Rock Climbing Challenges: Scaling New Heights – The November day dawned cool and damp, the sun was bundled in banks of gray clouds. Now, in the early afternoon, the air has only warmed a few degrees, and a lingering fog is making the limestone slippery – terrible conditions for rock climbing. But I have to try. I spent three months training hard in the gym, torturing myself on a finger strengthening device called a hangboard and doing barbells like crazy. I gathered two friends to assist, and soon a drone would be sent up to capture what I imagined, in my daydreams, as a triumphant journey to the summit after nearly four years of trying to conquer this route and falling, falling, falling.
The goal seems simple: I must climb vertical rock faces for about seventy feet, using only my hands and feet to ascend—a practice called free climbing. A … Read the rest