Little monkeys
My kids are growing up in Boulder, which means it's practically a right for them to learn to rock climb. (It's pretty much a right to learn to ski here, too, but we're delaying that for reasons that could fill a whole other blog post.)
In this small, one-movie theater town there are two rock climbing gyms -- I mean gyms with nothin' but rock walls -- and apparently that's not enough because they're building an Olympic training facility here, too. When we go hiking on a nice weekend, most anywhere we go will be lousy with folks and ropes and people on a high climb. Rock climbing is big here. Way big.
Parks and playgrounds have fake boulders to climb and rock walls on the sides of playground equipment. Our children scramble up those like they're nothing, so we thought it was time to take them climbing for real. They loved it.
We met a friend from their school and their mom at a rock climbing gym. The mom just happens to have spent 16 years on the U.S. Women's National Rock Climbing Team. (I know, you're thinking, "that's a thing?" I felt the same way.) She was the best in the country for a while, and even now, buff doesn't begin to describe this woman's body. Anyway, we met at The Spot for a weekend morning of fun with M+O and their friend, and up they went.
Funnydad helps M figure out her next move
O way up high. Both girls felt safe with the harnesses instantly.
Funnydad tries a bit of "bouldering," a type of rock climbing that doesn't use harnesses, doesn't go far off the ground, and tends to move across rather than up.
We're now going to seek out kid-sized harnesses of our own so we can take the girls without champion support. We all enjoy it, and who can resist an outlet for monkey children to safely be monkeys?
In this small, one-movie theater town there are two rock climbing gyms -- I mean gyms with nothin' but rock walls -- and apparently that's not enough because they're building an Olympic training facility here, too. When we go hiking on a nice weekend, most anywhere we go will be lousy with folks and ropes and people on a high climb. Rock climbing is big here. Way big.
Parks and playgrounds have fake boulders to climb and rock walls on the sides of playground equipment. Our children scramble up those like they're nothing, so we thought it was time to take them climbing for real. They loved it.
We met a friend from their school and their mom at a rock climbing gym. The mom just happens to have spent 16 years on the U.S. Women's National Rock Climbing Team. (I know, you're thinking, "that's a thing?" I felt the same way.) She was the best in the country for a while, and even now, buff doesn't begin to describe this woman's body. Anyway, we met at The Spot for a weekend morning of fun with M+O and their friend, and up they went.
We're now going to seek out kid-sized harnesses of our own so we can take the girls without champion support. We all enjoy it, and who can resist an outlet for monkey children to safely be monkeys?
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