There Is A God For Lesser Climbers

It is a book about gaining faith in yourself and your abilities and doing what you love for as long as you can. At a difficult time in my life, I found a better way to go climbing and started going out on my own. Over the next six years I discovered local crags, built trails for accessing local crags, created new climbing routes, restored abandoned ones, and found my way in the hills. Along the way were beautiful sunsets, sunrises, endless vistas of San Diego's rugged backcountry, and discovering for myself that age is just a number.

It is a book about gaining faith in yourself and your abilities. I went through this journey in my mid-fifties as I was starting menopause and then found out I needed open heart surgery. I got back on track eventually and resumed my current obsession, sport climbing. My first year of climbing had been very frustrating. For the first time I was terrible at something athletic. My prospects for improving were poor. Menopause, lack of climbing partners, a less than ideal body type and joints stiffened by thirty years of endurance training all worked against me. Then after the surgery and change of life and other unpleasantness, it occurred to me I could figure out a better way to go and started going out on my own. My style of climbing ignored the rules for acceptable, proper climbing. But I stuck to my guns and it paid off in spades. Over the next six years I worked out an optimal self-belay setup, built a dozen or more trails for accessing local crags, created new climbing routes, restored abandoned ones, and found my way in the hills. Along the way were beautiful sunsets, sunrises, endless vistas of San Diego's rugged backcountry, and discovering that having faith in yourself is the best kind of faith.

The author graduated from Cornell University in 1983 with a B.S. in Biochemistry. She started but did not complete a doctoral program in Pharmacology at Cornell, finally leaving upstate New York for the sunny paradise of California in 1989. After several years of a nomadic existence as itinerant bike race and triathlon junkie, she settled into software engineering and earned a respectable living for the next twenty five years. She retired in May 2020 and immediately reverted to being an outdoor junkie, this time as climber and trail builder. [see photo of AboutTheAuthor.jpg photo] The author, then more commonly known as "The Osprey", is riding a Bike Friday around Qualcomm Stadium. It belonged to the person who took this photo. She and eight other volunteers would be loyal and unswerving crew members over the next twelve days in the 2012 edition of the epic endurance event, Race Across America. Yes, this is an older photo of me. I retired from ultra-endurance cycling in 2015. Oh, the reason I was riding around the stadium was for the crew to get used to driving the van, rather different from a sedan, as well as practice direct follow, "leapfrog" follow, and other essentials of a support team. Much easier here than in traffic and busy streets.