Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/24995
en again, it's by its fans-the most difficult way limbing is booming, thanks in part to the indoor "rock gym" raze. But as Phill ips says, "actually touching rock is more fulfill lng, it's fresher feeling, it's more raw, it's just more real." Her local ang is Indian Rock, a clump of grey boulders tucked into the hill ear Berkeley, California . No majestic mountainscape he and city workers are running tree but Patricia Phillips doesn't for the next hold. Her body rock, toes perched on fingers clamped tightly settles o��other chalk away. She;: recoils a rful y for her target. the rock just inches a foot and a half to Indian Rock is scruffy and decidedly un-awesome� Some of th oulders are only six feet high. But it's mi nutes from the freeway, nd the bus stops a block away. Bay Area rock jocks jonesing fo fix can get one here, fast. "With bou lders right in town, I can limb anytime," Phillips explains. Phillips and her friends split for work, Dave Altman pum the hill on his bicycle. He's built like a caveman: melon eltoids, steel-cable forearms, lats like dock ropes. Body b Indian Rock-he's been climbing here for twenty years. "This is my favorite time to climb," Altman grins, looking around empty park. "No one in my way. " After touch ing his toes a w times, Altman hits his circuit. He's memorized a comple ries of climbs on each boulder, which he repeats in ra pid-fi quence, like Holyfield in his private gym. U Boulders are my apparatus, U Altman explains. Zen. It's not important what or where I climb, or even ho ard. It's just the process, going out and climbing. It's medita