Indoor Rock Climbing Outing
On Friday, January 6th, while freezing temperatures started to roll in, 13 Youth ventured up to Carabiner’s Indoor Rock Climbing in New Bedford, MA for a rock climbing adventure! Many of our Youth have been indoor rock climbing before, but for many, it was their first time; including Allison. Once we arrived, we put on our tight and slightly uncomfortable climbing shoes on, tightened up our harnesses and got trained on the auto-belays. At Carabiner’s, they have six auto-belays, where you just hook yourself on and you start to climb. It was a toss up whether students preferred the auto-belays or a human belaying them up the rock walls. The thing about auto-belays, is that they don’t help hoist you up in the slightest. The climber really has to do it all on their own, whereas when someone is belaying you, depending on their strength, they can help hoist you up some. Probably the scariest part about the auto-belays is that you really have to lean back when you’re ready to come down…and it does not have a kick of when it starts to let you down…what I mean by that is that you’re kind of free-falling for a bit, which can be only slightly terrifying ya know. But hey, whatever floats ya boat!
Once everyone was familiar with the auto-belays, it was time to climb! Our group had a few certified belayers with us: Russ, Jacob and Lucas Brown and Timmy and Josh Leonard (Youth). It was really cool to have Timmy and Josh belay some of their peers. They were truly in their element! Youth started climbing up the 3-story high walls immediately! Some went on the ladders and the free rope wall…where you’re basically climbing around a wall without any support from ropes. It looked wicked hard!
Somewhere in the middle we refueled with pizza and soda, and then it was back to climbing! I was shocked to see so many of our student going outside their comfort zone; whether it was climbing higher…suppressing their fear of heights or pushing themselves to use as much strength as they could to get onto the next rock. It was awesome!
We started to wind down and some students went to the workout area where they got their TRX on, showed us some of their flipping skills, etc. Then it was our time to head out. We ran back into the van as quick as we could because of the fear of the cold and headed home. It really was an awesome way to spend a cold Friday night…challenging ourselves, laughing and being with friends.
A special thank you to Russ, Jacob, Lucas Brown and Tim Leonard!
To view all of the photos from the evening, click here.
