Friday's Climb (20/4/2007)

At this point, we are still figuring out what we want to publish in our posts. But in a nutshell, we generally would highlight any significant events and happenings during our climbs, feature a particular trail(s) which we think is interesting, review the dinner places we go to after climbing, and talk about the people we bring and meet each week. Of course we would also share articles and news that we come across relating to the rock climbing scene, as well as techniques and maybe even gadgets. The sky's the limit here, therefore as VR develops, we encourage our readers to drop a comment or two into our posts, or even email us at verticalrising@gmail.com for requests or questions and we'll try our very best to fulfill them. As the site develops further, we would also increase our writers base so that they too can share their experiences. Till then, continue to support us by visiting us frequently!

Climbers: Bing, King, Sean
Venue: Camp5
Featured Climbers: Chris
Guests: Tua

Today's climb was particularly fun, because we met up with Chris! Chris is one crazy climber who loves to do crazy stunts like dyno'ing downwards, sms'ing while belaying, and speed climbing. He's a regular here at camp5 and is well known to most of the members and staff.

Chris

So the day's climb started with me, King and Chris going over to the bouldering wall and playing 'add-on'. The game is simple: The first person picks 2 hand holds and 2 foot holes and then traverses/climbs to 2 more holds. The next person then climbs the exact same route, and then simply adds 2 more for the next climber to follow on. If the climber falls while attempting a route, then he forfits his chance of adding 2 for that round. The winner would be the one that accomplishes a route that no one can.

Later on, Sean and his friend Tua (which is his actual surname) came along and joined us. Tua isn't exactly a newbie as he has been for OBS (out bounds school), where he learned the basics of belaying and repelling. While King and Sean went through the basics with him, Chris and I went to the castle wall near the trad wall to do some top ropes. After that, it wasn't long before Tua started doing 5c trails!

Tua and his 5c accomplishment

Of course the highlight of the day was not a trail, but an incident that happened at the bouldering section. A marshal was taking a couple and their little daughter for a tour of the climbing gym when they came to the bouldering section. So as the marshal demonstrated how bouldering was done in general, he then showed them how to properly jump of a boulder rock onto the boulder mat. The rest of the story is best illustrated with the self drawn comic below:

Of course we waited till they left before we laughed. But our laughs were more like subtle giggles rather than loud bursts of haha's - contrary to what is depicted in the comic.

We finished climbing at 11pm and headed to DJ for some tai chao. Unfortunately we were so exhausted and hungry that we forgot to take pictures for the food review. Oh well, there's always next time!

More to come: next week we feature a climb at The Summit's rock climbing gym.