Climbing

I was afraid for my life today. That hasn't happened to me very many times, but you sure don't forget it when it does. Your heart pounds and you can feel the adrenaline pumping through you. And then afterward, you're all shaky and trying to calm down. I'm getting a little amped just thinking about it.

Lately, Sam and I have kicked around the idea of learning how to rock climb at a climbing gym. It's great exercise, goes hand in hand with the hiking and scrambling we do, and would also be a great activity for Izzy, (Sam's 7 year old daughter.) So today we decided to go for it. We headed down to Stone Gardens in Ballard this morning and purchased an hour with an instructor and gear--pretty reasonable at $43.00 total for 2 non-members. She's never done it before, and I've only done it once at REI a long time ago. So we don't know dick.

We did, however, meet Matt. He technically wasn't there to instruct us, but just to belay us. (That means hold the rope so we don't die.) But he gave us lots of pointers, and made the whole thing fun. I especially liked the part where Sam wanted down, and he told her he wouldn't let her down until she got on top of the next ledge. And the part where she started complaining about her arms, and he said, "We can't hear you. Just climb to the top!"

Sam did great, though. She climbed to the top of a couple of walls--I was very proud! I did too, but the last one was where the excitement happened. Matt told me I should try the automatic belay. This is a small metal box hanging from the ceiling, (pretty freakin' high), by the top of the wall. It has a nylon web strap coming out of it that runs down to an anchor on the ground. You unhook it from the ground, hook it to your harness and start climbing. If you let go or fall, it's supposed to only let out the 'rope' at a certain speed--so you can rappel down the rock. I didn't trust it. He told me it was safer than having him belay me, but that was a waste of his breath. Then he said to climb up about 10 feet and test it. For you metric system fanatics, that's how high a basketball hoop is. So I get there and he tells me to go a little farther. Apparently you need to start falling for it to start applying tension and slow you down. This is falling backwards off the wall, mind you. I did it, and it worked, but it was scary as hell. It also lets you down a little faster than I was comfortable with. Then I let him talk me into climbing farther. For some stupid reason, summit fever I guess, I decided to continue all the way to the top--maybe 30 or 40 feet. At that point I had no alternative but to let myself fall backwards and trust that I wouldn't just plummet to my death. It's pretty hard to believe that the rope won't just come out of that little box as fast as you pull it. I had to overcome my silly little survival instinct to do that, and when I finally made the decision to let go, I got a serious jolt of adrenaline--so much so that I had to really focus just to perform the relatively simple task of rapelling. My heart was pounding so hard I was seeing white pulses in my head and when I got to the bottom, I was shaking. Maybe I'm just a weenie.

The climbing was hella fun, and I look forward to learning more about it and getting better. And I'm really happy that Sam liked it too. But I don't know if I'll ever be able to trust those damn automatic belays!