The first date with rocks

When you go to the mountains for the first time, it is exciting like a date. You are fancying

different scenes in your imagination, you imagine yourself as a hero. But when you meet with

a rock face to face, all thoughts disappear as if they had not existed. You are lost and confused.

You look around and get used to the conditions.

The rock looks like a blank sheet when you approach  it for the first time. It seems you can do

nothing: no place for hand grips, no place for a toe: «How do you do all that?». But your belayer is behind you and ensures you: «Belay on». There is no way out and you do the first movement, one more. You feel a light panic every time, but you again find a solution. You joy like a child when you put a toe on the overhang of a width of about a strip of chewing gum, thank heaven for a crack in the rock.

The first rise of the day is the hardest one. You have already gone a half of the distance. 10 meters are below you. But the same  distance is over you! You feel heavy, hands are tired. You see a blank sheet in front of you again. You think: «What  am I doing? What for? One more time? Me? Never!». But when you achieve the top, all doubts go away. The feeling of reaching of a goal, the breathtaking view makes amends to distress.

When you go climbing, you keep in your mind not a climbing technique and movements, but feelings. I remember the most delicious sandwich under the rain, fog over the forest which I have seen from the top of the rock, a funny dog which has been looking for Snickers the whole day, hot tea from a thermos and our climbing team, everybody.

When the moment for coming back home has come, all the team plunge in a car silently. A holy

fatigue is coming. Forces go away, eyes close. The driver switches on music in a car and each

song seems pertinent to the moment. After that on the road you will discuss rises, laugh and

confess honestly how scary it was. It will turn out that each felt the same as you  on this day. It's amazing that this will happen every time during a trip to the rocks. These impressions remain fresh every time.

Familiar?

Photo by Kirill Sobolev and Vika Senatorova