Bouldering

My thoughts

North Mass Boulder!

A few weeks ago, I started going to a climbing gym after work. I was pretty agnostic about the actual climbing part, but the facility offers tons of yoga and strength training classes, and so I decided to ditch the YMCA and try something new. I figured that if I was getting a membership, I should at least give this climbing thing a try, especially because they offer an Intro to Bouldering class. Maybe with the proper tutelage, I would fall in love with the sport! Even though I do find bouldering culture slightly cultish, it does seem like a great, full-body workout and a good way to meet people. And so even though I don’t particularly like falling (does anyone?), I decided to give it a try.

The first step was getting the right shoes. Bouldering requires these very specific, ballet-slipperesque shoes made out of silicone. They are tiny and squish your toes together. Like a bowling alley or skating rink, climbing gyms have loaner shoes, and you don’t really want to think too hard about how many people have worn them before you. I got a pair and glanced around at the other people donning their slippers. It seemed that people were decidedly NOT wearing socks with them, so I followed suit, even though that seemed kind of gross. Immediately after deciding to go sockless, I started noticing that actually a lot of people WERE wearing socks, in fact, it seemed like all the sockless people I had been noticing before were gone, and now every single person I looked at was wearing socks. A guy next to me even struck up a conversation with me to ask if his striped socks were cringy. It was like he KNEW I wasn’t wearing socks and was taunting me. But I had strapped the shoes on my bare feet already and was trying to play it cool, so I decided to just stay sockless and face the consequences later.

I stole this pic from Instagram but I feel like it does a good job illustrating how small the shoes are lol

Next, I gathered with the other people attending the beginner class. Turns out, many of them had climbed before and therefore, were not beginners. Our instructor, a kind man named Logan, led us to our first route.

I guess in climbing, red is the easiest. Seems backwards, since red generally equals danger, but what do I know? Our instructor demoed the route (are they even called routes?) and a few people tried it. It seemed straightforward enough, so after a few others had gone, I approached the wall.

I happen to have baby soft hands that get sweaty when I am under pressure, so I made sure to get a TON of chalk on my hands, probably too much. Then I placed my powdery hands on the starting hold and began to climb.

I made it about halfway up before I froze. It seemed like the only place to go next was down, so I let go. Logan told me I was “thinking too much” about where to go next, which was crazy to hear because it all happened so fast and I don’t really remember thinking. He also said I needed to point my toes near the wall, try to create triangles with my body, and “trust myself.”

We tried a few more routes, and to my shock and dismay I wasn’t able complete any of them. One of them I got really close to completing, and then somehow, I just kind of freaked out and found myself falling. I genuinely do not know what happened. Meanwhile, everyone else in this “beginners” class was catching on quickly, and all around me there were all of these incredible climbers scaling the walls like gravity doesn’t exist and they have never been afraid of hurting themselves. Incredible. Aspirational.

Good old Swiss Valley

This entire experience was a little reminiscent of the time I joined ski club in the 6th grade. To this day, I am not sure what compelled me to join ski club — none of my friends were doing it, and I didn’t know anything about skiing. On the first day of ski club, after school on a Tuesday at Swiss Valley Ski Resort, I participated in “ski school,” which was probably one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. Afraid of hurting myself, I never wanted to do anything other than “pizza” my way down the hill. “Pizza-ing” for those unfamiliar, is generally how you stop. But even when pizza-ing, I felt like I was going WAY too fast.

I had loaned my gloves to a popular girl to try and curry her favor, but then I found myself gloveless at the bottom of the bunny hill, staring at the thick rope that pulls you up. I grasped it with my baby soft hands and made it a third of the way up before the friction between the rope and my hands was too much. I let go and tumbled down the hill, my limbs mangling with the skis, the rope whizzing above me. They had the shut down the entire rope operation to rescue me. At the end of the night, another pupil asked if ski school was always so boring, and the instructor looked pointedly at me and said, “usually people catch on faster.” The popular girl gave me back my gloves and our budding friendship died there.

The evil bunny hill rope

After that, I was WAY too afraid of that evil bunny hill rope, so after carefully pizza-ing down the hill, I would take off my skis and walk up the hill in my clunky rental ski boots. Eventually I advanced to a few more complicated hills, but I still hated going fast down them, which I think is supposed to be the appeal of skiing. If I started going too fast, I felt like I was going to lose control. Feeling like I was going to lose control led to panic, which then caused me to lose control. Still, I was making gradual progress, until one night I got a little too comfortable (aka I was no longer just pizza-ing) and I completely bulldozed a child. I took of my skis and frantically (slowly) walked back up the hill to try and make sure he was okay, but his mom got to him first and gave me a nasty mother-bear glare, so I backed off. There was too much snow stuck to the bottom of my boots, so I couldn’t get my skis back on, plus, I had just bulldozed a child, so it didn’t really feel like I deserved to have any more fun. And so I did the one thing I knew I was good at: I walked up the hill. Someone yelled at me from the ski lift “Do you even know how to ski?”

Intro to Bouldering was not nearly as bad as ski school, to be clear. I actually made a super cool friend (hey Lalia!) who invited me to hang out the next evening! I think I’ll probably go back to Intro to Bouldering next week, and I am going to try and be a little more reckless with my body, because I guess that is what it takes to get to the top. I doubt I will never become one of these obsessive rock climber types though, and I will probably continue to loan shoes — although next time I will wear socks.