On Belay

[Throwback Thursday on a Tuesday? My blog, my rules. I wrote this well after I went on the trip and I’m posting it well after writing it.  This is Part 1 of 3.  Here are Parts 2 and 3.]

On a Friday night at the very beginning of May in the year 2015, I set out from Cornell Outdoor Education (COE) for my next great adventure. It really started during the spring of my freshman year, when I satisfied a longtime desire to go rock climbing by enrolling in and successfully completing COE’s Beginning Rock Climbing class. Except I didn’t stop there. I went home for the summer, returned to Cornell with chalk and climbing shoes, and kept climbing through sophomore year. That summer, I stayed in Ithaca and bouldered, then dragged my friend out to the wall to belay me as soon as she got back to Cornell. Throughout the next year, I gradually began to conquer the easier routes at Lindseth, and at spring pre-enroll, decided to try out outdoor rock climbing. I signed up for a weekend class at the Shawangunks (known as the Gunks).

We had a couple of classes before our weekend trip, to familiarize ourselves with the equipment and learn to lead belay. Then on the last weekend of the semester, we loaded up one of the red COE vans and drove out of Ithaca to the Gunks.

After a dinner stop, we arrived at our campsite. I couldn’t find my borrowed day pack with my also borrowed headlamp, so I set up the tent with the only other female student on the trip mostly in the dark. The class has space for at most, eight students, which is two to an instructor. We had started with seven enrolled. One didn’t show up to the classes before the trip, which brought us down to six. My friend, who enrolled in the class and showed up to the initial classes, got infected by my roommate and decided it would be better for her to stay in Ithaca. Five. Who would be next?

Those of us remaining pitched the tents in the woods. The tent I was sharing had the weirdest pole structure I’ve had to set up. If I remember right, there were two not straight poles and one or two more poles that were neither straight nor the same length. Eventually we got the tent set up and dumped our things inside. We had arrived at the campsite rather late, so by the time we had the tent standing, we set up our sleeping bags, put on extra layers for the night, and went to sleep. We had an early start planned for the next day, because it would be time to climb.