Let's get this out there right up front: I don't climb mountains. I am rather fearful of heights and one if the most frightening things I've ever done was to rappel from a three-story rooftop during some form of SWAT-style training Scared the bejesus out of me and I froze for quite some time -- measured perhaps with an hourglass - before I stepped off into the rappel. Someone sent me this link to Catherine Destivelle's free-climb solo ascent in Mali and I was fascinated. I felt like sharing.
She has her own website -- doesn't everyone? -- at http://www.destivelle.com/en/profile.aspx which has a short bio of her. At 51 and with a teenaged son, she doesn't climb as much or travel as far as she once did, but her accomplishments are legendary.
When I was a kid, maybe fourteen, family friends took another kid and I up to New Hampshire into the White Mountains. We hiked Mt. Monadnock, which is near the White Mountains, although not actually part of the chain. I didn't make the summit, but it was an adventure, nonetheless. Ever since then, I have had a fascination, at a distance, for mountains and the people who climb them, especially the ones who climb like Destivelle.
As you watch this video, I wonder if you see the similarity I do to the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo people. The long-abandoned home of a tribe of pygmies in Mali looks like Chaco or one of the other cliff cities in the Southwest.
Enjoy.
Climbing tends to be more of a challenge for women because we typically do not have the upper arm strength of men. We have a lot more leg strength. Her upper arm strength in this video is impressive for anyone, male or female. It also looks like she specifically chose more difficult routes just for the fun of it.
ReplyDeleteI used to climb some waterfalls unaided, but never attempted an overhang even with equipment. :P