A trip to America is not an easy thing… But the decision has been maturing for a long time, so I could prepare everything. Now I won’t touch upon the question about getting visa, if anybody is interested in it, I can tell him this information in a private talk.

A ticket to Boston was bought to the 27th of July, and on that day I took off. I paid a visit to Vasiliy Vorotnikov, who had promised me a large climbing and not only climbing program. It’s a pity, but we didn’t manage to climb in Rumney, we went to Colorado to climb bouldering. The way wasn’t short (the distance was more than 3000km), especially because we were traveling by car, but, on the other hand, we had passed almost all the continent through and that was my first acquaintance with America.

I liked Colorado a lot – in the middle of the rather deserted and plane area suddenly appeared mountains, and moreover they were not low. We stopped in Daniel Woods’s house, where, how it appeared later, were living about 6 more climbers, and even such monsters as Paul Robinson and Matt Bosley were among them. Certainly, we went climbing all together and on my eyes those guys did boulders of 8a category and higher in a few attempts, so I could only open the mouth and take photos. One of the best bouldering regions in Colorado was situated in Rocky Mountain National Park, it was placed highly in the mountains, so we had to walk a lot. For the first time I was afraid of the height of boulders – about 4 meters, and the places for falling didn’t seem to be suitable, but some days ago I got accustomed to this. The rocks there were wonderful – something like granite, but not sharp at all, the routes were mostly hanging, both with very small sharp and sloping holdings.

We climbed like all normal people – 2 days of trainings and 1 day off, but what was unusual – nothing could tear these guys off from the wall, they started climbing in the morning and continued until it got dark, and sometimes even when it had got dark, they tried to climb with lanterns, as for me this order wasn’t easy. Moreover, I had to climbed with men (Vasiliy, Daniel, and other), so I tried different routes of 8a and higher categories and realized with grief that most of them are too difficult for me. I wished to climb something easier: 7b-7c, but there in Rocky Mountain were only few routes of these categories, we hadn’t many mates and nobody wanted to belay me. As a result in 10 day climbing in Colorado I managed to climb several boulders of 7b, two of them I did flash (one was named “potato chip”, the name of the other I didn’t remember), several of 7b+, but on the boulders of 7c I couldn’t get a success, I did all the movings, but couldn’t connect them in a route: sometimes it started raining, sometimes – got dark…

After climbing in Colorado we went to Salt Lake City, Utah state. A big sport exhibition and competitions in bouldering climbing were taking place there. The competitions were very different from those that are hold in our country. In qualification and in final rounds there were only 4 routes, two of them were so easy that even girls of 10-13 years could manage to climb them, so it was difficult to get your own place. They calculated special points to find the result: every holding cost certain amount of points and there were also bonus points for on-sight. As a result, Matt Bosley, who climbed up to the end 3 routes became the second, the first place won Ethan Pringle, who managed to climb only two routes but from the first attempt, and on the third route he reached the last but one holding. Chris Sharma became the 3rd and didn’t impressed me much, it seemed that he didn’t like to climb at the climbing stadiums at all. As for me, I became the 8th, and hadn’t understand why. I was greatly surprised with the climbing technique (or saying correctly with the lack of it) of most of the climbers there. It was felt that they on principle didn’t set their foots, and routes were done corresponding, but, on the other hand all the climbers there were very powerful.

Being not satisfied with the competitions, we decided to climb routes in Maple Canyon (not far from the Salt Lake). This place impressed me a lot – it was a huge strongly hanging wall, the length of the routes sometimes reached 40 loops. But the most interesting was the structure of the rock: it was felt that someone had taken different stones both big and small, round and angular, and cemented them all together (in Russia we have such fences). There were a lot of holdings and they were really big, but one got tired so that even didn’t feel one’s hands. The most difficult route there was a route of the category of 8c, but it was not easy at all – there were very few people who had enough hardiness to climb it up to the end. In a period of 3 days I succeeded in climbing two 7c (one of them I did on-sight), one 7c+ and one 8a, for me that was not bad at all. After climbing in Maple Canyon we turned back to Colorado to climb more boulders, what the weather didn’t satisfy our wishes at all.

On the other hand I was lucky enough to get a chance to find myself on the concert of Red Hot Chili Peppers devoted to an output of their new album. Speaking honestly, it was the best spectacle I saw in my life, although I often go to concerts. Possibly, it’s the most bright my impression from visiting America.

So it came the end of August and it became time to go back, but in the meanwhile not to Moscow, but New Hampshire, where Vasiliy lived. There we one day climbed in Rumney, it was a very nice place: many massives and difficult routes and very specific climbing (problems with foots). Vasiliy tried to climb Joss 9a, it was the only route he hadn’t climb in Rumney, at last he managed to do all moovings on it, so we are waiting for the result… As for me, I did one 7c… and on this my climbing trip had gone to the end. And although I didn’t succeeded in climbing something supernatural, I think that I had a good training practice and got the acquaintance with America.