The year 2012 is saying goodbye and I'm looking forward to the fresh start. The weather here is playing with us all the time. Not so good for climbing outside but perfect to get creative and make some Christmas presents, do some fingerboard training, running, pull ups and other stuff to get fit.

A while ago I went to Podrta gora (a talus spot nearby) together with Gašper. It was pretty wet so we did a lot of searching (walking), found new blocks, built some landings and worked on a hard project before the dark . In one word, we did some hard work. I was crushed at the end of the day.

Sometime ago I read an article Women in Climbing on Jamie Emerson's blog: B3bouldering. It's an interesting discussion about where women's climbing is today if we compare it to men's.

This chapter is interesting and it made me think:

'' Women are not the ones hiking to the boulders with rope, harness and wire brush to clean and climb the newest boulders. This is one obvious niche that has yet to be filled in the growth of our sport. The argument could be made that only a small percentage of the total number of men that climb develop new problems, and if more females did climb, the number of female developers would increase. Conversely, almost no women have done any significant first ascents of classic problems at the best climbing areas.''

Here is how I see the developing and first ascents: I like the searching and all the work that comes with it. But to be honest. I'm just a follower. I join the group of guys, we do all the work together and sometimes it happens that I'm the first one to climb the new line. If it wasn't for Gašper I would never get the idea to go searching for new blocs by myself, but I'm always happy to come along. I don't know why that is. In my head, I'm still lost in all the existing problems I want to do and I'm usually not the first one to encourage everybody to do some searching&cleaning. But at the end, all the best and most exciting climbing days around home (if I don't count trips) happened when we did some FA's. Maybe it's just a matter of time when girls will go out and climb some future classics. We'll see...