Climbing is something that has been around for a long time, but the sport of climbing has evolved to include bouldering, top roping, sport, trad, ice, free solo etc. The type of climbing that this article is going to focus on is called top rope climbing.
Top rope climbing
I want you to take a minute to think about what the words Fear, Strength, and Trust mean, and I don’t just mean go look them up on dictionary.com. I want you to think about what they mean to you and where you’ve learned these meanings.
When I started top rope climbing my first year at Davidson, I’d start climbing pretty successfully, using mostly my arms to pull myself up (not a good climbing strategy) and refusing to make any move that didn’t have good hand-hold involved. I’d make it about two-thirds of the way up the climb when I’d hit a difficult move that I couldn’t make easily. Then, I’d look down, realize that I was probably thirty feet in the air and struggling to hang on, and instantly become terrified that I was going to fall and that there was no way I could pull off the next move.
Reality check: even if I let go of the rock, I was tied into a rope that meant I wouldn’t fall at all. But, fear is usually not dissuaded by rationality.
The tendency was for me to spend about 10 to 15 minutes in this position. I was too angry with myself to asked to be let down but too afraid to keep moving. Eventually, I would listen to the conviction of my belayer who was always more convinced that I could do it than I was, and make the move, finally, but successfully.
Then this semester, I decided to take the PCIA course (Professional Climbing Instructor’s Association), which will enable me to lead climbing trips for DO. PCIA focuses on learning the tools to build anchors for top rope climbs, rope management, and participant instruction. It’s easy to focus on the small parts like perfecting your BHK (a type of knot), but PCIA has taught me a lot more than just hard skills. Its moments like when you are placing pieces of trad gear into several choice cracks to rig a full Munter Mule Releasable Instructor Belayed Rappel system for the first time and it takes you almost three hours, or when you realize that the climb that you just set up so painstakingly really isn’t a climb at all, that you truly learn.
Its moments like those, both climbing and in learning to lead trips that you learn the importance of Fear, Strength and Trust. There’s Fear of course: fear that you might miss the next hold, that you won’t do it fast enough, or that your participants won’t enjoy themselves. But that’s where the Trust comes in; I’ve learned the importance of trusting in myself to be able to do all those things and more. I trust my co-trip leaders to help me out when I need it and be there to encourage me. Then comes Strength. Physical strength is helpful, sure, but it is mental strength that I’ve learned, mental strength that says that I can make that next move or that I can run all of the trip logistics while still taking the time to get to know my participants. Now, when I started climbing I didn’t expect to learn these kinds of skills; they were more of a side effect, but I come to realize that they were, in reality, that most valuable part.