Last year I was briefly employed as an outdoor activity instructor. I didn’t actually do any teaching but I was paid for two days of training to enlarge my repertoire from just archery and fencing.
The bit of training I was most excited about was climbing. I used to climb a bit. When I was a student in Canterbury, we used the climbing walls as training for caving, since caves are in short supply on the east side of the country. But I haven’t done a lot of climbing since and if I hadn’t already known my legs don’t have much strength, I definitely discovered it at the selection day. So since I was going to be learning to teach people to climb, I thought it was time I got some climbing practice in.
Conventional wall climbing is difficult on your own – no wall allows self-belaying, clubs are not typically welcoming to newcomers (who wants to trust their life to a stranger, when the only way to test it is to do it for real?) and I don’t have any friends who want to go anywhere near a wall.
But there’s a great bouldering centre nearby. Bouldering is like climbing but you don’t wear a harness and you don’t go higher than you can jump down. Before I could join, I had to do an induction session – and also, although I’ve been bouldering before, I’ve never been shown how to do it properly.
So off I went, dusty chalky climbing shoes in hand. First up was some admin – sign the form to say that you understand that bouldering is inherently dangerous and it’s not the centre’s fault if you cause yourself a major injury. Then a warmup. I haven’t played It (or tag, or tig, or whatever you called it) since I was in junior school. I’m still not a lot better at it now. Then some dynamic stretching. I’ve never heard of “dynamic stretching” before. That comprised our warmup and answered the question I had from the Ts&Cs on the website, that “all climbers must warm up first”.
The bulk of the induction was a tour of the centre – well, a tour of the climbing hall. Here’s the open area, here’s a slackline, here’s what to do in the event of a fire or major incident, here are the sofas and the beanbags (to be lounged on, not landed on) and here are the walls.
Most of the walls have a red paint stripe at the top, meaning you can’t climb on top. One block you can – and the safest way back down is via the slide. Oh yes. We tested this theory by climbing the corner of the block on easy red holds. First climb: no problem.
Then we were introduced to the main walls – don’t stand too close, don’t climb on tops, this is how the route colours work. Go and climb while I lounge on the beanbags.
So we did. We did easy black and blue routes, although I’m more fond of rainbow than anything else, where you don’t follow a route but just grab whatever’s handy. What felt really weird, though, was that you could go relatively high. Not crazy high but a lot higher than I felt comfortable without a harness. And then you have to climb back down. I’ve never climbed down a wall. You let go and your belayer lowers you. That’s the way it’s always been. But on a bouldering-specific wall, where there is no harness, you climb down or you jump – and I don’t jump.
We finished a quick go on the slackline and that was it, induction finished. I have such a love-hate relationship with slacklines. That is, I think they’re great fun but also I just can’t do it and never have been able to and some part of my brain takes that as a personal failing. I know my balance isn’t pinpoint-perfect but I went weekly to a slacklining club for months and I never learnt to take even one step, while these sleek and beautiful goddesses were doing yoga on the things.
The end of the induction was when I should have left, gone for the swim I had planned. But we were allowed to stay and climb unsupervised and it felt like cheating not to at least spend five minutes at it. What’s the point in saying “I’m going to get back into climbing” and then taking every opportunity to not climb?
Mistake! My first couple of attempts were small and unambitious and unremarkable. But then I tried to follow my fellow inductees up a blue route onto the slanted top of the boulder block. I couldn’t get onto the slanted bit, not without trusting my life to my knees and I didn’t trust that they’d grip well enough. So I tried to climb down. Not enough holds. It didn’t take long to panic. Fellow climbers were unable to help – I mean, physically they’re not allowed. “Put your hand on the round pink hold” was no help because it has no grip. “Put your foot down on the blue one” was no help because I’m not Mr Tickle. Hands get sweaty, arms start to hurt, panic starts to be really unhelpful. In the end, I jumped – by which I mean a semi-deliberate fall backwards onto the mat. I landed beautifully – land, fall and roll, hands flung backwards. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, deliberately hurling myself backwards off a wall. What was a bit irking was standing up and discovering the hold my feet were on was about waist-high. It was less a jump and more of an extra-large step.
I cut my losses. Go for that swim. You can swim. You’re not overly talented at climbing. That said, climbing followed by swimming isn’t a great idea. My arms were pretty much useless by then and remained so for the rest of the evening, including the fifteen mile drive home.
And I did go again, although I never qualified as a climbing instructor.
Since I never got paid to teach climbing, if you’d like to pop a few pennies my way, I have a Ko-fi here.
I blog every Monday & Thursday – Monday’s blog takes a leap off the top of a mountain as I do my highest ever paraglide. Do I crash? Do I get the lines tangled? Come back on Monday to find out.