I want to be a documentary filmmaker, so I made a documentary about a successful man. Whenever you want to make a film about a climbing area, there’s usually a guy. THE guy. Sometimes it's a woman, but if you want your film to be about route development its almost always a guy. I was living in Madrid last year and got a tad hyperfixated on the concept of route development and bolting. I wanted to understand who is doing it, why, and with what money. When I decided La Pedriza was my muse, it was evident that Talo would be my subject. 

Climbers have an intimate relationship with pain. From the nauseating pump of long routes to fingertips torn open on jagged granite, they choose to suffer for the sport they love and the goals they chase. But there is another kind of pain, one that half of climbers endure, that is far less voluntary. It is a pain British climber Willow Petrobelli knows too well, striking every month: “I’m basically crippled for the three days at the start of my period, and there’s not really much I can do about that,” she says. Yet despite living with this cycle of pain throughout her career, Willow – like many others – has been expected to stay quiet about it and continue to perform at her peak, regardless of where she is in her menstrual cycle.

At some point this winter, I decided I would go to Ceuse this summer. It felt a bit like a calling. It was apparently where I needed to be so I listened and I left. I left my 9 month life I had built in Madrid and went somewhere new where I thought I knew no one. After a 15 hour travel day, I made it to the camping, where a friend from high school appeared miraculously. The universe said you are ok, you have friends here, you have friends wherever you go. So I stayed a month. More friends came. More friends made.  I arrived in my follicular phase ready to start anew. My ovulatory phase came so I easily  made new friends, started my project, and pushed my limits.