In Search Of The Summit

Being a climber isn't easy. There's the early morning wake up calls for road trips to competitions and crags. There are the late nights in the gym. The mornings when you're so stiff and sore you contemplate calling in to work with H1N1 just to get a couple days off because your body hurts all over. The countless dollars spent on shoes, chalk, harnesses, gas, cliff bars etc. But worst of all, is having Climbers Hands. Hands with torn skin, ripped calluses, and dried out from using chalk.

You know, the kind of hands women typically don't want anywhere near them (Luckily for me, my woman rock climbs and is quite forgiving).

Do you suffer from climbers hands?

Well my friend, REJOICE for I have found the holy elixir. The key to soft yet tough skin (The name could be a little less feminine, I warn you of this now):

Lemony Flutter by LUSH

Seriously, this stuff is magic in a container. Typically takes me a little over a week to heal my hands from a competition using regular store bought moisturizer for 'dry and damaged skin'. After my last competition, I went in to lush with Hilary to poke around for a bit since we were in the market. Long story short, the sales girl introduced me to Lemony Flutter, I tried it and my hands felt better from the first application, so I bought it. Using it twice a day (once in the morning, and once when waking up) my typically dry, cracked and torn hands look like those of a normal human being. Two thumbs up for this stuff.

For those unfamiliar with LUSH, get out from under the rock you've been living in. I've pulled their mission statement from their website:

We believe in making effective products from fresh, organic* fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics.

We invent our own products and fragrances. We make them fresh by hand using little or no preservative or packaging, using only vegetarian ingredients, and tell you when they were made.

We believe in buying ingredients only from companies that do not commission tests on animals and in testing our products on humans.

We believe in happy people making happy soap, putting our faces on our products and making our mums proud.

We believe in long candlelit baths, sharing showers, massage, filling the world with perfume and in the right to make mistakes, lose everything and start again.

We believe our products are good value, that we should make a profit and that the customer is always right.

Chemical free, handmade and mostly vegan friendly... can't go wrong.