Archiv für den Monat März 2020

Last night we had an amazing dance party in our little house in the mountains. All six of us dressed up, we made dinner and spent a good while sitting and eating and chatting. Then we turned on the sound system and had a proper late night dance party for Eline’s 22nd birthday. It’s amazing to see how different my life looks like since the confinement has started. I rest a lot. Once a day I have a Pilate session with my friend Ann from California. Some days I go for a run or just a simple walk. Sometimes it happens that I do some pull ups (imagine!).

 
Mostly, though, I just enjoy chatting with the friends I live with, or calling other friends and family on FaceTime. I read more than usual. I work on my French, my English, and my singing. I play Scrabble for hours and hours.

I have this feeling that there will be a “before” and “after” COVID-19 era. I can’t imagine that the world is simply on standby right now and that after a couple of weeks we will go back to the old reality.

To be truly honest with you, and I told you this already in my recent post, the confinement has arrived at a perfect moment in my life. I’ve been struggling over the last few years with certain things that I might rather not face. Now I have the space to think about them.

The world has been moving fast and I haven’t been able to resist its rhythm. I found myself running after every task, restless. I could feel myself becoming frustrated and yet I didn’t know why. I see now that it was related to the way I was doing things, always pushing to do all of the things. I can imagine that during this confinement, some of you are realizing the same.

Up until the confinement no matter what I was doing, I was thinking always about the next step.

Also, I’m in my mid-thirties now and my needs have been changing. I’ve ignored them because my desire to climb hard has always been my top priority. I’ve climbed and pushed myself hard this way since I was 17. I love hard work and giving my best. It has always made me feel satisfied and content.

Since the beginning of 2019, my mind has been consumed by the idea of free climbing The Nose. If you know me just a little bit, you know that the routes I love most are those which are not so famous. I am drawn to routes that are in radical, remote places, new routes, or rarely-repeated, hard old-school classics. Even if I am not physically the strongest climber, I can always rely on my strong mind set to do incredible things.

The Nose is not my style of project, as it is possibly the most famous (and crowded) route in the world. But once I start something I simply can’t stop until I have given it my very very best effort. This is how The Nose became my unlikely obsession. In 2019, I trained almost all year. All my thoughts and intentions were dedicated to this iconic route situated in the Yosemite Valley. I slept with the topo over my bed, and Lynn’s “It Goes Boys” quote pasted on my door.

I pushed myself so hard in training, even though I could tell that my body was getting tired and that my heart was not always in it. Never before in my life had I trained for so long (a full year!) for one single route. When I left Switzerland for California in October, 2019, I knew that I was in the best shape of my life, physically. But at the same time I had never felt so fragile in my mind. Somehow the opposite of “Nina style.”

As soon as I arrived in Los Angeles I had a total meltdown. You can read all about it here in my Nose blog. But trust me, it was rough.

I somehow managed to get my shit together and perform on the Nose like I never had before. At the end, it was not enough and I failed. Failed, yes. Normally I believe that in climbing, there is no failure as long as you tried your absolute best. Plenty of times in my life I have tried a route and not sent. Like for example in 2018 with Melissa in Madagascar. We clearly did not send the route we had come for (Tough Enough), but hell, we climbed our asses off and the trip was a huge success, chain or no chain.

But this time, on The Nose, I felt failure. It has taken some time and reflection, but now I think I know why. My motivation was not from my heart. I climbed the route to satisfy my ego, to prove something to myself and to others. And that’s exactly why I felt failure. I hate to sound so negative. I learned so much from working that route. I grew in so many ways as a climber and I think as a person. But failing to send felt different this time.

On top of that, I fucked up my health, before and during the trip. Since returning to Europe, my recovery has been slow. It took me a couple of months to get rid of my toe fungus and my feet are not the same anymore, they hurt a lot. I lost weight during The Nose project, and now my body is taking back what it needs.

This confinement is a really good opportunity to listen to my body in a different way. It’s not the first time that my body has tried to tell me these things, but it may be the first time I listen. The big challenge to me now is to settle into myself, and to trust in life. I try not to analyse or to judge, and I simply observe.

I cry sometimes because I miss climbing so much. At the same time, I feel like my body is enjoying this break. It is incredible to see how much time climbing takes up in my normal life. I give so many hours to my passion, and I don’t regret a moment of it. I am taking this opportunity to catch up with my other interests, do mental exercises, and enjoy time. However long we are in confinement, there is no doubt that I’m going to climb all my life long.

I can see how challenging this situation is for all of us, and also how much we can learn from it. I truly believe that life will be different “after” the corona virus, and I’m very curious and excited to see in which direction we’re going to evolve.

I grew up with a fear of drugs. My mother has smoked cigarettes since she was a teenager and she grew up in a family touched by alcoholism. So she raised her 3 kids, Cathrin, Arno and Nina surrounded by the fear that we could get addicted to drugs. She made us a deal: if we didn’t take up smoking before we turned 18, she would pay for a big trip. I made use of that money when I was 22 to go to Argentina, Tuzgle, one of my first climbing trips!

When I was a teenager I would sneak around and party with alcohol on the weekends, along with all of my friends. I never smoked cigarettes, though. I hated my mom’s smoking and wanted nothing to do with that. I also refused to smoke weed or to take any drugs.

Despite my weird relationship with drugs and my fears of addiction, I’ve always been addicted to sports, especially climbing. When people try to explain the effects of getting stoned, I see no difference from when I climb on rocks. Climbing in total flow changes my perceptions: my eyes are wide open, my pupils are huge even in the full sun, my breath is calm despite the physical effort, my muscles don’t know fatigue. I feel like I’ve become a magician, that I have super powers. Every gesture is natural, fluid and guides me to the summit.

Nina CAPREZ and Cédric LACHAT climb Orbayu, pitch 5, 8c – Naranjo de Builnes, Picos de Europa, Spain.

For almost 10 days we have been confined due to COVID-19 and to be truly honest with you, so far it has been one of the richest experience of my life. As a life-long climber and a bit of a rebel, it’s nice to just follow the rules for once. The government has put restrictions on us, severely limiting our movements and activities, to protect vulnerable people. It feels right to work together and to contribute, knowing that lots of people on the planet are going through the same.

The confinement makes room for new things, it brings us closer together, and crazy and stupid ideas are coming to life! For example, last night. I had the courage to open up myself imposed limits concerning drugs. I got stoned, for the very first time in my life. It went bad, I lived one of the worst moment of my life. I became very negative and dark, aggressive, mad, I completely lost my shit.

After a cold shower this morning and a cup of coffee, I realized that the choices that I made in the past were right. This state of flow I get into while climbing is very powerful in my life. I do not feel it when I do other activities, even those that require great concentration. No drug could replace that state of flow I am in while climbing.

My fear and resistance, even judgement, about drugs, has been with me since childhood, since my mother instilled in us the fear that she felt in her childhood. I am living now with people who do not have the same fears. I’ve listened without judgement, to learn about other people’s experiences, and it helps me to break down my fear. There is some wisdom in their approach, and I’m learning that it is ok to release control once in a while.
But honestly, I thank God that he has gifted me with climbing. In my point of view, it’s the best and healthiest addiction I could have.

What could I learn from this, that I could not learn any other way?

It has been a while since my last writing. To be honest, I’m not really good at it. I can only write about a climbing adventure, a performance, or something extraordinary I did in my career. I’m having a hard time writing my emotions down, I’m afraid of showing something than my strong side. But the current circumstances are perfect for writing about deeper things. So I will try.

For the last 15 years, climbing has been my guideline in life. I have built my career, my income, and my relationships on my passion for climbing adventures. I have always climbed routes that I was psyched for and at some point, other people got inspired and supported me. I know what I want to do, what drives me, and I go for. Having a passion for something is such a gift!

I grew up doing all kinds of sports. When I got into ski touring and scrambling in the mountains at the age of 13, I found myself challenged every single day and I couldn’t get enough. By the age of 17 I was getting more and more into rock climbing, and I learned that how important it is to have a healthy body and strong mind to improve.

Since then I push my limits, I simply love it. My curiosity to see how far I can go is a real addiction. This curiosity has occupied every single hour of every day for the last 20 years. I live climbing, I dream climbing, I eat and drink climbing. It is always there. Because of this strong driving force, I have refused everything that could take me off route or slow me down. I calculated everything, not always consciously, but still. In my climbing, my movement on rock, I’m very freestyle, in the absolute flow. But the rest of my life I have kept a little bit tight.

For almost two years now, I can feel myself getting tired of hanging on so tight.  In 2018, I teamed up for the first time with Lynn Hill and that was a game changer for me.

We became partners, but more than that, she became a trusted friend. She somehow showed me that there is a way to be an athlete and a wonderful and generous person at the same time.

She has been very honest about her experiences and the choices she made in her life. The more time we spent together, especially hanging on a big wall, the more I opened up and  learned about life.

Today I’m 33 years old (the age of Christ!) and I think it’s time to let go of certain things and to make some room for other things to grow.

This opportunity to stay home here, without so much distraction, how can I use it to find my inner voice, my intuition. When I am climbing a route, moving on rock, my experience and intuition guides me to climb the rock as I find it. I know what the moves will be, I can guess what the next hold will feel like. How to I find that inner intelligence on the ground? In my relationships? To move through life without fear, freestyle, like I do when I climb?