How it All Started (aka How Rock Climbing Became My Entire Life)

Growing up, I always thought rock climbing seemed super rad. I knew it was something I'd enjoy, but I had no idea how to get into it, or that I even could get into it. I remember doing the rock walls at fairs a few times, and was really excited when we went on a cruise and I found out the cruise ship had a rock climbing wall. That was probably one of the things I was most excited about on that vacation— paradisaical Caribbean beaches be damned.

The cruise ship climbing wall! April 2003

My first day ever at the climbing gym! The blob! It was so hard!
February 2011

Then in 2009, a rock climbing gym was built not far from my house. I really wanted to go. I read the entire website several times over in excitement. Except... I was nervous because I had no one to go with. Seems silly now, but there you go. It wasn't until 2011, when I joined the outdoors club sophomore year of college, that I finally went to the climbing gym. And I loved it.

My climbing got off to a pretty slow and unremarkable start. I climbed a few times that first semester, then started going once a week, then twice a week, then took a six month break while studying abroad in Spain (don’t ask me to speak Spanish, I forget…). Then, a year and a half after my first visit, I finally started going three days a week, four. I couldn’t do a pull up. I remember one night staying until the gym closed, trying the juggiest climb in the boulder cave over and over again. There was this one move at the lip to an orange handle jug shaped like a telephone that I couldn’t do. But, man, was I psyched. I kept trying until I was exhausted, but I don’t think I ever sent that climb.

Psych was high. October 2011.

But I kept showing up and started improving little by little. Still, I would look at 5.12s in the gym without ever considering that I’d be able to climb them one day. I marveled at them. The tiny holds! Those climbs were for the strong people. The super humans. And I’m sure I never even glanced at anything harder than V5. My goals and dreams never seemed to extend farther than the next grade. And that’s a mindset I’ve largely carried with me until very recently, and one I’m trying to shake. If you dream small, you achieve small. You limit yourself. If you dare to dream BIG, then you open yourself up to enormous opportunities. But that’s probably a topic for a different post…

I found climbing training in the summer of 2013. I’d just graduated college, didn’t have a job yet, and had absolutely nothing to do but rock climb. The gym started an adult climbing team where I became part of the community, where we bonded over pushing ourselves through vomit-inducing high-intensity workouts. (And I mean that literally—someone puked on the first day of team. Admittedly, we shouldn’t have gone out for burgers beforehand). The workouts were HARD, but they were fun! It was exciting to push myself harder than ever and to see my body respond. To see the improvement right before my eyes.

I’d found something that excited me. I’d found something that awakened a whole new side of me. In the years prior, I’d lamented the fact that I had no passion in life. I’d beaten myself up about lacking discipline. Here, I found both inside myself. I found passion and try hard and unwaveringly consistent dedication. I was becoming the kind of person I’d always wanted to be.

First day of sport climbing ever! May 2013

The passion hasn’t waned over the years. And neither has my dedication to the sport. Though I’ve been injured more times than I’d care to admit, I keep getting back up and getting at it. That consistency, and the willingness to sacrifice in other areas of my life, has allowed me to keep progressing through each letter grade, even as progressing gets harder and gains become even more minute.

A lot of the time I still feel like that beginner. My body has adapted, but my mind still sees myself the same as ever. Like—despite the thousands of hours of work put in—none of it could be true. I’m forever the kid who can’t believe his luck when he gets a full-sized candy bar trick-or-treating.

But Halloween was a week ago now, and it’s finally starting to dawn on me that it is all real. That the girl who walked into the climbing gym for the first time on a February evening nine years ago, ogling at the archway and the cave and the rainbow-colored holds, isn’t me anymore. If she could see me now, I know she'd be proud. 😊

Blurry, but worth it. First day ever at the climbing gym and thrilled to be there. Feb 2011.