Rock Climbing - Day 1

Well, on that first day, I managed to climb for an hour and a half (with some short rest periods between climbs). I'm not expecting to be able to climb that much on future days due to life getting in the way, and of course the muscle fatigue that I'm sure will set in, but for my first day, I figured that was pretty good. I quickly discovered that my forearms are much weaker than I thought, and they were going to have to get stronger pretty fast or I was not going to get much climbing done. My hands also got sore, but that I had expected. I took the advice of the desk attendant and did a little traversing, and then I scoped out the V0 climbs. I tried them, and to my great surprise, I managed to finish quite a few of them! I guess I haven't lost all of my upper body strength that I gained as a tree-climbing child after all; I was pretty proud of myself for that.

Another discovery that I made is that I am more afraid of heights than I realized. I've always known I'm mildly afraid of them when I shied away from steep drop-offs on roads or hiking trails, or clung tightly to the railings when up in observation towers, but when rock climbing and not having a rope and belayer to catch me, or even a spotter, I was not as brave as I needed to be to complete some of the routes. I had been to Boulders before, and had been climbing in other places as well (always indoors), but almost every time, I had a rope to catch me or at least I had been with friends who kept an eye on me. Not knowing anyone around me, and not having any sort of safety gear scared me a little bit. That's something I definitely need to work on if I'm going to complete all of these climbs!

Overall, it was a good day for climbing. As the proverb says, "every great journey begins with a single step", and that's what I did today. I am on my way to my year full of experiments. Although I realized climbing had been fun in the past partially thanks to fun friends to climb with, I am proud of myself for taking the initiative and going on my own, just me versus the wall. So after my first day of climbing, I went home, sore but satisfied (and also famished)...thank the Lord for grilled cheese!