Climbing?

Yes, I think I like it :-). A good friend of mine told me about this climbing class at Stone Gardens, which is an indoor climbing gym in the Ballard section of Seattle. Now we're taking the class together and it is really, really fun! Yesterday we had a beginner's technical class that actually took over two hours. The steps and procedures involved in climbing are not very difficult, but it takes a while to get the hang of it. Foremost, you really have to follow safety steps prior to each climb. By the end of the class we got the basics down, which included tying a rope to a harness, conducting a safety check, practicing commands such as "belay on" and "climbing", and belaying, which means pulling and holding the other end of the rope that your partner--who is doing the climbing--has. All that was left was to climb and we did a couple of runs on some easy climbs.

Today we learned some basic climbing techniques (such as how to place your feet) and then we climbed for about 2 hours and it was really fun again. I tried some more difficult climbs, including a 5.7 (that's the difficulty rating) that I couldn't finish. One soon learns that when climbing vertically, the hands get tired very quickly.

The class is once every week for the next month so I'm very excited. Additionally, I can stop by at the gym anytime to climb this time period, and I think I'll take advantage of it.

[Backdated on 03/10/2006]