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-mountain-goat-
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Oct 25, 2004, 1:36 AM
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I was just wanting to put this out there for fun.
Many years ago I took a class (In 5th grade I think) about rock climbing.
There I learned how to tie a figure 8 follow through and not much else, but that was all it took to get me hooked. I learned from an old army sargent how to tie a swiss seat. And from there I took my dads truck rope (which is what he used to tie things to his truck) and I cut off enough to make a swiss seat, then I went out to "Y tree rock" about a mile from my house also about 50-60 feet high! I would throw the truck rope over a limb at the top of the cliff, tie into my home-made swiss seat and get my little redneck neighbor to belay me by rapping the rope around a tree about 3 times! Sound crazy? From there I finally got a rope for my birthday when I was about 12 along with an atc, some webbing and a biner. My family had no knowledge of climbing, not to mention we wern't very welthy, and I was looking to lead, so I would sling around natural objects and even use rocks to jam inside cracks and then sling around them!! It may sound like a dangerous way to get started, but I must have done something right, cause Im still kickin.
Anyway, I was just wondering if any of you guys got started climbing in an interesting fashion, my approch may seem old school, but Im only 18 now, so it wasnt that long ago. Im proud of my past, I have learned alot by trial and error and someday I hope to teach others.
~Russ
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tattooed_climber
Oct 25, 2004, 1:48 AM
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trial and error......you know what the learning curve for climbing is like....(well, for one thing, if you can survive youre epics, you should learn alot)...but if you don't, you dead...and this thread already sounds like a troll, so i won't say anything else to waste my time..
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beanricecheese
Oct 25, 2004, 2:58 AM
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It was the summer after my senior year, a 8 month long summer starting in January filled with a two month trip to Oaxaca, Mex, lots of doing nothing and lots of drinking, smoking, and a trip to Reggae on the River. Me and three buds were gonna go but one bailed and we had an extra ticket... that's were Shawn Snyder (metoliusshawn) stepped in. I didn't know him but one of the buds, Mandy, new him from a little juice shop she worked at. We took his Vanagon down and we all had a good time. On the way back we stopped by the Lost Boulders in Klamath, CA as Shawn wanted to do a little climbing and we had no argument... sounded fun. That's where I began... no shoes, no chalk, just sand, ever-changing boulders and bloody feet. After that, joined In-Climb and have been bouldering ever since... the wonder is, had I not gone to ROTR or Shawn had not joined us on the trip I may very well have never climbed a rock in my life.
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spikeyhair13
Oct 25, 2004, 2:58 AM
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I started when i was 8. I went to galyans with my sister and climbed. It scared the crap out of me. So i was done with climbing at 8. Years later when i was 12 i went to the renasance festival. They have a climbing tower, I tried it for fun. I wasnt scared. So i went to REI weeks later and climbed. I had a fun time. It just progressed, and now i have climbed for a year. Not very exciting, but i find it funny, that the renassance festival of all places started my climbing.
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shiva523
Oct 25, 2004, 1:12 PM
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I began climbing while helping a friend with a health project. He was assigned to "improve the health of the community" and decided that he would take friends climbing. A few days into it, I was hooked. The project began during Christmas break; I think I climbed every day during that vacation...
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far_east_climber
Oct 25, 2004, 1:25 PM
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Umm, well my first experience of roped climbing was when I was 8 at some fair... all I remember is that it was fun and I had a clunky helmet on and wishing I could drop down on the kid below saying "What's taking you so long??? come onnn". Basically began to take it more seriously from 14/15 onwards by messing around on my old school's climbing wall and now it's 4 years since then.
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glowering
Oct 25, 2004, 1:47 PM
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I always climbed boulders and trees. I went to college with some friends from Yosemite. We went there on a camping/hiking trip. 2 of my friends were going out climbing, no one else wanted to join them, why I have no idea. I went with them. After one of them led a 5.10 and set up a TR I climbed it (with a few falls) in my wrestling shoes. I was instantly hooked.
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overlord
Oct 25, 2004, 1:57 PM
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T2
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bandidopeco
Oct 25, 2004, 2:11 PM
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My first roped climbing expirience was probably when i was around 11 or 12, with my uncle at school rock (Donner Summit). He set up a top rope, tied the rope around my waist, gave me a hip belay and said go, so i went.
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willingspirit
Oct 25, 2004, 2:22 PM
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Just last year. I 'd seen rock walls for a while and thought it would be cool, but didn't think I'd be able to do it. (I thought you had to be in fantasic shape, and I'm an old (>40) reforming couch potato)
So then last year I moved to a city that has a climbing gym and signed up for lessons. My first couple times I did terrible...couldn't make it up the easist wall. What kept me going was that is was the best overall strengh workout I'd ever done. In a much shorter time than it takes to go through all the weight machines in the gym, I'd be sore all over.
I kept at it, got better and really liked it. Then this summer I went outside. Now I'm hooked.
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euroford
Oct 25, 2004, 4:13 PM
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see my profile
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caughtinside
Oct 25, 2004, 4:15 PM
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My roommate got out of his body cast, 3 days later I took his rack and dragged him up a 3 pitch 5.6.
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mr_dirt
Oct 25, 2004, 4:40 PM
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Growing up in Colorado I knew what alpine climbing was, however, when I saw the Eiger Sanitation in 1975, and seeing Clint Eastwood climbing desert towers like where I had on lived in Utah got myself inspired (ya, kinda lame). I got my elder brother, who had moved to Wyoming and been climbing scene the late sixties, to take me out for my first climb outside Estes Park. Five years later I was on El Cap. At least something good came out of that movie for me.
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dingus
Oct 25, 2004, 5:00 PM
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This story has been told elsewhere in greater detail, so here's the Cliff Notes version:
I joined the military when I was 17. They trained me in esoteric clandestine assination techniques and I was deployed to a jungle environment where I excelled at search and destroy missions. I was pretty much the best there was.
All of my teammates on our recon patrol were eventually killed, either in the field or as after effects took their toll. Finally I was the only one left and I led a sad and lonely existence.
I eventually came home and took up a vagabond lifestyle. On day, hitchhiking, I was let out near a town in Washington called Levinworth. Thinking 'prison' I wanted nothing more than a hot meal and to be on my way. While walking through town the dick headed (but basically 'good' guy) sheriff picked me up and escorted me to the town limits and told me to take a hike.
I didn't spend 10 years in the army to be told to get out of town by some hick sheriff so I elected to stay. That resulted in my arrest. The sheriff's brother-in-law started to torture me down in the cell block. When he threatened to do me with his 'other night stick' I went a little berserk. This set off my finely honed survival skills and I incapicitated the entire police department.
On the run I borrowed a motorcycle on Main Street and ran into the mountains. The Sheriff chased me every step of the way. I abandoned the motorcycle and took off up a mountain on foot. They called out a search team included the state police and were hunting me with a dogs and a chopper. Eventually I was cornered at the top of a cliff and attempted to down climb.
Sadly, I was at that time a poor climber. Yes, the army taught me to climb. Like I said, I was a poor climber, hehe. Out of options and not knowing how to hand jam, I took extraordinary measures and leapt off the cliff rather than serve as human target practice for the sheriff's brother in law who was now in the chopper taking pot shots at my head.
Well, the jump went badly but ended up OK I guess. I survived, big surprise there? Anyway, as I plummeted to earth I was bitterly aware that 'there has GOT to be a BETTER WAY.'
So as soon as I got out of the stockade I read Freedom of the Hills (chuckling at some of that stuff, too funny), took an EMS class (where I killed and buried the instructor while demonstrating PROPER technique during "survival training' hehe), and the rest shall we say
Is history.
Whats in YOUR wallet?
DMT
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caughtinside
Oct 25, 2004, 5:05 PM
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Classic dingus! :lol: What happens in part II?
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greyicewater
Oct 25, 2004, 6:24 PM
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last summer i was falling hard for this girl, and she climbed... she invited me to the local gym and i went. i can honestly say that i believe in love at first sight. i instantly fell in love with climbing!
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dharmacase
Oct 27, 2004, 4:18 PM
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I stopped using hard drugs and need other things to do.
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boku
Oct 27, 2004, 4:57 PM
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At a kids birthday party at a climbing gym.
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johnson6102002
Oct 27, 2004, 5:26 PM
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around 14 my scout troop went to thee rock gym and i became hooked from that day. we latter took trips with guides ice and rock climbing in the gunks then i worked at a high ropes course for a summer with a bunch of really cool people and alot of climbers and got really into the sport bought my own gear and built a nice woodie in the basement and now im gonna start leading as soon as i get out of this full leg cast after taking a nasty landing on a front flip dismount off my slackline breaking my leg in 4 places and requiring surgery!
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bonads
Oct 27, 2004, 5:43 PM
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My friend and I were in the school gym and we had just got done with our forearm workout when we looked at the wall. I had never done it, and he had done it only once, so we went and started climbing. Of course i found out quickly how much fun it was. The funny thing was that by the time i got done, i couldn't even write my name on the sign out sheet, it was just a bunch of squiggles.
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dave1
Oct 27, 2004, 5:54 PM
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I hatched out of an egg. wait, no,that was a dream I had.
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sarcat
Oct 27, 2004, 6:08 PM
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Funny I just watched First Blood on Sunday. Great show.
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jammer
Oct 27, 2004, 7:36 PM
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Years ago, in the early seventies, while living in Colorado Springs, I became friends with this guy that likes to climb. We became stoner friends and he took me The Garden of the Gods. He started climbing this ridge, climbed about 100 feet or so, sat down and lit a joint. Since we had not gotten stoned yet, I had to climb up to enjoy.
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cactusjack
Oct 27, 2004, 7:58 PM
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Boy scout summer camp, lake arrowhead, worked there from age 16-22. My buddies were on the high adventure team and I told them I was afraid of heights, so they put me on a wall. Been climbing ever since off and on. Now I'm married and my wife has learned to climb so we go outdoors as often as we can. Gotta love open minded people.
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saltamonte
Oct 27, 2004, 8:03 PM
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having grown up doing ALOT of tree climbing as a kid including lots of jumping from one tree to the next and other insane things that when I think of them now I often wonder how my parents Didn't worry themselves to death. especially when I would shout down to them from 50 plus feet up in a tree swaying around on the tallest branch. i just loved to climb so as soon as I was in contact with rocks big enough to climb I climbed them (no gear) in michigan this wasn't very often. (in highschool my disregard for safety did catch up to me when I feel about 30 feet of the side off a building I was climbing badly spraining my ankle) but a few years ago when I moved to an area with more big rocks and cliffs (mexico) and ran into some real rockclimbers (guys with gear) i was reminded of how fun it is to climb and I just had to get my own gear the rest was history
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gremlin
Oct 27, 2004, 10:18 PM
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My friend had climbed a few times and had his own stuff, and he wanted to climb one summer and needed a belayer. So he said "Hey, come to summersville with me to belay me and I'll buy you lunch." I don't let people buy me stuff, but I went anyway for lack of anything better to do, and climbed in my tennis shoes and an old ass harness of his dads with no padding and the ever popular crotch loops instead of leg loops.
I didn't drop him to his death, had a blast on the half of a route I managed to do that day, and bought a harness and pair of shoes off of ebay that night when I got home. 2 years later, weekends on the rock are all I look forward to, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
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sirdrinksalot
Oct 27, 2004, 10:49 PM
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my son was born three months premature so he was in a neo-natal intensive care unit in nearby(40 miles) Evansville Indiana. One evening when i had to leave him alone so he could rest, I was at a loss for something to do. I called my mother and she told me to go to Vertical Excape. There i found a great group of people, everyone was very friendly and supportive and always ready to shout "hell yeah, get it boy" I started tagging along to So.Ill and the Red, and the rest is history.Jonathan is now two and a half years old and the chillenest little sh!thead you ever met.
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cgailey
Oct 27, 2004, 11:29 PM
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When my parents separated, my mom started to date a climber (this is the mid 80's by the way). He owned an old and busted cavalier with thousands in climbing gear filling the trunk. I spent the entire duration of their "relationship" being dragged out to Index, Leavenworth, and Smith where I immediately fell in love with climbing (as much as an 8 year old can). I don't know if it was the climbing or the guy selling the carefree gum in the campground for like $.10 a pack that attracted me to the sport more, but I vividly remember watching Patrick Edlinger crimp his way to the top of Scarface and thinking, "KILLER!!". Thankfully I got his autograph later that trip at Redpoint; that signed poster hung in my room for years with the neon tights screaming "get out and climb you lazy turd!" at me. Well, it took many years, but climbing once again took hold of me...maybe selling my mom's old Sportiva edlinger shoes and harness on E-bay that reminded me how much I loved the camaraderie that seemed to fill that campground on any given weekend and the frustration I felt as a kid trying to scrape my way up some climb, whose name and grade meant nothing to me, with a guy I hardly knew yelling "use your feet!" up at me.
All I know is that I count myself lucky because I got such an early exposure to climbing...albeit shorter than I would have liked.
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mgr
Oct 29, 2004, 2:23 AM
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The first tiem I ever went rock climbing was on some ratty gym wall with my scout troop. I hated it and said that I would never do it again. Then for some reason i wanted to get into it. I think it was from reading a book. I don't know, but anyway, here I am. :D
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blouderk2
Oct 29, 2004, 2:35 AM
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My best friend in highschool asked me if i wanted to go climbing. I said sure and we headed out to an indoor gym. We top roped some stuff and bouldered a bit and ive been hooked ever since
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