Blog

Is It Always Fun?

• May 2011
• Climb Training

Hey Steph,
Hope things are well over there in Utah, wish I was there. First and foremost, thank you for being an awesome lady. You have come to be a big inspiration to me as a younger woman. Anywho, I wanted to get your insight on an issue I’m having regarding climbing. I’m not sure if you have addressed the fun factor before, but either way I’m asking. Is climbing always fun for you? Lately for me, climbing has not been fun at all. Now granted I’m not outside I’m stuck in a climbing gym but I usually approach climbing with a fun way to push myself and get some exercise. I would love to get to a point where I’m climbing harder and harder routes and feel more comfortable taking it outdoors (I’m a little terrified), but as I walk into the gym all I feel is dread towards the wall. Part of it is absolute fear. I have yet to take a real lead fall and this has kept me from climbing at my limit so I’m stuck on less challenging routes. I tend to freeze up in fear even though I have complete trust in my belayer and know that the chances of getting hurt are pretty low. I just can’t seem to push myself and climbing seems like the least fun activity I can do right now. I haven’t taken more than a 5 day break in about 8 months and that was only for one camping trip, so maybe I’m burned out? So basically my question is, does climbing ever stop being fun for you? If you have these periods, how do you wrestle through them? Thank you so much for your insight and keep on keeping on.
Natalie

Dear Natalie,
Thanks for writing! Your question is great, and the answer is No! It’s not always fun. Nothing is always fun, even having fun is sometimes not fun.

I’ve gone through a lot of different experiences with climbing not being fun, because I’ve been climbing for 20 years. And I’ve climbed in Patagonia for 7 seasons in a row, where most of the time you are really not having any fun at all because you are exhausted, cold, scared, frustrated, bored, stressed or waiting. As Thomas Huber said there once, “the fun comes later….”

There are definitely times in climbing where what you are doing is not so fun at the moment–hiking up a hill for four hours, jugging fixed lines all day, or whatever it may be–but you want to be there so badly that it feels worth it. But then there’s another type of climbing not being fun which happens when you are just tired and you need a break.

I do have some perspective about it now. For a lot of years, if climbing got frustrating or no fun, I would just bang my head against it and wonder what was wrong with me, and just try to force through the phase. This usually resulted in getting sick or injured, and at the very least, not having a good time doing something that is really supposed to be enjoyable. Now if I feel like that, I can see there’s usually a reason. If I’ve been climbing and pushing myself really hard for an extended period of time, I’m worn out. I need a break. So I do something else for a while. This winter I was totally motivated for a base climb project, where I climbed desert towers and base jumped them. Since we decided to film the climbs and jumps, I ended up repeating climbs that were pretty hard for me many many times and repeating jumps that I found technical many many times, as well as doing all the rigging for the shooting–a job in itself. I loved it and was fully psyched for months. But after the project was finished, I was done! I took a break from climbing for a month, because I was tired and I just didn’t feel like it. I went skydiving and did some gardening. And then one day, after a few weeks had passed, I suddenly wanted to climb again. I’ve learned to listen to myself, with motivation.

Like I said, it took me a lot of years of banging my head against the wall, overtraining, and even getting sick from not resting to learn about listening to my motivation. You can’t push all the time.

You talked about being afraid, and that being the limiter of your fun. Fear is a whole other problem, which many climbers struggle with. But it still comes back to banging your head against the wall, at heart. If you let fear stop you from doing the things you want to do, you will be miserable and frustrated. But if you try to force it, you will probably also be miserable and frustrated. Again, the answer is to listen to yourself. If you really want to do something (climb), but there is something stopping you (fear), take a different approach. If forcing it isn’t working for you, back up a little. Keep doing what you want to do, but try to go about it in a less extreme way. If you’re scared leading in the gym, just toprope. After your toprope ability is solid, start leading at a much lower level. Don’t force it. If at a certain point you suddenly decide to take practice falls, then do it, but not before you really want to. There’s a difference between feeling like you “should” do something, and truly wanting to do it. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself to have fun that you don’t have fun.
🙂 Steph