The Wall

As I approached the climbing wall, I started to get nervous. It was so far to reach the summit. I started to shake at the thought of falling from 10 feet up. My spotter walked up to me. She saw that I was shaking and she said that I had nothing to worry about. I was safe and secure. She started naming all the stuff that would help me not to fall. For example the harness, the rope, the climbing shoe itself, the carabineers, the belay device, the fixed rope, even her. She would do the spotting to keep me from falling.

I was about to start the climb, when the belayer stopped me and we went through another harness check. After that I started to climb. To start off, I grabbed hold of an edge and pulled myself up. My spotter said that when I get to where my legs are on the climbing wall it would help to push with my legs and not pull with my arms as much. After a while I ran out of foot and hand holds and I made the mistake of looking down. The climbing gym was so far away! I started to lean away from the wall and I started to grab at the wall desperately. The only thing that was holding me up now were the ascenders ropes. My spotter gently swung me back to the wall.

The trickiest part of my climb was when I had to change my climbing technique to traverse climbing. There weren’t a lot of holds so I had to use the technique of smearing. Then I came to the overhang. I traversed around it. Then I used another technique called friction. It was hard. I didn’t trust the friction between my shoe and the wall to support myself, but it really worked.

When I finally reached summit, it was time for the downclimb. I was supposed to put all my weight on the rappel. I had done it. I was the first of my class to climb the wall all the way to the top.