News Section
Climb on
Outing Centre members scale 30-foot walls
By Casey Toner
Weekender Reporter
Clinging onto tiny molded plastic nubs, members of the Outing Centre
scaled walls Friday night at the Northlander Climbing Gym in Rockford,
climbing sometimes more than 30 feet in the air.
Experienced climbers pushed with their legs and balanced with their
arms to conserve energy, while rookies scrambled up the walls quickly,
pulling and pushing with their upper bodies.
Soon the scrambling dissolved into a slow crawl and the weak, inexperienced
climbers popped off the wall like dead flies, only to be caught by a
pulley, a belayer below, a jockstrap-esque harness and an International
Climbing and Mountaineering Federation-approved rope that can withstand
the weight of a car, said Ben Kinney, an Outing Centre trip leader.
“Their lives are in our hands,” said Karen Rosenbloom, an
Outing Centre trip leader.
The spotter below, known to experienced climbers as a belayer, lowers
the defeated climber from off the wall, feeding the pulley rope in between
a two-hole piece of Air Force-grade aluminum.
Prior to climbing, a climber will check the harness straps of the belayer
and vice versa. Then the following conversation will ensue:
“On belay?” a climber will ask, checking with a belayer to
see if his or her equipment is ready.
“Belay on,” the belayer will respond.
“Climb?”
“Climb on.”
As the climbing walls progressed in difficulty, the molded nubs of
plastic became smaller, fewer and farther between. Hence more and more
climbers popped off the walls, dangling mid-air. The dangling, exhausted
climbers shake subtlety; experienced climbers call this “The Elvis,”
Rosenbloom said.
Most fallen climbers fell only a few feet until a belayer caught and
suspended the dangling climber mid-fall. Then, the climber had two choices:
swing back to the wall and ascend or quit and be lowered.
“It’s about beating your goal. Once you beat it, the next
one starts. And then the next. It never stops,” Rosenbloom said.
On the back wall, experienced climbers bouldered, or scaled a wall
horizontally, in the back of the gym.
Bouldering differs from regular climbing. Joel Brown, an Outing Centre
assistant trip leader, said bouldering is harder, more technical freestyle
work, done only a few feet (and up to 12 feet) off the soft, shredded
rubber tires lining the facility.
Bouldering courses are lined with irregular climbing nubs, some in
the shapes of skulls, others in the shapes of hands. The bouldering
walls break and bend at sharp angles.
Boulderers spot themselves with a black, 6-square-foot foam pad and
move slowly across the territory. They hang, arms outstretched, in a
skeleton-hang to conserve energy, Brown said.
And everyone else is either on the ground staring skyward or scaling
up the indoor climbing walls, scrambling and stretching hopefully for
that next tiny plastic nub.
