Saturday late afternoon we made our way to MetroRock, but we didn't know exactly what to expect. The email confirmation said we'd be provided with equipment, so we just wore comfy clothes and sneakers. The beginning was a little disorganized. They probably had about 50 participants and at the designated time to begin, they just said, "Follow the person in the yellow MetroRock or the grey Living Social T-shirt." So all 50 of us followed the first person in the yellow shirt we saw walking with harnesses in her hand. Turns out she only had 3 of said harnesses. I was confused.
And then more yellow and grey T-shirt clad people began appearing and the lines started to shorten. Slowly I began to understand. We weren't there to learn to rock climb--we were there just to run up the walls. Each T-shirted staff member would belay the participant, and we would cycle through the allotted harnesses at that particular climb, and then move onto another staff person. It took a while to figure it out, but once we did it made more sense. Although I did question why they sold more slots than they had harnesses available.
On the first climb, I made it up to the top without too much problem. Admittedly, it was a pretty easy climb. Although when I got to the top I did remember that I'm not a huge fan of heights. Oops. Dave of course did very well, since he actually knows what he's doing. (Please excuse the blurry pictures. I forgot the camera and had to go with the phone for these.)
The second wall we climbed was tougher. It was almost twice as tall as the first and took a sharp right turn partway up, so if you didn't use the right path or got yourself twisted, it'd be tough to stretch over to the right course and get to the top. I made it most of the way up before my legs started shaking in fear. From the floor Dave and the staff person were cheering me on, encouraging me to just stand up on that leg to reach the next hold. Easier said than done. I would be more confident standing on that leg if it wasn't shaking so bad I thought it would give out. But I made it and although I had to do a little stretch jump at the end to hit the target, I still made it all the way up.
After a short break, we found another wall that didn't seem too scary. Technically there were two logical routes to take, one being very short, the other taller and more tricky that would require jumping from one wall to another.
Small world story: Dave and I were standing in line and two women were behind us. Dave had on a Fat Heads T-shirt (bar in Pittsburgh) and one of the women asked if he was from Pittsburgh. He said no, but I was. Turns out I went to middle school with this chick. She was a year ahead of me and we even road the bus together. Neither of us recognized each other's names, but we played the name game of who you know and knew a bunch of people in common. How weird is that? I can go to Pittsburgh and never run into anyone I know. But at a random rock gym outside of Boston I come across someone I apparently went to school with.
Dave let me go first and I made it up the short one quickly, so I decided to go for the big one. I made it over to the other wall and slowly and thoughtfully climbed the big one. I was doing reasonably well when I went to grab the next hold and it moved on me. AHHH! Dave hollered that I was doing good and I looked down (WHY???) and told him that it moved on me. It made me nervous to continue to use that hold, but I needed it, so I persevered. I was pretty close to the top (although going slowly on shaky legs) and then I just had to hang out for a while. The holds were not in a useful place anymore. And because I'm short, I didn't have the wingspan to stretch. I made to attempts to jump and hit the target, but failed at both. I needed to hit the next hold. So I chalked up, and gave it my all. I was able to grab the next hold, which was super small, just long enough to propel myself to the target. Not easy. Dave went up and agreed that it was a reasonable course until you got to the top and had to use a lot of strength to finish.
We started watching some people doing more challenging climbs and came to an area that apparently was challenging everyone. As we got there, a guy went up and became the first one to make it to the top during our session. The difficulty was an overhang at the beginning that you needed to get over and then climb across the wall, away from the target, and then work your way back. A few more people went, some successful and others not so much. I convinced Dave to do it, though. (I knew I would never be able to figure out how to get around the overhang.)
Dave was pretty methodical about his path and he did really well. He wasn't the fastest, but he figured it out and didn't get twisted or have to backtrack like a few other people did.
After the last climb, we went up to get dinner. They didn't have any seating, so we got our BBQ and beer and pulled up a piece of floor to chow down. The food was good, which was a relief considering the amazing BBQ we'd had the week before. And we were starving because it was already about 2 hours pas tour normal dinner time, adding to that the activity portion of the evening.
Overall we had a really good time. It was something completely different for us and we probably wouldn't have done it had I not seen the deal. It also encouraged me to get back to working out. There's no excuse to being this sore after only 3 climbs!
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