Rock Climbing for the First Time!

Last Sunday, I went rock climbing at Stone Summit for the very first time! My cousin, Danny, came with me since he's an experienced climber. Walking into Stone Summit, the first thing I saw was a huge rock wall that was about 60 ft. high. Since I had no experience at all with rock climbing, we started at the beginner walls which were on the second level of the gym. Each route has a certain difficulty (5.5 being the easiest and 5.14 being the most difficult). I managed to get to the top on the first wall I climbed, but it was one of the easiest walls there. Before I even climbed, though, Danny and a person that worked at Stone Summit taught me how to tie the necessary ropes. I struggled at first with the knots, but after it got a lot easier with practice.


 Just after climbing the first wall, my arms were extremely sore! The muscles used in climbing that I researched a while ago were the ones that were really sore. My forearms and fingers hurt the most. I could only get through 4 or 5 walls until my arms couldn't handle any more climbing. It was certainly scary as I climbed higher, and I slipped and lost my grips many times. It was difficult trusting that the rope would catch me, and it still was hard to trust when I was hanging in midair. The chalk and the shoes helped a lot since it was really easy to slip from the holds.      
        

 I thought it was so much fun, and I can't wait to go again. Since I have a baseline on where I'm at with climbing now, I can start researching techniques on climbing for next week. I've decided that my goal is to climb one of the walls on the downstairs level. Since my arms were too tired, I didn't try out bouldering, but maybe next time I will. Everything that I researched--equipment, physical strength, mental strength, etc--all came together went I went climbing. I knew what to expect when I got there. I'm hoping that I'll get better at my climbing skills so that I can climb harder routes. I'm trying to figure out how to make a page on the blog that shows all the pictures from my visit, but I'm still experimenting with it. For now, here a some pics. (Update: to see more pictures, go to the Gallery)