.
Its been a reoccurring theme over the last couple of weeks (also read here from yesterday: Choose your risk) that nothing risked, nothing gained isn’t just for finance. Its good for the heart too. If everything we do had a known outcome and totally safe, why would we choose it?
Once I decided it would be more fun to just climb and enjoy being out, the uncertainty faded out and it turned into a great weekend.
“Everything in life is a challenge. You can accept the challenge to improve. Or you can bask and distract yourself with success. It’s up to you. After all, sport is about personal growth. In the mountains you have the opportunity to challenge yourself beyond any means available in daily life.”
And while limestone sport climbing is obviously not the mountains, the process of choosing to grow instead of choosing to back away can be the same.
And it was really good to bring in the full camera kit of lenses, flash and the film camera to just play. Looking forward to getting the film developed, so much harder to wait.