The Mountains Call, and I Must Go: Bouldering

The university I work at has a rock climbing wall and bouldering area in the middle of campus that faculty, staff, and students can use, with free climbing gear rentals. They’re cool like that. Consequently, I’ve been intermittently taking advantage of the free rock climbing, and have progressed from a 5.8 to a 5.10. I wanted to introduce my kids to this world, but they still aren’t keen on heights, but they love clambering on trees and boulders in the local parks, so I thought bouldering would be perfect. We played around in their bouldering area before, but it’s hard to do that kind of thing with a crowd of rowdy kids (especially with anxious college students not wanting kids scrambling around underneath them while they’re climbing) so I took my wife with my this time to help out.

To prep the kids I told them about the bouldering ratings (V0 to V15), and how only a few people in the world can climbing V15s. Kids love the “only a few people in the world can do this” line, and it naturally piques their curiosity about what they’re capable of.

After about half an hour of bouldering we called it to make way for the patient college students. Later that night, we went to my office and watched on Youtube some of those “best climbers in the world” that I alluded to earlier in the day (both the world bouldering championships and Adam Ondra’s first ascent of La Dura Dura [5.15]), as of now the hardest wall in the world.

Future

Since ropes wear out over time, if you’re going to invest in one there’s an obligation to use it frequently, and I just don’t think I’ll be able to get that kind of time for the next decade or two, so for now I think bouldering might be a good step to take with my kids, since all it takes is a crashpad, chalk bag, and pair of shoes. (And the crash pad can double as a very comfortable sleeping pad--free soloing legend Alex Honnold uses his this way in the van he lives out of).

In the future I’d love to do the vagabonding, camping/bouldering/mountain biking all day thing at Moab, Utah; Joshua Tree National Park, California; and Squamish, British Columbia.