Belay On!

Belay On
On Belay

Climbing
Climb on!

The four communication phrases that have been a regular exchange during rock climbing. Earlier in the week, I had gone for my second visit. I had to take the belay test. I took the test with a random lady as a climbing partner who turned out to be not so random after all. It was the usual commands, check, harness, carabiner and the fall test.

Aced it! Turns out that the lady was my colleague's friend who was supposed to meet us. Cool. There are 4 of us now and I start climbing. An easy course marked green 5.6 grade, made it up pretty quick. Next one was 5.7 grade, it was alright, kind of cheated in a place or two. The third one was a bitch! It was 5.8 grade, and one had a stretch a lot.

It was one of those routes were the wall starts leaning towards you creating a ledge impression and you need your upper body strength to push your self up. In the first attempt I did some quick moves to get to the ledge and then my arms started to scream, my palms were sweaty, it wasn't gonna be easy trying to reach into the chalk bag to get rid of the sweat, but held on. The arms started to scream loudly and I loose a footing and I fall...

I am dangling in the air, as my climbing partner has me covered, damn I almost had it, I had almost reached over the next hold , damn , I yell "take" and I get lowered. Alright time for another try.

This time I forget to pull the quick moves and I am hanging off, with my arms screaming like a the howl of the strong wind, I fall.. Bah! Another time

Time for a break then climb another route. Attack of the pink happens! It is a 5.7 grade climb and the route is marked in pink! If you are scratching your head wondering what's with the attack of the pink check this.

All in all a couple of climbs it was good. The knots are perfect, I should get some rope from the guy next time to practice on my own different knots.