Not so Boldering
Rock Gal and I spent the weekend in Austin. I had to go for a business trip and it just made sense for her to join me for some climbing while we were down there. We drove down Friday night and I got to meet some of her friends from the Cactus Cafe, then we found a cheap hotel and sacked out for an early wake-up and trip to Reimer's Ranch.We did some real fun climbs at Reimer's, none of which I can name or justifieably describe at this point in time. They were fun, I am learning (slowly) how to lead climb and had a great time getting on some 5.8 and 5.9 routes, and I think I did one 5.10 as well. The 5.10 (i think) had a nice roof to manage as well as a lot of backsteps and off balance reaches for unusually shaped bits of rock. It was a nice challenge and we had a great morning of climbing before my shitty business meetings.
Jump forward to Sunday, we split out of Austin around 2:00 PM and headed toward Dallas to stop in Belton for some bouldering. I'm new to ropeless climbing, Bouldering, but Betty has some experience and is quite good at picking routes. We did a few to start that were fun and challenging, then I got stuck.
The climb started out innocently enough, a few jugs and some nice places to put one's feet, but I got to the top (maybe like 10 feet off the ground) and got really fucking scared. No seriously, I was damn scared, and I'm sure it would be funny at any other time except right then and there. Maybe I was tired, maybe I was low, maybe I was just in one of those totally uncomfortable situations... in any event I was at the top of this very short cliff and had nowhere (to me) to go.
So I did the only logical thing possible at that time. I froze. Well, I didn't freeze, but I sure had a lot of trouble moving. I had these visions of jumping down onto the crash pad and breaking my leg, which would suck since I'm leaving the country in 15 days.
Anyway, Rock Gal did what any other wonderful girlfriend would do at the time, and rescued my sorry but off the crag. A few minutes later I felt a little ashamed, embarrassed and somewhat less scared... So, I pretty much figured out that ropes are my friend and when I boulder in the future (I did another route later) I'm just going to do a few moves at the bottom and have my own personal early top out that does not involve scrambling for grip, sweaty palms and peeing my pants.
posted by GreSam @ 12:14
1 Your Opinion:
ahh you should of pissed your pants; that would have been a good story... though trekking through euro land with a bum leg, well, you are familiar with being somewhat immobilized - i see no problem. lol.
i had to tell a chick once that i needed a rest when hiking... that was about 20 minutes into a 2 hour hike. i felt like i was going to puke, but i didn't ahhh erin is her name.
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