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Ciao From Cortina

• October 2011
• Climb Training Travel

Hi Steph, how’re you?
I’m Edoardo Valleferro from Cortina, I meet you at the end of july after your conference for Cortinaincroda.
I really enjoy that evening expecially the video in which you jump off from the Tofana’s Pillar! It was amazing! I thank you again for signing your book for me. I just finish it and I found in it many inspirations. I really understand your feeling and I started to learn mine sensations; I mean the answers to the most common questions like:”Why I do this? Why I like alpinism and all that stuff that often is hard and full of suffer?”
Reading the stories of your solos, in particular, brought me a sense of full agreement (if I can say that). I share your thoughts and my motivations became stronger. Of course my little and easy experience is not comparable to yours, but that is all!
According to the dedication you write for me, I had the occasion to open my first new route here in Cortina on the Croda da Lago Peak and that was the greatest day of this season, despite the route was not so long and quite easy. During the ascension I thought often about what you wrote about your speditions and I felt for the very first time that beautiful sense of adventure and fear of the unknown.
I’ve been climbing for six years and now I think I quite reach the peak of my possibilities in terms of difficult. But I want to aim high for soloing so can I ask if you do a specific training for this discipline like joga/meditation or other stuff? Cause when I start climbing I empty my head and I get into another world but I think I need a bit more and I’d love to have a piece of advice from you. Accordingly that I choose routes which are 2-3 grades under my limit and I’m always conscious of what I’m doing. I’m not “fixed” with it and I don’t plan a solo, I just feel the right moment and I go for it.
I had other things to share and ask to you but they won’t come in my mind right now and mostly I don’t want to bore you!
Hope to hear from you! Sorry for my english but unfortunately I didn’t keep improving it.
Ciao Steph! You’re always awesome! Keep it up!
Kisses

Hi Edoardo!
I’m glad to hear from you, I love Cortina and had such a great time there this summer! I can’t wait to come back, I hope next year. 🙂 Congratulations on your new route! I think you are doing it right with your approach to free soloing. As you know, it’s something not to push. Just keep doing what feels right to you, and when you feel the urge to push yourself, think harder. Meditation is very helpful to me, not just for free soloing, but for the rest of life. Thinking a lot is maybe the most important part of climbing. I think the best thing you can do to stay safe with free soloing is to keep increasing your ability on safe climbs–don’t think that you can’t improve with your difficulty on roped climbs, you always can. And that will always help you with any other climbing goals you have. Sometimes it feels like you’re not improving, but the progression has just slowed.
Remember: life is long!
🙂 Steph