I like that Boulder, That is a nice boulder – 101 in 1001 [5]

Time to tick another off the list.

I’d been ready to tick another thing off my 101 in 1001  list for a while. In fact, I think I massively need to up my game with this. Bouldering is something I’ve wanted to try for a long time, and a work friend had recently started going and saturating his snapchat with videos on his days off, so I just had to try it!

I booked a boulder induction for 8.15pm on a Monday evening, perfect timing for most people who shy away from crowded places right? Wrong. It was insanely busy for the first half hour, they had just had their wall re-set, so there were lots of new climbing routes available and the place was packed. The session instructor – Sarah, was incredible though. She first took us on a tour of the facility and did the usual ‘common sense’ training. Finding a quiet spot we each took it in turns to climb up a Slab, Match and then work our way back down. The group took to it quickly so we soon moved on to overhanging walls and a few more complex places. Everyone in the group was either much taller than me or had climbed before so there was one route that I couldn’t quite reach but Sarah was so supportive, she told me bouldering isn’t about reaching the top, its about perfecting technique and progressing, so I may have been three holds off of completing it this time, but next time I should try one more, and i’d soon be at the top.

The induction gave me some good tips and we finished off with 40 minutes of free-climb after. I challenged myself to a lot of different routes, and there is one climb right in the middle where you climb onto the top of it, walk along and dismount the other side. This is where I thought I would struggle. It’s not particularly hard, but I get nervous at heights, and with bouldering you have no harness, just a foam floor beneath you. I managed it though, and even went back for more.

 

 

I traversed many routes, and can’t wait to build up my strength to try more. I’ll definitely be returning and am so happy, even with the amount of people at the start being quite intimidating I managed to do it and progress well!

Short but sweet, time to move onto conquering number 6, but bouldering will definitely be something I’ll keep up.