Something Completely New

Last week I tried a new sport. No, I'm not going to give up cycling anytime soon, but I was participating in a Boy Scout camping trip and they--the Scouts--wanted to rock climb. "Sure," I said, "why not, it'll be a hoot."

We prepared by going to a local climbing gym and getting checked off for belay and safety--you know, how to use the equipment and tie the knots. Once that was out of the way, we spent a few hours climbing. I got fairly confident with my skills and though it was painful, I was looking forward to climbing on real rock. I was like the novice mountain biker who has ridden a couple of times on a bike path and thought they could handle the real thing.

Naivete is a wonderful thing.

First, some differences between climbing in a gym and climbing on real rock:
1) handholds are NOT clearly marked on real rock.
2) what handholds you find are not nicely shaped or rounded. They are, in fact, painful to hold on to.
3) getting off the ground is often the hardest part of climbing the real thing. Not so in a gym.
4) the real rock is much, much taller.

The similarities are:
1) you will feel like your arms are going to fall off.

That's it.

So I approached this activity with enthusiasm... on the first day. On the second, I approached it with a little dread. I am sure that the novice mountain biker feels the same dread after having--barely--completed the ride of the previous day is told that day two will be similar, but slightly harder even though the novice rider is still sore from the day before.

Without going into too much detail, I'll say that I did better the second day than the first. I discovered that I can hang on the rope--thanks belay guy!--and recover for a bit. And by "for a bit" I mean a good 10 to 15 minutes. Vultures were circling. I also discovered that if I didn't worry about what might be in there, I can stuff my entire arm in a crack and use it as a handhold, though I'm not sure what would have happened had I fallen with my arm stuck in a crack.

It was fun, but I'm not hooked. It was a whole lot of work without the downhill reward. But, it did open my eyes a little to those that are entering our sport. What is easy to us, isn't so easy to someone who is on their second ride, or their second ride off road. How do we prepare them for what's in store? I was climbing in regular lightweight hiking shoes, had I been using climbing shoes it might have helped. How often do we let newbies use equipment that isn't in good working condition or just isn't up to the task?

I think that if we really want more people to walk away saying "this is something I want to get into" we need make the first two or three rides as fun as possible. Let them enjoy that downhill and the work to get to the top just might be forgotten.