Today I got to take the back half of the two-day lead climbing class at Planet Granite, with the talented Viviane (thanks for being flexible about the scheduling, PG!). It was incredibly fun. In particular, one of the prominent training aspects of lead climbing* we covered today was taking falls. Obviously, when climbing, you're occasionally going to fall, and it's important to learn to fall in a controlled setting so that when it happens for real, you're ready for it. I've done a few things like this, such as bungee jumping, so I was feeling good about my chances here. I've also done fairly extensive climbing on auto-belays, which are a device which takes the place of a human belayer; and when you get to the top on an auto-belay, you basically just have to take a leap of faith. The same was true today; she would bark out that we needed to square ourselves to the wall, take a breath in, then - jump. Or at least slide off the holds. We fell about 10-15 feet, which may not seem like much, but it definitely takes the breath away, which is why you exhale on the way down.p
What I learned: falling, and taking leaps of faith, is incredibly good for the soul.
On a related note, if anyone in the Portland area is available to help me take my lead climbing test, let me know! I'll need help with that over the coming week or so!
*PS If you're curious about lead climbing, see my post about 2 weeks ago about the first part of the class.