I just called RockQuest to confirm the height of their indoor climbing walls. As a former journalist, accuracy remains in my blood. The helpful employee told me 40-45 feet.
I’m glad I called, because in my mind, they were about 80-85 feet.
The first thing I did when I arrived at RockQuest, after meeting up with my friend Chris, was sign an unnervingly lengthy form.
“You’ve got to sign your life away,” Chris laughed as I pretended not to be a lawyer and scrawled away, ignoring the small print. “It’s OK. I haven’t lost anybody yet.”
Chris brought me into the large climbing area and as I stepped one leg after another in the harness, I looked up. Far up. I had forgotten, I suppose, that I’d developed a bit of a fear of heights in the last few years. As a kid, I climbed towering trees and scrambled up cliffs in the woods. Now, sometimes driving across bridges made me uneasy. It had been a while since I’d climbed anything this high.
Chris explained how he would belay me down the wall. We ran his rope through my harness and he showed me how to tie a knot called a re-sewn figure eight with a Yosemite finish. I couldn’t stop looking up the wall as he explained how reliable the knot is.
Then he said, “Belay is on.” I said, “Climbing,” and he replied, “Climb on.”
I surprised myself, and Chris, by scrambling up the first wall like some kind of spider monkey. Despite my pounding heart and nearly gasping lungs, my childhood in the woods came back to me like an old instinct.
Forty feet below I could hear Chris laughing.
“OK, this was clearly too easy. Let’s bump you up.”
I kicked myself off the wall and felt myself slowly lowering down. That wasn’t bad. I can do this.
The next time around, he let me tie the re-sewn figure eight with the Yosemite finish. And I leveled up to the next wall.
Rock climbing difficulty, Chris explained, is measured by numbers. An easy climb might be a 5.0 or 5.1. A tougher climb would be a 5.8 or 5.9. Only a few people in the world can climb a 5.15.
When I reached the top of the 5.5 wall, I eyed my knot. Had it looked that loose when I tied it? Had I done it right? I’d been a little distracted when Chris has shown me how. I looked down the dizzying length of the wall, back at the knot, and back at Chris, still gripping the chalky handholds.
Finally I said, “Oh well,” and let myself drop.
I lowered down to safety. And my fear started to dissipate, like a fog.
By the second-to-last wall, a 5.7, I got to the top without fear, and I was able to think about technique. I tried to focus on where I was putting my feet, on using my larger muscles, on being strategic instead of just scrambling.
“You’re definitely a power climber,” Chris said. He explained that women typically develop better technique because they don’t rely on their upper body strength. Apparently I was the exception to this rule.
Chris grinned. “You need to get in touch with your feminine side.”
I held my arms out like a zombie. My forearms were numb. My fingers wouldn’t make a fist. But I’d made it to the top of a 5.7., learned how to tie a climbing knot, and best of all, looked down from 45 feet up without fear.
I’m ready to climb on.