Hardrock. No not the restaurant!

Saturday we went rock climbing! During the first week we were here, while we were wandering around the city, we saw a rock climbing wall through the second floor window of a building downtown (there's a good picture on the website which is linked in the title of this post). We both thought this was very cool and decided we were going to go sometime. Jump forward to this week and our neighbor stopped by one night and asked if we wanted to go there as she had seen it herself and wanted some people to go with. We were happy to go and decided Saturday would be good.

We headed downtown around 1:00pm after waking up and recovering from the Good Food and Wine Show the day before. The 3 of us arrived at Hardrock and rented our shoes and harnesses and signed our lives away on the safety forms you would expect at a place like this. The shoes were really uncomfortable as they have to be really tight so your feet can grip the wall without sliding around inside. As none of us had ever done any climbing before we had to go through a brief safety course. Our instructor Yeisy, sounds like Stacy but with a "yay" instead of a "stay", taught us how to secure the climbing ropes to the harness and also how to belay for the person climbing. The person climbing has to put their carabiner through two loops on the rope and then tie another portion to their harness as a backup. The person belaying is in charge of keeping the rope taught so that if the climber slips or they won't fall to the ground.

Each of us had to climb up the wall a couple times and belay a climber a couple times before we were safety approved. The person belaying has to follow a 5 step procedure to keep the rope taught and locked at all times so the climber is safe, they are constantly pulling out the slack while the person is climbing. When the climber is ready to come down the belayer has to make sure the rope is tight so the person climbing can just sit back from the wall while they slowly lower them down the wall.

After a couple times up the short practice walls we moved on to the big walls. The practice walls were probably 25-30 feet up with lots of easy handholds and footholds to use. The rest of the walls went all the way up to the ceiling which is close to 60 feet tall. We looked around for a few minutes to find a wall that looked easy enough for us to climb up all the way. There were routes going up all the walls, they had "rocks" sticking out forming, some that were easy to grab or step on and some that weren't much more than little nubs on the wall. Some of the routes had overhangs that you had to climb up. There were some places on the wall that had holes and cracks to use rather than the protrusions everywhere else. Each route had a rope in front of it anchored to a belaying station and numbers on the walls to let you know how difficult it was to get to the top. They ranged from single digits up to the mid twenties.

There was a good number of people there so finding something we could handle took a little bit. We started on a route that had handholds from 11-18 or so, this was a medium one. Carly went first and she got about halfway up the wall before she couldn't figure out a place to go and had to come down. I went next and I made it about two thirds of the way and then started having trouble picking a spot to go next. I slipped a couple times but Carly was doing a good job belaying so I was able to hang on and keep going. After a bit of a struggle I made it up to the top! I was pretty proud of myself because it definitely wasn't easy to get up and it was the first time I tried. After I came down my arms felt a bit like jell-o so I needed a break.

After everyone took a turn we moved over to an easier wall, Carly made it all the way up this time and she was really happy. I took a turn going up and thought it was nice having good grips the whole time. Our neighbor tried a couple times but each time she was about half way up she would look down or couldn't find a place for her foot and then came down.

We tried a couple more walls before we were done, another easy one that Car and I both made it up without a problem and April made it nearly to the top so she felt better about it. The last one I attempted by myself, it had an overhang and there was no easy path to the top. By this time I had almost no strength left in my arms and only made it about 25 feet up before I lost my grip and fell off. That was kind of fun in itself since the overhang meant the rope wasn't right up against the wall all the way up so I was kind of swinging around like Tarzan when I fell off the wall. Carly wasn't amused as this meant I was flying over her head as she was letting me down! I tried it a couple times before I gave up and called it a day. We watched a couple people going up some crazy paths, going up corners and leaning on the wall while holding themselves up on a little nub. We definitely want to go back and give it another shot!