If you can’t tell, I absolutely love being active. I wish I could get up to the mountains everyday, but given the whole, “you need to pay your bills” situation, I’ve accepted my weekend (and every other friday) warrior status.
And honestly, there are those days in the winter when it’s just brutally cold or unsafe and I don’t really want to be up in the mountains. I like a challenge, but I know myself. And I’m not the girl who likes freezing her ass off while the wind gets seven levels of aggressive with me. No thank you.
With these things in mind, and the fact that I have been wanting to try it for a while, when I stumbled upon Earth Treks free intro to climbing belay class, it was clear that it was ON. I honestly need to up my weekly physical activity, so I posted it on one of the hiking groups I’m in and ended up meeting two other ladies who wanted to learn how to climb, too.
The class is approximately an hour long and you learn a LOT. And when I say free, both the class and renting shoes and a harness are free; no obligation to join the gym or buy anything. You also get a pass to climb after the class as well if you’re smart and actually ate dinner beforehand. I’ll be honest given it was free I didn’t have high expectations, but, and I mean this in an all caps kind of way, DAMN.
First of all, our instructor was named Kristin and she was amazing because everyone named Kristin is destined to be so. I could tell she‘s very passionate about climbing and actually likes teaching newbies. She was super patient the whole time and it honestly felt like learning from a very knowledgeable friend.
I won’t go into too much detail here because that’s what the class is for, but trust me when I say you learn so much for it being a very short amount of time. The first part of the course involved learning how to put on your harness and tying in. Next, we learned to anchor in and belay. Finally, after going through the safety checks and learning commands (sidebar: climbing language is zany, y’all) it was go time!
I’d only gone indoor bouldering once and this experience was definitely on a different level. My first climb up I most definitely made the mistake of looking down and got a little shaky, but once I started lowering and realized that I was not going to fall the nerves went away; just like that. Next it was time for me to be the belayer and I can definitely see why you partner up in this. There’s a lot of trust that goes into it and I got a feel for the rhythm and groove you would want to eventually get into with your partner(s), which is a pretty neat concept.
Even though I would’ve liked to keep on climbing, I was absolutely STARVING and if you have been around me when I’m hangry, it’s not pleasant. After Kristin gave us a tour of the gym we all decided to purchase the 15 day gym trial with rentals for $30 and I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to going back! We did get in one more climb each and I definitly had a- woah, am I really able to just dive right into it like this? Again, pretty dang neat.
I love that there’s so much to learn with climbing and it’s an ongoing challenge where you can push yourself. And it doesn’t hurt that, just like with photography, it goes hand in hand with hiking :). I’m excited to give this a go and see where it takes me. If you have any questions about climbing, I’m most definitely NOT the person to ask but I’m happy to let you know any details about how amazing this class was and would highly recommend it. Alright, time to go practice my figure eight because they even give us some retired rope to take home and practice with ❤️ . Big thank you, Earth Treks, what a great experience!
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