Climbing Beyond
by Emma Wood

The most insidious lie anxiety tells it's victims, is that it is stronger and more powerful than they can ever hope to be. I make no secret about it - I've been there myself. At times it felt like I was tiny, being tossed around inside a wave. Overwhelmed by the sheer power of the forces around me - totally without control, no matter how hard I fought to swim against the current. There is, however, another side to this story. This wave is created by the brain, and the 'anxiet

I spent some time this morning watching a video of Nalle Hukkataival, a Finnish climber, establishing the hardest boulder problem in the world. For the uninitiated, bouldering simply means climbing at low level over crash pads without using any ropes. They are called 'problems' because you have to work out how to climb them, and in this way are similar to mathematical problems and brain teasers. For Nalle, this particular problem was challenging because it had never been done