Remember way back when Lilly wanted to climb? She got to climb 65 feet up the REI pinnacle and kinda, just kinda really, really enjoyed herself. In spite of that, neither she nor any of the rest of us had done any climbing since, but with good weather we decided the whole family would give it a go.
To be clear, we're not climbers. We have no business doing any climbing. Sure, we have a bunch of harnesses and carabiners and ropes, but that's for alpine climbing and ziplining in the backyard. When it comes to the finer points of climbing we're pretty much newbies.
Don't worry. Unlike many of our adventures, nobody got hurt. We made plenty of mistakes though. Like assuming we could actually climb right up. Or having only a single piece of protection. Or letting Henry belay Clara who weighs more than he does.
I went first because I'm the epic adventurer. I can do anything! Except perhaps climb up a 31 foot artificial rock wall. 31 feet of gain should be super easy. What the heck? I got a quickdraw in place as high as I could, but then had to come down. Lilly went next and had no problem getting to my spot and all the way to the top. She even placed another quickdraw and got the rope into the top anchor before rapelling down and cleaning the quickdraws. Clara and Henry took their turns, too, before Lilly and I went back up to the top and pulled the rope down.
Just like last time, everybody agreed we need to do it again. And that's even after we all woke up the next day with sore arms. Thankfully, since it was the end of October there wasn't a lot more outdoor climbing to be done until spring. We might feel ready by then.
