Over the Christmas holiday, we wanted to find a fun activity to do in order to spend some time with our friends, so Jenn came up with the idea of heading to the local rock wall at the Olympic Club gym. She called to be sure that kids were ok to do it, which of course they were (even Ryley was fitted with a little harness!), so we booked it for a few days after Christmas.
The wall itself is rumored to be about 35 feet high, there are several ‘routes’ marked by similar-colored hand and foot holds, of course some routes are easier than others! There are four rope / pulleys on the wall so that you can theoretically have four climbers going at once – we had one staff member there to start to work one of the support ropes (called ‘belaying’, I’m told), and one of the ropes had an automatic belaying device (no human required for support – perhaps slightly unnerving!), so we were going two at a time.
Our friends the Cundliffes, Cora (with Bella & Marleigh), the Kowalskis, and George with his dad & granddad joined us for the 2-hour session. The kids seemed to love it, as well as the moms (and me)!
Jenn loved Ryley’s cute little harness – Ryley was ok with it, but seemed to enjoy trying to take it off!
All the kids were great climbers – a skill they most likely honed with hours of practice climbing on anything they could find! They also all seemed to enjoy the ‘dangling’ after reaching the pinnacle of their climb, some I think were climbing just for that!
The kids would watch in awe (unless otherwise distracted – or begging for mom to come back in MacKenzie’s case, poor thing) when one of the ‘big kids’ (parent or older sister) would make an attempt to get to the top – they were so high!
All the kids made some notable climbs – Bella was able to make it the highest of all the kids, making it about half way up to the top!
Iris got a great shot of Jenn and I climbing up the same rock (different faces) at the same time. I was lucky enough to get to the top on all my attempts (I chose the easier routes…) – I’ll chalk it up to being a little lighter from being sick earlier in December!
One of the faces had a ledge that you could go up and sit on and actually had to repel back down from (otherwise you’d swing out and smack into the rock!) – the repelling was pretty fun, too!
Iris & Rihannon racing (ok, they weren’t)! Cora was, however, giving that crazy upside-down route a try! Tania showed us all up with her rock-climbing prowess by making a successful attempt at that route later on. We were all rooting for her as she worked her way up!
The rock wall was a great way to spend the afternoon with friends. I can see how it would be a great workout (was hard work even just holding on sometimes!), and even better, we were allowed to bring a cooler with a few beers for afterwards.
Unfortunately, I believe it’s closing at the end of January – I think we’ll try to get out again a few more times before that happens!
