Southern Smoke 8c+ by Anna Liina Laitinen

Anna Liina Laitinen (26), who is doing University studies in Finland, has done her first 8c+, Southern Smoke in Red River Gorge. This spring she also did her first 8b+ and first 8c. (c) Matty Hong What is your climbing background? I started climbing 2007 immediately when I saw a climbing wall. I've always dreamed about climbing but I didn't know that was possible in Finland. The climbing gym where I started was 1,5 hours away from my home but I was happy to take those 3 different buses to get there even I had time to give only couple of burns. How much travelling are you doing nowadays? This year has been crazy! I've never traveled this much! I guess I've done 10-12 trips this year including the competitions? I'm lost on track. But I'd love to be able to do it even more in the future or stay abroad a little longer. How can you explain your fast progress in the last year? Travelling, training and the company I've been climbing with. One year ago I started training a lot, more than ever. But the progress is not only explained by training hard but the biggest improvement has been in a mental part of climbing and caused by just climbing a lot in a different places, different routes, and pushing myself to a situations I'm not feeling the most comfortable with. The company I've spent time and traveled have had a huge impact to my climbing as well. When your friends are climbing hard you naturally start trying harder routes. And I'm sure I wouldn't climb this hard without my positive boyfriend Matty Hong who's super psyched as well. Being super motivated and psyched to climb is my secret. And there's no end for it which is scary!