Christmas break felt nice and long this year. I was done on the 17th and the kids were done on the 20th. So we had a few days to finish getting ready before Christmas, a few days of celebrating and a week and a half afterwards too. By the last Friday of break we were ready to get out of the house so Philip, Nicholas and I decided an adventure was in order. They picked a rock climbing gym I'd seen advertised this summer but we hadn't made it to.
When we walked in it didn't look like much but it ended up being challenging and fun. I say that as if I tried climbing. I didn't. I watched and encouraged. Now that I've observed I'd be willing to try it but boy, you need a lot of arm and hand strength that I'm sure I don't have.
The gym didn't have too many other climbers that day so there was no waiting. There were a couple groups of people who seemed to be regulars, and one little boy, maybe three or four who was climbing with his dad and took a minute to make sure I was admiring how incredibly good his dad was at climbing. If I was four and my dad was that high off the ground, I'd be impressed too! :)
The first wall was just vertical. Obviously you can climb however you want but they do have color coordinated paths that are labeled by difficulty. The grey pyramids are free game to use while climbing any path. VB is for beginners and it quickly gets harder. I think the red path Philip was on was a V2 and Nick's green path a V3-4 (probably because there's a big gap between where he is and those big green grips by Philip).
The second wall was also just vertical but it had a place you could climb up on top of and a corner you could make your way around..
The last one had an inverse incline so you would be hanging upside down. It was by far the hardest. Philip finally gave up on climbing UP the incline, climbed up next to it, crossed over a bit and then climbed DOWN the incline.
Up
Over
Down
Nick tried too but it was so much harder than it looked. He ended up just grabbing what he could.
It's super tiring but there's also a lot of chairs facing the wall so you can sit, rest and plan your next climb. The planning part turned out to be really important. Also the pass is good for all day. The boys climbed for about an hour, we went to lunch, did some errands and then went back for an hour and a half. They did more sitting and planning when we went back because it turned out their arms were still tired from the morning.
It was fun and I think we'd go back. The price wasn't too bad but I saw they run a special on 1st Fridays so I'll have to see if we happen to have any off of school!
