Trip to the Southeast

During the renovation work at the apartment, we were able to
make a short trip to the Southeast. Elise has a congress in
Atlanta, and I was able to join her after the event to go
climbing in Tennessee with her and Richard.

That was my first time in the South, and I was able to taste
the famous Waffle House food. Very greasy, as expected, even
more than expected actually. But when you're real hungry,
there's nothing like it ;-)

Richard's mum and stepdad kindly hosted us for two nights and
even took her on their boat to a restaurant for lunch. Pretty
cool!

The weather around Chattanooga was pretty bad for 2 days, it
was really pouring rain, then really cold and foggy. Overall,
not much climbing was done even though we were so close to so
many crags :-(Still, I manage to do my first 5.8 trad lead, in a beautiful
crack. Very scary, like each time you go up one level. I
learned to trust my placements!

On the 3rd day, the weather turned sunny and warm, and we
were able to head to Foster Falls, TN, which was hosting a
climbing festival for the day.I was able to lead a couple of sport 5.9s, and handogged on a
5.10b. In general, nothing too hard for the day, but Richard
let me lead almost everything, which made me focus and commit
on all lines.

The highlight was the evening, with Tommy Caldwell and Beth
Rodden as guest stars. I guess not many of my blog readers
know them: they are basically climbing living legends:
probably the current 2 best American climbers.I was so excited to meet them and speak to them!

They look
like normal people and they accomplished so many exploits,
like climbing the Nose free!They showed us a slideshow and a video of there recent
ascensions in Yosemite. That was really inspiring. On the
close up videos, we could see Tommy Caldwell in the crux
sections of the nose: he was definitely suffering. If you
thought climbing 5.14 was easy and painless for the elite,
think again!