SOUTHCLIMB: A new approach

Caro, trying Seven Spanish Angels.

After some time off climbing and mainly focused on skiing and ski mountaneering, we are back on a climbing training cycle. It was hard to stay away from climbing. The first couple of weeks were very hard, but i guess, once your body and mind gets used to do other things and understands that resting is as important as training, everything is much better. That time away from the sport, helped me to come back more motivated and although I still feel weak, I can see that in a couple of weeks I will be stronger than before the break.

Santiago Valerga warming up

I´ve always focused my climbing in either sport, trad or alpine objectives. Within this time i came to realize that in order to see progress in my climbing, would be good to experiment a little bit harder with just plain bouldering. That is why, when we gazed the possibility to take some days off from work and go to Bishop, we didn´t hesitate.

Caro sending a nice V6.

Santiago Valerga in Soul Slinger

We spend 5 days camping out in Bishop. The first 4 days were very cold and finally the last day was warm. We climbed a bunch of V2 to V5/6 problems and also did some V7´s. I was getting close on a really nice V9, but it will have to wait for next trip. It took us, almost the entire trip get in the bouldering mood. Totally different approach than sport climbing. Once we were finally getting in the groove and temps were warmer and more pleasant to climb, we had to leave.

The last 3 days were spent at Red Rocks, in Vegas. Climbing some sport and trad routes.

Now we are back in Colorado, skiing again and more motivated for training and getting strong for the spring plans.

We have to thanks Ian Young and Julie Trombetta for picking us up in Reno and driving us around. Thank you so much, it was a great and fun trip.