This is mine
Between leaving school and getting my first proper job at 25 I bummed around having adventures. Mainly climbing and diving interspersed with a bit of jumping off stuff and some spectacular drunken episodes.

Most of it’s blurred into a few snapshots, apart from where things went pear shaped or were particularly uncomfortable, you always remember them with perfect clarity.

Anyway, me and my main climbing buddy spent a couple of months in the Lofoten Islands. Sea, mountains and dried herring describes the place completely. We’d spent the afternoon on the perfect climb. It was just inside our capabilities, started at sea level, no wind at all, and was spectacularly beautiful. We’d been on the Islands 3-4 weeks by then and were well and truly in the grove. We flowed up the rock hardly needing to exchange a word. Grins fixed on our faces we reached the top of the face and sat, in the warm sun, with our feet dangling over the edge sharing a celebratory cigarette.

And at that moment I realised I was completely at peace. I wanted nothing more than to be sat where I was. I genuinely didn’t have a worry in the world, or even the prospect of any worries on the horizon.

If I’m feeling a bit stressed that’s where I try and take myself back to. Looking past my feet to the sea in the fjord, slightly buzzing from the climb, so quite I could hear the tobacco crackling in the cigarette, sat next to my mate. Perfect.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Thu 12 Aug 2010, 11:50, 3 replies)

Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!
I've always wanted to climb in Norway, but a couple of big accidents put paid to that: a good day now is getting downstairs without holding onto something.

What sort of grade, and could you link to the routes?

*click* anyway.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Thu 12 Aug 2010, 12:12, closed)

I know this feeling!
I wish I could say it were more recently though.
Some of my most serene moments come from sitting at the top of a nice climb.
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Thu 12 Aug 2010, 12:14, closed)

as a climber
thats beautifully put
( zulu eh?, Thu 12 Aug 2010, 12:21, closed)