Way back at Christmas, Meghan came up with a most appropriate gift for Beta: time at the local rock climbing gym.
We didn’t use it right away because we were out of the country, and then something always seemed to come up or we just weren’t thinking about it, until this past week. I remembered about the rock gym, Meghan arranged a time, and this morning (Mother’s Day to boot) we showed up for the first of five sessions.
A rock climbing gym, in case you’ve never been, is a series of walls with a random assortment of hand-holds embedded into the surface. It’s meant to simulate rock climbing enough to help you build strength and skill.
You wear a harness and clip onto a rope. Some faces have auto-belays, some have ropes slung and wrapped over a bar above the face (pulley-style) so a partner eases you down. The ‘cave’ wall has no ropes, as the entire face is inverted. It has a very thick pad to land on instead.
We booked two hours, and Beta made it through impressive one and a half hours of it. By the end she had “spaghetti arms,” but she was talking about going back before we were even back in the car. Score one for mom!
