Scaling New Heights With Rock Climbing
Before I embarked on touching one of those stones on a rock wall, my imagination took me to the space of it being equivalent to courting death. My wild visions visualized my arms straining for a stretch to pull myself up with sheer strength, toes stepping on tiny footholds, veins popping angrily from my temple and arms, teeth gritting tightly as my legs shook and I strenuously climb up a vertical wall. A slip, and I fall in the abyss.
Morbid thoughts, I know. It can be super scary for me as a first-timer with no rock wall or bouldering experience whatsoever. Yes, I realise it’s contradicting whenever I tell others that I’m afraid of heights, and yet I have done some basic trekking and hiking in Bhutan, Nepal, Indonesia and Malaysia (Singapore’s humble Bukit Timah Hill at 163.3m too) 😂
As I write down this post, I begin to uncover more of the reasons behind my first baby step into picking up rock climbing.
Getting To My Why
“I’m going to sign up for rock climbing!”, my pitch a little higher with a degree of fear as I tell my friends and family. To my amusement, their deadpan faces seem to imply that they have gotten used to my crazy antics when I told them that I signed up out of the blue. You see, the journey started out like a dare to myself.
The point is, putting aside gaining practical skills in climbing, it was a taunt to a part of me to try something a little scarier than what I know, a little different than what I have tried.
Taking the first step to sign up for rock climbing became a personal “project” that seemed impossible but necessary for me. To add a little spice to my journey, I decided to be bold and signed up for the Singapore National Climbing Standards (SNCS) Level 1 certification. Yes, it was my first attempt to enter the realm of rock climbing. After all, most schools (except one instructor that I spoke to shared that I needed to have some basic rock climbing experience) mentioned the only pre-requisite is to be at least 13 years old, and it is suitable for anyone with little or no prior sports climbing experience. Being certainly overly qualified in age and having exactly no sports climbing experience, it offers some assurance that I can register.
There I was, standing in front of the 10 meters rock wall (like a 3-storey building) with an overhang at the top. Truth is, I stared at it like a bewildered caveman who just created fire for the first time.
I was excited but I would be lying if I said I was not afraid. I could feel my shivers as I looked up the wall, the scorching sun peering down from the side of the overhang, almost in a cheeky, sneering manner. It also did not help when my instructor and my fellow batch mates widened their eyes a little when I told them I have zero rock-climbing experience (but there was no pre-requisite!). There, I wondered how I landed myself into an uncomfortable situation, yet again.
Learning to Let Go
As I gradually calmed myself in the process and eased into practising the figure 8 knot tying and belaying techniques, I lifted my foot and stepped onto the first stone for my first climb, ever. Being a novice that I am, I relied heavily on my arm strength and climbed up, but that exhausted me quickly. At the 8 metres point, my arms and shivers gave way, and I fell.
My heart skipped a beat. The safety from my fall was completely resting on the fates of the knots being well-tied, the careful checks of the belay beforehand, and the trust in your belayer for having your back, literally. Good thing this allowed my belayer to also practise in catching me.
As I climbed a few more times, somehow, the more I fell from the top, the more I got used to the flow of letting go completely.
A fall can be unpredictable within a narrow window of time. Even mastering a proper fall takes skill. Falling safely away from the wall, the signal you need to give to your belayer, choosing which part of the wall to fall, and relaxing your body as you fall. Soon, you will realise that falling is part and parcel of rock climbing.
The point became not in facing the fear of falling, but in pushing myself to my edge so I can summit, or fall and try again.
Getting Back Up
Contrary to what I thought was just having pure brute force needed to scale up, climbing actually comprises of graceful movements with each step epitomizing an intended purpose.
The outcome is certainly to get to the top of the wall, but I soon realise, even as I fall (many times) mid-scale, I gradually redefined my desired outcome to be able to touch one rock after another, and stretching that inch above the previous step. That became the real satisfaction for me. Each placement of the rock is deliberate, with varying difficulties that force you to contort, bend, and stretch in a sequence of movements, like a dance choreography as you glide into the flow of the climb. Your breathing becomes the background music mid-air.
Slowly, bit by bit, you figure out a sequence of moves that get you through. Each time you fall and pick yourself up, you gain an imprint to learn the holds, the moves, where to tense and when to relax for a moment. You train your body and brainwork, until one day, it all comes together and you gather your rhythm to dance your way up that wall.
Playing A Game to Overcome Unnecessary Obstacles
As I gradually throw myself out there onto the wall, scaling and falling, scaling and falling, what appeared to be mammoth in the heights of the wall became fun, like a game in solving this puzzle in front of you.
Bernard Suits wrote in his book, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, “Playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” Do I HAVE to climb a wall? No. Do I HAVE to take up rock climbing? Not really. I learnt that this project soon became a little more than just about scaling a physical wall or facing my fear of heights.
It is about immersing in a dance with myself and a static wall that seem to taunt me to do better. It is about pushing what is impossible in your current reality.
The beauty of this sport is that no matter how amateur or good you get, you can always find a way to stretch yourself. I became hooked to this sheer sense of triumph, perhaps of the hormone, Dopamine, hitting me. The chemical agent that gives a good feeling, and for me from winning an event, a challenge I set myself for, a tease within myself to explore “what if”. This sport became an epitome of pushing not just my physical limits, but it expanded my mental capacity and welcomed me with open arms as I stepped out of my comfort zone.
Climbing to New Places
I grabbed my SNCS level 1 certificate on the same day I climbed for the first time. While the fear dissipates the more I dived into the experience, it is still a lingering feeling to egg me towards being more comfortable in discomfort zones. As my feet dangles from a height on the wall, each step is edging me towards a new path of building up my mountaineering journey. Above it all, a footing towards new places in life.
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