Haley Noehren - Assignment #20 - How to Rock Climb

Surprise! This post isn't about running! I get it, I don't look like a rock climber. My arms are basically two dimensional and have little to no muscle mass. Or mass at all. Well, fun fact, you don't even need arm strength to rock climb! It's surprisingly about flexibility, core, grip, and legs. So here's a few basic steps about how to rock climb. 

Conveniently, we have an indoor climbing gym in town which makes this a whole lot easier.

Step one: Get your gear.  Yeah this seems like a no brainier. But there are some tips about how the gear should fit and look. Lets start with the harness. When you put the harness on you want the waist to be tight, with the orange carabiner loop in the front. If you are ever unsure about how tight your waist strap is, try pulling up really fast on the orange loop and make sure it cant slide too far up your waist. Now tighten the legs. You can leave some more room here, cause your gonna want some extra flexibility on your legs. Now that everything is tight and secure, take your loops and double back them. What double backing basically means is take the tightening thingy and thread the belt back through it again, just for safety. 

Now on to shoes. Your feet should feel nice and comfy, right? Wrong! I usually wear a shoe size 9, but I climb in a size 8. It sounds awful, but for the best performance you are gonna want your toes to be nice and squished in the shoe. It should be a bit uncomfortable, but the tighter the shoe, the better foothold you'll get on the wall.

Last, but not least, chalk. The climbing place will give you a harness and shoes, but you'll have to buy this one on your own. Yeah, you can climb without it, but sweaty hands trying to grip a wall are not the best. Basically there is the sock of chalk in a bag that hangs from the back of your harness, which you sick your hand in and it coats your hand with, you guessed it, chalk. I makes your hands disgusting, but it helps A LOT with grip.

Step Two: Stretch! You are gonna be contorting and moving your body up a wall. It might help to get your muscles warm and loose. Once you feel ready, go pick a wall!

Step Three: Hook up your harness. This part is kinda important. When your reach the top, or fall, you might wanna be hooked into the rope to catch your fall. There are actually two ways to do this, Auto belay or belay. 

1) Auto belay. This type of wall has a machine that belays you. Hooking in your harness is pretty easy here. Just pull down the rope, and unhook the safety carabiner from the belay. Then take the thick carabiner and hook it into your harness. The auto belay carabiner is kinda hard to unhook. It's a two step carabiner, so you'll have to push down, twist, and then push in to unlock it. Once you are secure, you can climb and then fall back and coast down the wall!

2) Belay. Grab a buddy, cause this one is manual. You'll need someone who is belay certified if you wanna climb a wall with a normal rope. Once you find  buddy, unloop the rope and tie what I call the figure 8 knot. That knot should be relatively close to your harness. Once you do that, tie a safety knot a bit above the figure 8 one. Once you've done that, have your buddy check, and you make sure that they have the rope safely in the belay carabiner. If it's all good you'll say "belay", and your buddy should reply "belay on". Then you'll say "climb" and your buddy will reply with"climbing" or "climb on". Now you are set to climb! If at any point you need more or less rope, just yell at your buddy. And if you feel like you are gonna fall, say "falling". 

Step Four: Climb! There are so many ways and strategies to climbing, so I'll make this brief. Keep your body close to the wall. Like basically touching it. This helps keep your center of mass balanced. Use your legs. If your body is all stretched out on the wall, you are doing it wrong. Keep your legs up high so you can use them to push up to the next hand hold. Your legs should be near your chest-ish so that you can use them to keep moving up. Every wally has a crux- or the hard part. Just push through, re-position, and be creative to try and get around it. Once you past the crux, it's smooth sailing. 

Step Five: falling. If ya reach the top, please don't climb back down. You gotta trust the rope, you aren't gonna die. So, let go from the wall, put your hands on the rope, and fall back. Keep your legs out, and use them to push off the wall, you don't wanna flail into a rock. So just glide back and enjoy the ride down!

And that's it! Sorry for making you read this whole long thing about rocks and legs and chalk. But climbing is super fun, and if I can do it, you can too!