Climber Crush Wednesday featuring Midori Buechli
On 2/12/20, we featured a crusher from Toronto, Ontario in Canada, who refers to herself as a “tiny human woman”! So let’s not waste anymore time and introduce you to Midori Buechli @midoriontherocks! 🍤
What are your pronouns? She/Her/Hers
What are some things you would like the community to know about you? My name is Midori Buechli, I’m 30 years young. I grew up in Northern Ontario but now I live in Toronto. I love climbing; bouldering is my true love, but sometimes I can get into sport climbing too. I love my husband, my friends and my family and overall I’m just trying to have a good time in life.
How long have you been climbing, how did your climbing journey begin, and what caused you to fall in love with climbing? I started climbing in summer 2010. Hard to believe that it’s been almost 10 years! I first started going to the “bouldering room” at my university because of a guy I liked (now we’re married!) but after the first few visits, I was hooked. Pretty quickly I felt a major affinity for climbing. I grew up doing gymnastics, so the movement and the physical challenge really appealed to me. But what made me truly fall in love with climbing was the community. Overall, the vibes that I experienced at the gym were so positive, it was addicting. All my closest friends are the ones I have met through climbing. And then we started going on trips… what a game-changer! I was never very outdoorsy growing up, but as soon as I started climbing outside, something clicked. I fell in love with nature and I’m so thankful that climbing has given me that.
Last year, you took a year off to travel and climb. What was your favorite place you visited? And what was the best lesson you learned from your adventures? Last year was such a dream come true, we visited so many beautiful places and touched so many different rocks! But if I had to pick one as a favorite, I would have to say Hueco Tanks. That place is truly magical. The style of climbing there lends well to my strengths (crimps, roofs, heel-hooks, toe-hooks and the knee-bars!) and I was able to send my hardest boulder to date while I was there. While those factors may have influenced my decision, Hueco is just such a special place with fragile and beautiful flora and fauna and a very unique history. It’s hard to put into words, you just have to experience it! The most important lesson that I learned on the trip, and something that I am continuing to work on, is to control my emotions. I love projecting and pushing myself but I also have high expectations of what I should be able to do. There were many occasions when I expected to send and didn’t, and let me tell you, I shed some tears… I don’t want to use the word tantrum, but ya that’s basically what it was. I’m not saying that it’s bad to have emotions, I was upset because I really care about climbing and achieving my goals, but when your day (and consequently your partner’s day) turns to garbage just because you didn’t send, that’s a problem. Climbing is supposed to be Fun! So this is what I try to do now; have realistic expectations, celebrate progress not just sending, recognize when I am starting to get into a bad mood, give myself a time out. For my time out I need to walk away from the climb, because otherwise I will just be staring at it and saying WHYYYY!? Find a quiet spot alone and do some deep breathing exercises. Once I am calm-ish I tell myself “It’s just a rock, not being able to send it does not mean that I am bad at climbing.” Then I look around at the beautiful vistas and practice my gratitude. I try to choose one thing that I am grateful for and focus on that for some minutes. It sounds corny but it actually helps a lot! Climbing and having the resources to go on trips is a huge privilege that a lot of people don’t get to experience, so it’s good to get perspective sometimes!
We are so inspired by your never-ending psych and try hard. We’d love to know what goes through your mind when you approach a difficult climb. How do you try to turn the impossible into possible? I used to get intimidated by the grades on really hard climbs. Not so long ago, if you told me a climb was V10 I would laugh and walk away. At a certain point my mindset changed, now I’ll try anything (unless it looks really dangerous). If you think something is impossible, then it will continue to be impossible. I like to believe that anything is possible. For instance, last year a friend persuaded me to try Dark Age at Hueco Tanks. I had never even touched V11 before and the climb ends on a scary highball. Going into it, I had no expectations, but then I made decent progress on the opening moves and I started believing that it was possible. Over the next sessions I tried to link sections together but I hadn’t tried the top out yet. I went through a lot of trials and tribulations to convince myself to do the highball which is a 25-ft V6 in itself. There was a lot of down-climbing, dropping off and general beating myself up for being so afraid, but eventually I did the top out and then I practiced it many more times to get used to the feeling. On our very last day in Hueco I sent, and I cannot tell you how elated I felt in that moment! All that to say, there’s no reason not to try, you may surprise yourself!
What is your experience with being a shorty and tackling all these difficult climbs? Any tips for others? Watching tall people climb, while it might get me psyched about a certain problem, is often completely irrelevant to me and sometimes is a hindrance because then I get stuck thinking that their beta is THE beta and then I fail on it repeatedly instead of thinking for myself. One of my favorite things about climbing, especially outside, is that there are so many different ways to do things, you just need to apply some creativity. Shorty beta may involve crimping intermediates, heel-hooks, toe-hooks, getting really high feet… if you’re in a roof, how about going feet first? That’s my signature move lol. My main tip is believe that it’s possible and just try! And it if doesn’t work, try again OR try something different!
Do you have any training goals this year? What are some of your favorite training exercises? My main training goal for the year is to improve on explosive power, I think it will take my climbing to the next level. I just recently started using the moon board and the campus board (trying not to overdo it though, they are hard on the digits) and I think that they will be instrumental in helping me work on this goal!
Now that you’re transitioning back to “real life,” how do you hope to best balance work, life, and climbing? It was quite alarming at first to go from living in a van and spending all our time outside, to moving into an apartment and living in the busiest city in Canada. But we’re starting to get used to it and it’s nice to be able to spend more time with friends and family now that we’re back. My career in nursing is important to me as well and soon I will be starting a new role in Oncology which I’m really excited about. I like to believe that I can do it all; relationship, training/climbing, work, socializing! Just takes some time management skills!
Do you have any other words of wisdom to say to the climbing community? Whatever you’ve got, work it! I used to be super annoyed about my height, but there’s no sense in bemoaning something that I can’t change. I’ve developed a style of climbing that suits me and I love it. The human body is truly amazing in its capacity to adapt and perform. Love your bodies and love yourselves! Nothing is impossible.
