I had a really good weekend. It was filled with TV shows, delicious food, and of course some adventures that I have and have not done. With my Friend D we went out to Pensacola and made a plan to go and have some fun. One of these ideas was to go ahead and climb at UWF. They had top rope there and I hadn’t done top rope before so we thought it might be fun to let me try a new way of climbing. So I got a little tour of the UWF gym that they had. Let me tell you that these guys went all out on building this place. They had a track, a basketball course, a tennis course, A climbing wall, a track, and a gym with all the equipment you need. It was so awesome to see but of course we ran into a little bit of an issue. The wall was closed on Fridays.
A little frustrated but trying to stay positive we looked up other areas to see if there was somewhere else we could go. There was and so we went back to the car and made the twenty minute drive there. We had some trouble finding where to go and for a bit I was sure we were going to be totally lost. After some fumbling we got inside and found that man of the hour. We decided to go ahead and sign the forms, pay the fee and see how it goes.
We got the instructions on how to use to top rope, how to climb and help each other out. We would take turns. One would climb and the other was your spotter. I quickly became nervous since the instructor was watching our every move. He was nice but made me super nervous. We decided to go ahead and use a Belay device. Basically it helps your partner get up and down the wall safely. The belay is attached to the person and anchor at the bottom. You have to keep the climbers rope night and tight while they climb so that they don’t trip or get tangled in the rope as they go. Then once they reach the top you have to bring them down safely and make sure to not just let them go completely. The second part I had a lot of trouble with.
Mostly because its a lot of strength involved and D is twice my weight. The person who climbs leans back and the spotter then had to slowly let go of the lever and feed rope back through the belay. Let me tell you that I was so nervous of dropping D it was unnerving. Luckily he’s climbed a lot (since he was 3 years old) so he wasn’t nervous about it and trusted me completely. Personally I thought that was a mistake but since he’s still alive I guess it all turned out ok.
After the first session the instructor left us alone and I felt much better with it being just the two of us. Not only was it better for me because I had someone who wasn’t being all judgy of the fact that I had never done this before but I also knew that D was calmer then the instructor. So with that we continued on for about an hour and a half. We both took turns and had some fun on the wall. I was able to climb about thirty feet with no issue and that was nice since I’m usually weird about heights.
Once we were done I felt like a champion and luckily D was nice about the whole thing. Truth be told I’m really starting to enjoy climbing quite a bit and even though learning new things makes me a little nervous that’s totally ok. Somehow I got through it.
Have any of you guys done any climbing? Top Rope, Belay, Bouldering?
