July 12, 2011- On the Rock

We experience a lot of different attitudes on rock days. Some don’t particularly want to be there, some are crazy afraid of heights you name it we see it. These students for the most part had never been climbing but they were more than willing to give it a go. Like most rock days real emotions come out during the rappel. I talked about it earlier in the blog and every experience is different but a lot of the emotions are the same. Fear of heights, fear of trusting their belayer, fear of trusting the rope etc… This group really stepped up in encouraging each other. Multiple gals didn’t really want to rappel. One gal in particular got to the top sat down and said she wasn’t moving. By the end of the afternoon she was willing to walk to the edge with me. With the support of her community of friends and willingness to challenge herself she stepped over the edge. It is funny to me how an arm around a students shoulders is big help. When in reality the arm does absolutely no good for anything other than reassurance but it seems to help. We were all stoked for her when she got to the bottom and celebrated her victory with her.

 Walking her through each step.