On Rock... Rock On

The last week that I was in school was spent doing something that I have never done before in the short existance of my life: Rock Climbing on real Squamish granite (actually it's granodiorite but no body really cares). We climbed for six days with a one day break in the middle and it was incredible.

When you Rock climb, you wear relatively minimal gear: a harness, a helmet (to protect from falling rocks), and rock shoes. These shoes are in essence very rubberized slippers with a suede top. With them your entire body can be easily supported on something like a single crystal of quartz, but ONLY if you commit to it. If you don't put all of your weight on your feet, then you won't have enough friction to stay on such small footing. It blows my mind every time I do it.
The neat thing about climbing is that it forces you to have trust in your classmates. You have to be confident in their focus and ability because in reality you are trusting them with your life. Not only do they hold the rope for if you fall, they are the ones who set up the very anchor that you are trusting with the weight of your fall. Of course, the anchors are double checked by our instructors but we were the engineers and that is a cool feeling.
There is nothing quite like the feeling of success that is reached when you get to the top of a climb, especially if you are pushing yourself! If you fall multiple times on one route and keep on plugging away at it and finally overcome that one hold or make an extraordinary reach for the key footing, you feel an amazing amount of self-betterment. You begin to be confident in yourself and can then challenge yourself even more on the next climb that you undertake.
On our third day of climbing I suffered a small injury. I had lowered myself from where our group was belaying, down onto a boulder in order to empty my bladder. I was about 10 feet off the ground at this point. When I turned to climb back up to our little platform, I fell backward about fifteen feet to the dirt (luckily) ground below. I managed to roll in the air so that my shoulder was first to hit the ground and not my back and God was there making sure that I wasn't badly hurt. After hitting the ground I was in shock for about fifteen minutes and my hand was numb and bleeding from hitting it on something. I was pretty white so I sat out for a bit but I did end up doing one climb still that day which turned out to be a bad move. I woke up the next morning (luckily it was our day off) with a very sore and stiff shoulder. I tried the reduce mobility tactic but the tissue swelling kept the pain more than alive. I finally had the presence of mind to buy some Ibuprofen and by the next day I was ready to climb again (maybe not but I did anyway). The shoulder still hurt but I could move it in every way that I needed and it didn't hurt more when I climbed with it so I continued and nothing happened. I'm sure it'll be sore for a bit still but I believe I'm fully on the mend. Moral of the story: when you pay $6500 for 20 weeks of instruction, don't hurt yourself!!!
I would really recommend climbing to anyone. Just make sure that you know what your doing or are with someone who does. The cost of a mistake is just too large to be careless or arrogant.
Here are some pictures from our week:

This is me.

Here's Vanessa after successfully belaying me from the top of the cliff and me, after successfully climbing the cliff.

This is Aaron top-down belaying using a munter hitch.

This is Dan Dunkley reaching for his next hold

After Thanksgiving weekend is done I will be introduced to Downhill mountain-biking for the next 6 or 7 days. That is also something that I've never done before... should be good. I'll do my best to keep you updated.

On party... Party on!!! (just for you Gary :) )