My Climbing Journey


One Year in Climbing
November 2019

Rock climbing is one of the most important things to me in life. Although I climbed a few times throughout my life, it wasn't until June 2018 that I was really fully introduced to the sport. A few months later in November, I pushed myself to become truly invested.

It has now been a full year since then, and I'm happily climbing more than ever. To celebrate a year in climbing, I would like to take the time to reflect upon how I came to love the sport and how much climbing has changed me as a person.

So, with this page, I will talk about the journey of a full year of climbing, and the impact that it has had on my life. Without further ado, let's go.

Before, Why, and How I Started Climbing

Before I started climbing, I had just completed my third year of university studying Computer Science. At this time, I felt as if my life was at an all time low. From an academic standpoint, I was completely burned out. Classes were exhausting for me, and I was not happy with how poorly I was performing. I also felt like I had no interest in anything, lacking something to drive myself forward. And despite having many great friends, I never put in time to socialize, and my social life was pretty much non-existent. Physically, I was completely out of shape, and I never partook in any form of physical activity.

I was very much in need of a change in my lifestyle, and I knew I had to do something about it. Before my fourth and final year, I was able to land an internship position at Environment and Climate Change Canada in Burlington, and I wanted to approach this as an opportunity to figure things out and get my life back on track.

Within my first few months of working, the opportunity to climb with some other coworkers and students found me. Initially, I saw this simply as an opportunity to do something recreational, make some new friends and socialize. Little did I know that accepting this invite would ultimately change my life. So along with some other new students, we all headed to the gym together after a full day of work.

My First Gym

The gym we went to was Climber's Rock in Burlington. Every climbing gym seems to have their own introductory package, where you get a discounted membership, and free rentals for a month or two. Of course, Climber's Rock had their own 2 month introductory package. I spent the day learning all about the basics with my new friends. I had great time and I decided to purchase Climber Rock's introductory package, eager to return there again the following week.

Climber's Rock also held some really cool events that were free to attend with their membership. Luckily, my membership was active when they held their "Night Moves" event, where all the lights were off, and climbing was done with head lamps. They also served drinks, had flashing club lights, and a DJ set up atop of their bouldering wall. To this day, Climber's Rock is my overall favourite gym, featuring tons of bouldering and top rope problems, and I always look forward to visiting again.

The Basics

I still remember the first time that I climbed. I tired out almost instantly, and I was unable to climb any boulders past V1 difficulty. Boulders are short and technical climbing problems, that don't involve any use of any equipment such as harnesses. In most gyms they are graded from V0-V8 (though they can go upwards all the way to V17, insanity!), where V0s are designed for beginners and V8 can provide a challenge to even highly experienced climbers. For new climbers, it's not uncommon for the scale in difficulty of the grades to feel logarithmic, as a V2 can seem impossibly more difficult compared to a V1... At least, I certainly felt that way!

There are also top ropes, which are longer routes that you climb with a harness. In North America, they follow a rating system that starts around 5.5-5.7 for a common beginner difficulty. The number trailing the 5. increases along with the difficulty, and the scale will start to use letters a-d or +/- symbols to further specify the difficulty. For example, a 5.11a is easier than a 5.11b. The hardest route currently graded that currently exists is 5.15d (outdoors), though most gyms stop at around a 5.12d difficulty. Similar to my inability to climb boulders, on my first day, I struggled to barely send a 5.7 (sending is short for "ascend", basically just means completing a route/problem).

After spending the day at Climber's Rock laughing about how weak our arms were, we left the gym. The following 3 days, I was so sore that I could barely use my arms at all. I remember failing to use a can opener when making dinner, and later that night, struggling to brush my teeth. It was more funny than it was sad, and I knew that this was just the beginning. I knew that if I kept at it, I could only get better from there.

As the first two months went on, I had absolutely no sense of technique and relied only on my (barely existant) upper body strength. I was the very definition of a gumby (derrogatory term used to describe an inexperienced or bad climber), rocking the socks in rental shoes, baskeball shorts, and t-shirts gotten from volunteering events.

Reflecting on these months, it didn't matter whether I was good or not. I'm happy with the fact that I put myself out there, that I had found something that I truly enjoyed and needed. Through climbing, I found a new lifestyle, always looking to improve, become healthier, and doing so alongside my friends. Climbing provided me with a great opportunity to socialize with people I genuinely enjoyed being with, and it always very wholesome and exciting to cheer them on as they improved. It was also very nice getting the exact same encouragement back when I was the one climbing, even from strangers at the gym who just wanted others to succeed. Every climbing session was such an amazing time for me, and through the long and monotonous weeks of working full-time, it was the days where I climbed with my friends that I always looked forward to, and this is something that still holds true to this day.

Breaking My Arm

On the 11th of July 2018, it was the last day of climbing before my introductory membership at Climber's Rock was about to expire. Since I loved it so much and wanted to keep improving, I was eager to continue after the membership ended, regardless if the other students planned to keep going or not. But for now, we would enjoy the one last climb together with our free rentals. I thought to myself, hey, since it's a special day, wouldn't it be sweet to send a V2?

There was a green V2 problem, that I tried a few times, but never had luck completing it. I decided this day would be the day that I finally send it. Slowly making my way up, with no understanding of any technique, I actually got actually pretty close to the finish. But before I could reach the end of the problem, my arms were starting to give. I had to act quick, so I desperately went for a momentous swing towards the next hold. Having very little experience with this kind of movement, I missed the holds, went sideways, and started to fall. At climbing gym boulders, falling is pretty safe, as long as you do so safely. Unfortunately, this was exactly what I didn't do. Sticking my arm straight out to catch my fall, I landed on it with my full body's weight pressing down on it. I heard a crunch as I slammed awkwardly onto it, somehow twisted up my foot as well, and I felt a strange numbness rush up and down my arm. I was unable to get up or move my arm. As I laid confused on the mat, my friends caught on to what happened and rushed to my side. The staff was called over, threw together a makeshift splint, and I was on my way to the hospital (courtesy of John).

After waiting in ER for a long time, the verdict came in: A fracture in the elbow and a sprain in the ankle. The doctor told me that I wouldn't be able to climb for 6 to 12 months. This was pretty upsetting, but I tried my best to keep looking forward and stay positive.

I remember a lot from this day, making dick jokes in the car in an attempt to distract myself from the pain, debating about humans racing horses in hot weather while patiently waiting for the doctor to call me in, calling my mom to tell her I broke my arm on her birthday, and eating my first A&W beyond meat burger at 1 am. But that positivity quickly disappeared, as the months waiting to heal the arm were long and uneventful. Because of the way the cast wrapped around my hand, I wasn't really able to use it for anything, and I didn't have the ability to go out and be with my friends. Overall, the biggest struggles were sleeping, cooking, eating, and showering. With only one hand, I had to make some pretty funky chicken wing movements to scrub soap under all the spots.

I was very eager to rest and heal up my arm as fast as possible, not just to start climbing again, but just to get rid of that pesky cast. I made sure to eat a lot of fish for the vitamin D (and because I didn't need both of my hands to eat canned tuna). A couple of months later, they took off the cast and I started physiotherapy. I had some pretty nasty bruising and funky tan lines, my arm looked kinda like a banana that was a few days too ripe. At first, my arm could barely move, even without the cast. It had been locked in a bent position for so long, that it basically forgot how to straighten itself. Physio went well slowly regaining my range of motion, and working out the pain with massages and exercise.

I never fully recovered my range of motion and there's about a 10 degree difference in how much my arms can extend out. But after a speedy 4 month recovery (much faster than expected), I got the OK from my doctor and physiotherapist to start climbing again. I remember riding my bike to work that day, and smiling uncontrollably at the feeling of wind running up my arm as I grasped the handlebar with my cast-free hand.

The Return

It was mid November when I started climbing again. I'd like to think that my eagerness to start climbing again sped up my arm's healing process, so I was excited to get back into it. The climbing group now was pretty much completely different than the one that I initially climbed with. They also all decided on climbing at a different gym, as it was closer to where they lived. On top of that, we met twice a week instead of just once, but I certainly had no complaints about that!

This new gym was called Gravity, a warehouse type building with extremely tall top roping walls. They had some very fun and interesting boulders as well. Though the gym was quite smaller than Climber's Rock, I didn't mind, as the gym was still really great and I was only excited to be climbing again.

I took things easy, to ensure I didn't wreck my arm as soon as it was recovered, and I was also quite shaken up about attempting to climb anything past V1 in difficulty. At first, I thought that taking such a long break would result in me losing any strength or endurance that I had gained previously. However after only a few climbing sessions, I quickly regained my strength and was already back at the level I was at before I broke my arm.

I spent a lot of time the next few climbing sessions watching my new climbing friends climb boulders. There was an interesting black V2 problem with some awkward holds, and it involved a lot of leg adjustments that I've never really seen in any problem before. Every one of my friends seemed to struggle with the problem, and it looked harder than any V2 I'd ever attempted. As I watched them, I thought there was no way that I could do this problem. But one day having climbed all the V1s in the gym, I decided to give it a shot to see what it was all about. It was the first V2 I tried after breaking my arm, but after watching my friends struggle with it for so long, I learned from their movements and knew how to approach the problem. And then I kept climbing up the route until I got to the finishing hold. It felt amazing, I flashed it (flashing is a term for completing a problem on your first try)! My strength and technique had been better than ever, and I gained the confidence to start sending all the V2s! I was climbing better and better each day, and once I was ready, I moved on to the next level.

Improvements

I attempted a few V3s after this point, but it wasn't until the 7th of January that I sent my first one. It was a problem with crimping (tiny finger holds), a dyno (jumping and releasing your hands from the wall), and campusing (climbing with no feet). In this picture I took, I've mapped out the dyno that took me multiple attempts before I finally got it. Without any fully developped calluses, I lost a lot of skin on my fingers too! But since I'm a pretty small and light guy, I was able to excel at problems that relied more on upper body strength over balance and technique. I definitely documented and bragged a lot about the problems I completed on my Instagram stories. In retrospect, it must have preeeetty annoying for people to see, but I'm glad I did it anyways, since the archives ended up providing me a lot of data to track my progress as a climber.

I'm proud of the fact that I was able progress to this level, only a few months after I recovered from my injury. I would have never imagined myself being able to do something like this before I started climbing. The feeling of satisfaction every time I achieved climbing a problem at the next level was incredible, and with the support and cheering from my friends, I was always motivated to keep improving and become the best climber I could be. It was also equally exciting watching my friends get better too, and they sent their first V3s around the same time that I did.

Keeping track of my progress, I sent my first V4 on the 13th of May after getting some pointers from my friends. On the 11th of July I sent my first V5, though it may have only been because the problem was generously graded. For top ropes, I had worked my way up to the 5.11a range in difficulty, though I'm uncertain how accurate that level is for me, since every gym I'ev climbed at, the accuracy of the difficulty of top-ropes has been quite variable. After being stuck at this range for a long time, I realized the best way to get better was to start climbing 3 or more times a week, and I became even more invested than ever.

Making Friends and Making Sends

As the year went on, I found myself becoming the one who was always trying to recruit new students to try rock climbing, hoping that they would find as much passion and enjoyment out of it as I have. I couldn't have been more happy when some of the new students agreed to try it out! Just like how I started, they had never climbed before, but came anyways as an opportunity to socialize and do something active and fun. It was great watching these friends start the same way I did (with 100% less broken bones) and quickly improve over time.

My obsession with climbing became a recurring joke at work. Climbing was very often a topic that came up at lunch time, and I only wished that everyone could be included in our discussions. The constant attempts at recruiting other students paid off, as one day almost everyone decided to come to the gym after work and climb for the first time. They were all climbing much better than I did at my first time and just hearing from them about how much fun they had after we left made me really happy. That was a bittersweet day, since it was approaching everyone's last day working at Environment Canada. I knew that although I was parting ways with all of my climbing friends, and leaving Burlington, I knew that I had to keep climbing.

Back in Toronto, I've started the year fully reinvigorated. I now climb primarily at a gym called Basecamp Climbing, which is located very close to my apartment (not planned but extremely lucky and fortunate). It's nowhere near as big as Gravity or Climber's Rock, but the gym makes up for it by having a lot of cute dogs. I joined the University of Toronto Rock Climbing and Bouldering Club, where I have made a lot of new friends who are all incredible at climbing. I've also met some great people from the University of Toronto Outing Club, who are all very experienced climbers and it's interesting hearing their insights.

Nowadays, I aim to climb 4-5 times a week, working primarily on V4-V6 boulders and trying to send 5.11b top ropes with no breaks or falls. Alongside the fantastic new friends that I've made, I know I can only keep improving from here. And now, having caught up to the present I want to wrap up by giving some direct shoutouts to the wonderful friends that have climbed with me throughout the year. Not only have you all made me a better climber, but you've made me a better person. The rest of this page is for you.

Acknowledgements

John ~ Thank you so much for inviting me and other students to climb. You certainly spread something you were passionate about to me. Without your leadership there, I would have never found this life changing hobby. I will also never forget when you drove me to the hospital after I broke my arm. As much of a nightmare of a day it was for me, I imagine it was just as much for you, but I'm glad we were able to get through that together! It's unfortunate I took too long to heal before you got that sweet promotion, because it would have been great to keep improving alongside you. When you left CCIW, people started joking around how I became the new John 2.0, constantly trying to get people to try climbing, but I'm not sure if that was a fair comparison, as the climbing family had already been established by you, and I just followed along those footsteps you had already set. Hope we can climb together again some day!

Maddie ~ My brother! I remember when my arm had just healed back to climbing condition, I was very eager to start climbing again. It turned out everyone was busy that night, and afraid of the snow storm warnings that came up. But we were unafraid and we drove our cars out through the crazy snow and traffic to Climber's Rock, where we climbed together for the first time. I can never complain about being short, because the betas you find when the holds are too far to reach are actually insane. I also love the presence you brought to the climbing family and how you picked up and cheered others on with the nonsense sayings that I would shout. Let's go brother, run your sets! You definitely pushed me to become a better climber. And I still don't understand how you're so good at hand stands. It was always a pleasure, hope to climb with you soon brother.

Celine ~ You were always a very friendly and encouraging presence for the climbing family. I'm so glad you stuck around with us even after you left CCIW. I remember very early on when I just started, John introduced me to you and the two of you taught me a lot of the basics and insights of climbing early on. It was a lot of fun watching you send some top ropes, and I remember that it was you who helped me complete my belay tests! I'm also very thankful of the times you would often host everyone after climbing for dinners and and various get togethers. I definitely won't forget eating poke and playing with Suri. I hope I can come back to the climbing family some time soon, and we can all climb together again.

Amanda ~ You are a beast of a climber! I remember on days when everyone seemed to be busy and couldn't go climbing, I was worried that I would be the only person to show up at the gym, but you were always there, and on weekends too! You're crazy good at climbing and I learned so much from you and Mike. My first V4 and V5 sends were both results of your tips and suggestions. You have a lot of knowledge about climbing and I hope my dumb ass ideas didn't degrade any of it! It was great to have such a knowledgeable and experienced climbing friend. I loved hearing about your climbing trips as well and I will never forget the day no body showed up to Gravity, and we played an epic game of Add-One spanning an entire section of the boulder wall. I'm really looking forward to the outdoor climbing trip to the Glen that you are planning!

Austin ~ It was awesome climbing alongside you. It was crazy how you seemed to be able to send every problem that I struggled at and in return I could send some the ones you struggled with! Your dedication to getting problems that I would normally give up on was awesome, and without you doing that, I probably wouldn't have sent a lot of the problems that I did. You never made any excuses and only looked towards being a better climber, and I think that's the best attitude to have. You have crazy endurance and motivation, and you pushed me to be a better climber. Thanks for being such a positive and encouraging climbing friend. We gotta climb again soon, and see how much we have both improved!

Megan ~ I'm really glad you joined our climbing family so quick, I thought it was awesome how fast you incorporated yourself with our climbing group! And also thanks for all the carpools that we shared, though, your music was pretty mediocre. Just kidding, I can't say anything when I have an hour long playlist of boobalee. Thanks for being so supportive and fun to be around at the gym. It was inspiring to see your dedication to always show up to climb despite having a weak knee. And I think out of everyone, you've belayed me for top ropes the most, so I gotta thank you for that! It's great to hear that you are still climbing with your Waterloo friends and I bet the next time we climb together, you will be twice as ripped. Can't wait to run sets with you again! Also, our next camping trip should have outdoor climbing, better start planning.

Caroline ~ Insanely good climber! I am very lucky to have been able to climb with you. When I left Burlington, I was worried that I wouldn't find anyone to climb with but you have made my transition back to Toronto absolutely fantastic. I don't understand how you're able to send half the problems that you do, but it is very inspiring and I'm more motivated than ever to get better. I'm very thankful that I have found someone who is so good at climbing, and your interest and dedication towards climbing is infectious. Thank you for being always down to climb, despite having the busy CS student life. In these past months, you've pushed me to improve more than I thought was even possible. Thank you for being such a fun and great climbing friend. I am already looking forward to our next climb!

I would also like to give shoutouts to:
my sister Angela, Todd, for inviting me to climb 2 years ago,
the rest of climbing family, you know who you all are, amazing how we just kept expanding our numbers,
my new friends from UTRCBC and UTOC, really glad to have met so many talented climbers from our school,
Greg, Morgan, Sara, Liz, Sean, and anyone else that I have had the pleasure climbing with.

I had so much fun this past year climbing with all of you. Thank you for everything, keep climbing, and run your sets!