CONQUER: Who says you can't climb in jeans and a sparkle shirt?

Yesterday (after many, many months of scheduling conflicts) a friend and I went wall climbing. I was both excited and nervous to start and hesitated to go first. Since Jaz is admittedly the more adventurous of the two of us... I was more than happy to let her go first. As she climbed our first wall, I realized that it probably wasn't as easy as it looked. Matt, or gracious belay(er), let me know that he didn't start us on an easy wall but he wanted us to start in the middle to see if we could handle it. So Jaz made it to the top and didn't want to let go of the wall to come down but alas she did.

SHOWTIME...get hooked up to the rope and start climbing.The first few steps weren't SO bad. I was confident..I could do it..then the rocks got smaller and I didn't know where to step- or what to grab-OH and by this time I was halfway up. I looked down (mistake) and then got a little shaky about the whole idea. Thanks to the cheers from Jaz and Matt I kept it moving, and once I reached the top-I was proud. I made it all the way up! May seem like a small feat to some of you, but for me it felt good.I was SO ready to go on to the next. I came down like pro and was geeked for the next wall.Little did I know that it would be 40 feet high. That's no biggie though. We had three walls to climb on which was of course way easier than it looked! This wall made for good spiderman shots though!
For our final climb, Matt issued a challenge for us to follow one color of tape (hands and feet) up the wall. Jaz made it halfway up and the fire alarm went off. WTF! SO everyone is confused and in mid-climb and no one really wants to get down so they forcefully evacuated us. After a short break, we returned and smacked that last challenge. WE HAD SO MUCH FUN! As soon as we let I was plotting our next return!
Feeling froggy? JUMP!...feeling like a monkey? Climb! Take a chance and try something new. You never know...you might like it.

Our local climb hot spot: Earth Treks Climbing with facilities in Rockville, Columbia, and Timonium Maryland.