Earlier this week I tried rock climbing and now I am definitely feeling it. Like any sport (if you haven’t done it before) you will experience sore and aching muscles after the first time out, or in this case, the first time up. I learned the basics of climbing and belaying. Was the belaying really supposed to be harder than the climbing? We spent a lot of time learning the belaying, and tying on, but for climbing we didn’t get any instruction (other than don’t climb until your belayer is ready!).

My first trip up the wall I didn’t think about the height, at least not until I made the mistake of looking down. That person holding my rope down there sure looked small? It felt unnatural being so high up with only little fake rocks to grab ahold of. A few deep breaths and encouragement from my friends below enabled me to scale the wall like Spider man all the way to the top. Once I got used to the ‘repelling down’ part of the activity, I was a lot less worried about falling and the height was no longer a concern.

After climbing for a while, we watched how a pro does it. They appeared to dance over the rocks instead of ‘climb’ like the rest of us. Rock climbing is a beautiful sport when you watch someone do it right (I wasn’t quite there yet). Clearly it was going to take me a lot of practice to move gracefully over the rocks, but it sure would be fun trying. I am definitely looking forward to the next opportunity to rock climb. Too bad I don’t have a rock wall in my back yard because it would get a lot of use. Then again, I would need someone to belay me, or at least encourage me when I got too high up the wall!