I’ve been bouldering for half a year and I’m pretty okay at it. But as I would boulder I’d finish my problems and look up at the others. The ones who were climbing top rope and loving it. They’d take bigger risks for bigger pay outs and rely only on the rope and their partner to make sure they were safe while doing so. I knew I had to try it.
Last night, I took a top rope class to learn the basics of this more exciting version of climbing, I even managed to rope two friends into it. When we arrived we signed a waiver and then the instructor rattled off a list of skills we would need to demonstrate later in order to top rope on our own in the gym. The basic gist came down to knowing our equipment, knowing how to a tie the knot and knowing how to catch and perform a fall.
I’ve talked about me a lot during this post and now I want to talk about why you should take a top rope class. Besides the most extreme sports, think skydiving, bull fighting and the like, rock climbing is one of the few sports that trains you to do what nature never intended. Climbers also have great names for their gear an ATC or air traffic controller is a device that keeps the belay and the belayer from flying through the air. Plus there’s a certain coolness that comes with saying climbed hundreds of feet in air for fun.
Schiller's Stories 