Ian: Hello!
Editor: Hi!
Kate: Hi!
E: First thing I wanted to talk about is why both of you started climbing and if you remember what drove you to do it?
I: Amy Robinson—the feature member from last month—got into climbing about a year before I did and I was looking for a new hobby. I was in a bit of a social rut and looking for a hobby to take up my time after work and ... by the end of the first session, Amy hooked me into an auto-belay like I was a small child and just let me tucker myself out. And then, yeah, I got into climbing. I really enjoyed both the physical aspect and the mental aspect of it, in the sense that it’s a lot of puzzle solving, but it’s also sometimes—you just gotta climb better and you just gotta get stronger and better at climbing and that’s the solution. Sometimes that’s frustrating, and sometimes that’s really rewarding. I also enjoy that you are competing with yourself until you decide that you want to compete with other people. So, it is purely “I am just trying to improve myself and get better,” and if you don’t want to touch competing with anyone, you literally do not have to.
E: Yeah, that’s true. It’s also nice to do something that’s problem solving that doesn’t make you feel stupid if you fail. *laugh* You don’t have to rely wholly on your brain.
K: *laugh*
I: I do enjoy bullying my friends whenever they finish a big project and they’re like, “Yes, I did it!” and I give them a high five and then I just stone-faced look at them and say, “Now do it again, but better.”
E: Yep, you’ve done that to me before. Honestly, at first I was like, “Ah, come on, I want to celebrate this,” but then afterwards, I thought, you’re right. It does often feel better the second time because you know it wasn’t a fluke. You didn’t just get lucky.
K: Totally.
I: And it feels much smoother once you know all the moves and you put everything together and you get over that mental block of like, yeah, getting over this wasn’t a fluke, this wasn’t just a one-off thing, and again, do it better, do it smoother, finish the climb, and maybe still feel like dying, but not as much.
E: Very true. What about you, Kate?
K: I got into climbing really casually. I had a friend who worked at a climbing gym and we’d climb late on Sunday nights. So, I was doing it only those late Sunday nights because it was free and easy and I just did it very casually for a few years. It was always something I did with my ex-partner at the time, but it was coming to Crag X where I really started climbing by myself without coming into the gym with someone that I already knew.
E: Ah, those sweet auto-belays... those sweet and scary auto-belays. Once you get used to them, it’s so nice and so convenient.
K: Yeah!
E: Can you tell me about how you guys met and started climbing together?
I: Friendly Fridays! ... I had been climbing since April/May and was coming to the Friendly Fridays just to meet people and get more involved in the community here and also to try and find a regular climbing partner. It would’ve been October of last year, I think, was the Friendly Friday where I met Kate. We chatted a little bit about doing the Lead [course] and training for that and basically ... we got in touch and it turned into sort of like, “Oh you want to do the
Lead [course], okay great. Let’s look at the schedule and see when one’s available,” and Kate said “Hey, can you do the first session of the class... tomorrow?”
K & E: *laugh*
I: And then I had to figure out my work schedule. We had a pretty quick turn around into doing the lead test. Then it turned out that our work schedules just worked really well.
K: I think that covered everything. I also was just looking for people to climb with and I went to Friendly Friday.
E: That’s such a nice happenstance when you find someone who’s like, “I love this. I want to do the lead test immediately.” The partner I used to climb with was the same way. We started going around four times a week and then we both went, “Okay, this is a thing now. We have to do this.”
I: Yep.
K: Uh huh!
E: I’ve never actually been to Friendly Friday, though. Can you tell me a little bit more about it and what you liked about it, what appealed to you, and how you heard about it, too?
K: I think I heard about it on the Instagram for Crag X. I thought it was so awesome. I’ve climbed at a handful of other gyms before and have even done things similar to a Friendly Friday, but I never came out of them having had a very positive experience. It was always just kind of awkward. But this one was run so well. Amy’s in charge of it and she switches you around so you’re climbing with a lot of different people, she forces you to make a little group chat at the end of it—
I: That will inevitably die within a month and a half when people figure out who they like to climb with. I’m in about close to a dozen group chats that showed up and then died. But yeah, everyone meets up right at the beginning, you get a free button—
E: Yeah, the buttons are so cool!
K: Uh huh!
I: The double-headed llamas, so cute. I do try and keep an eye out for those buttons as well and I’m happy to see that people are wearing them because it means that, even if I didn’t climb with them on a Friendly Friday, they went to a different Friendly Friday and it makes them seem a little bit more approachable ... I’ve met a lot of people through Friendly Friday who are the types of people who will ask you if you want a belay if you’re alone, or you become comfortable walking up to them and asking them if they would be able to belay you on something, and that is really, really awesome. Everyone meets up, everyone gets paired up. If you’re an established climbing pair, Amy will try and break you up a little bit so you’re forced to meet new people ... I’ve seen, especially recently, that it’s been really good for people who are just visiting—whether for a work thing, or they’re here for school for a semester, or they’re visiting family for the season, that type of thing—I see a lot of people come to Friendly Friday who are here really short term and don’t have time to break through any social barriers.
E: I didn’t know she switched around people, that’s so smart! I could see how it could otherwise be not as good because of the highschool mentality of being like, “Oh! A group project!” and then people grab the people they always pick and there’s always a couple people left out.
K: Yeah. I feel like I’ve been to a few Friendly Fridays and it’s nice as well because even if I don’t climb with the people afterwards because our schedules don’t line up or they have another established climbing partner, it’s so nice seeing them around the gym and getting to recognise people here. It’s one of those things that builds a lot of community.
E: Great answers. Do you have any plans for the future of your climbing careers or any goals for the future?
I: We have two soft plans. Kate wants to climb The Chief before she graduates from Law school—
K: —which is coming up really soon now! We need to work on this goal. I: *groans* Yeah, we’ve gotta figure this out. Figure out multi-pitching. E: How long do you have until you graduate?
K: A year and a half.
E: Okay, you gotta get on that!
I: Yup! I also want to drag Kate to Thailand at some point so we can go climbing in Railay, south of Thailand.
E: You went there before, right? Did you do any climbing while you were there?
I: I did a day-ish of climbing. I went to Thailand for a month last year and the part of the plan was to do a good chunk of rock climbing, but the first two weeks were me and my best friend just travelling around and he doesn’t rock climb, and then I ended up going there and did a day of guided climbing and chatted with a few other people. At the same time, everything caught up with me and I started feeling under the weather, so I didn’t end up climbing nearly as much as I wanted to. I also found out by way of chatting with people that I had a significant skill gap when it came to climbing outdoor stuff.
E: Yup, like everyone!
K: Yeah.
I: Pretty quick after, I insisted upon Kate that we do the Transition to Outdoor course at the gym.
E: Oh, you’ve done it?
I: It was great!
K: We did it back in the spring.
E: What is that like?
I: It’s really great. Harrison is excellent ... It essentially puts together rappelling, building anchors, breaking anchors ... There’s a big focus on gear, as well. One of the nice things is that you get given a pamphlet of a gear checklist as a breakdown of what you need to do a single-pitch sport climb for most of the climbs on the island. It’s really helpful because moving from gym climbing to outdoor climbing can be really intimidating and really expensive if you don’t know what you need to buy. There was a lot of really good knowledge and it was nice to go through all that stuff in the controlled environment of the gym. You don’t have to worry about the weather.
K: I think that it makes you knowledgeable if you go climbing with other people and sets you up to go with people who are a bit more experienced and not be dead weight.
E: *points to self* I’m the dead weight.
K: *laughs*
I: The pamphlet lets others know what you’ve been over and what you know. You pay a chunk of money up front to get this training so that when you spend a bigger chunk of money for a guide, you’re not wasting a half a day doing basic skills.
K: And I think that a lot of the time—I learned how to lead and how to climb through other people and I didn’t know why I was doing things. I didn’t know what was important about it, and the people teaching me didn’t really know because they learned second-hand as well, so having a course like the Transition to Outdoors or the Lead course where they’re able to answer all of your dumb questions because they’re really knowledgeable makes me feel a lot safer for when I then go and use the skills.
E: Yeah, leading is always scary, but it’s less scary when you know what you’re doing. They teach it really well. I didn’t know exactly what the Transition to Outdoors course was, but it sounds awesome. Every time I’ve gone outside climbing, I just sit there and twiddle my thumbs and think, “This is taking so long and it’s my fault because I’m doing nothing to help.” I: I remember staring at you and Chris from atop Burgers and Fries.
E: It felt a lot longer down below, let me tell you. Before we end, is there anything you wanted to bring up in specific that we didn’t cover?
I: Highballathon! Sign up. It’s really fun. If you do sign up, prioritise the high wall climbs and the climbs you can top out on. Do the things that the gym does not normally let you do. The climbs usually stick around for a while. Also, if you are competing, go in with kinder expectations for yourself. Last year I went into it and ended up hurting myself pretty bad. I beefed it pretty hard because I had trained too much before Highballathon and did not give myself sufficient rest days, so I was frustrated because I was underperforming what I was anticipating. If you end up struggling on a climb, really struggling, step away from the climb. It will probably still be on the boulder wall later that week. I have a lot of respect for the setters who set so many new problems ... Even if you don’t register for Highballathon, the finals are a lot of fun. You get an MC and it’s really, really cool seeing people who are really good at climbing trying these really hard climbs.
E: It’s really difficult. Everything is harder as a highball, and I think that’s important to remember. If you have a grade you can climb at a regular boulder height, it is not the same as a highball. The fear and the fact that it’s a longer problem makes you way more tired.
I: Yeah. ... I’m injured right now so I won’t be competing, but I am gonna go out of my way to make it to the final.
K: I feel like we did everything last year. We did Highballathon, SFCT, and all the courses... My plug is for people to take part in all the community events. Crag X does such a good job at them and the climbing community here is just so great and so sweet. Take advantage of all of it because they do such a great job.
I: Also, much in the way that Friendly Friday llama pins are a great way to find friendly people, look for someone wearing an Ikea chalkbag. Chris, Amy’s partner, made them for us for a comp and he wants to hand them out to a bunch of people and wants them to be a signal to come up and chat with us. Even if there’s just the two of us, we’re happy to get you in on a belay.
E: Cool! Well, we’ve been talking for almost half an hour, so we should probably cut it off here. Thank you both for talking to me, those were great answers!
K: Awesome, of course!
I: Thank you!