Feet above Head, and Other Strange Happenings in Monday B-rock

Sadly, rock climbing is over. Best PE class I have ever taken. A few weeks ago, we took climbing field trips around campus; two Mondays ago, we rappelled out of Schoellkopf Stadium, and last week, we were at Noyes at the K2 bouldering wall, though I’m pretty sure everyone just calls it Noyes.

When we walked over to Schoellkopf, we found one of our instructors waiting for us with about three different ropes tied to the pillars of the stadium. We found out that to rappel, we had to climb out of a window. Don’t try this one at home, kids. Since most of us had rappelled approximately zero times before, we had the rope that we’d be lowering ourselves down with as well as a second backup rope manned by our instructor.

It was definitely kind of weird climbing out a window. After that, it wasn't too bad, besides the fact that you literally had control of your life in your own hands. In the second part of class, we were shown how to ascend a rope without having available hand or footholds. The method involves two small loops of rope tied with prusik knots to the rope you’re ascending. A prusik can slide in one direction, but when weighted in the other direction, tightens and doesn't move. Basically, you use the loops as footholds and slide them up with you as you ascend.

Bouldering at Noyes was all about invoking your inner superhero. If you've ever heard the climbing principle about always keeping 3 points of contact with the wall (meaning three limbs . . . face apparently doesn't count), well, it’s wrong. First off, there’s deadpointing, in which an arm and a leg leave the wall so that you can reach holds further than what you can touch just by stretching out. Then there’s the dyno. By linear extrapolation, three limbs would leave the wall in a dyno. By exponential extrapolation, all four limbs would leave the wall. Let’s just say climbing is becoming awfully nonlinear.

So essentially, we were told to take flying leaps from one part of the wall to another. I don’t think I’m going to be becoming Superman any time soon. During the next part of class, we were taught about heel hooking. Usually, it involves bringing your heel high up on your body (sometimes over your head), but unlike a high step, your body tends to be more horizontal. You can then use your foot to pull yourself upward.

The Noyes wall is pretty small, so to make up for the lack of square footage the entire thing is overhung and all the bouldering problems center around the thought “How painful can I make this problem?” There’s this one problem along an overhanging ridge where the entire thing is made up of heel hooks (because that’s totally realistic and everything). You’d better be channeling Spiderman vibes, because you spend a lot of the route with your back facing the ground.

For the last part of class, we were supposed to come up with our own as painful as possible bouldering problem in ten minutes. I actually made contributions to this problem, which started off with a couple solid handholds, but no footholds. To get to the next part of the problem you had to smear across the wall to get to the next handhold. That got me to wondering if it’s possible to smear across the entire bouldering wall. I can already feel the pain . . . I’m going to try it next time I’m there.

One final message from Spring 2013 Monday b-rock (i.e., me):

Thanks to www.keepcalmstudio.com for the generator.  This picture may only be used for non commercial purposes; use of this picture must give credit to Keep Calm Studio.