My first outdoor climb

Yesterday I went on my first outdoor rock climb. I'd saved for weeks to buy rock shoes and finally had enough money last week. With the nice days fading fast, it was definitely time to get out of the gym and onto some real rock.

My climbing friend Dylan and I went to Quincy Quarries, which is an old granite quarry directly off of route 93. It's billed as Boston's premiere urban climbing experience. Apparently, it used to be deep and filled with water at the bottom, but a lot of people died cliff-jumping. Then someone got the brilliant idea to put old street signs and telephone poles at the bottom to discourage people from jumping in, and the death toll multiplied from people jumping in anyway and hitting the poles on the way down. They filled it in with Big Dig dirt about ten years ago and it's become popular among climbers. Now there are anchors all over the tops of the rock to attach top-ropes to.

Dylan set us up a top-rope at an easy-looking corner. Alas, I forgot my camera, which was a crying shame considering the views of Boston and the ocean from the top of one of the rocks. I had to snatch these pictures off of the internet, but you can see our first climb in this one. It's the corner in the middle of the picture, right where the rocks step up a little.
I made Dylan go first. Then it was my turn. I was pretty freaked out going up, and I had a hard time with some of the moves. By the time I got to the top, I thought very clearly, "I'm terrified. This is not fun. I'm never doing this again." Then I had to let go and be lowered, and I froze. I honestly thought I was not going to be able to move off of the rock to get down. Once I touched the ground, my knees were knocking. Then, of course, I went right back up it again. How quickly we forget! It was much easier the second time and my sense of impending doom was squelched.

Next we set up on a slabby wall (I couldn't find a picture of that one). It basically looked like it had no holds whatsoever, plus it had a lot of graffiti that made it slick. I made Dylan go first again. He made it up, but since he climbs several grades higher than me, that was no indication of my success. I couldn't even get three feet off of the ground. I ended up climbing a little off to the side of Dylan's route, but it was really hard, and about 3/4 of the way up, I panicked again. After getting to the bottom I gave it another go and made it up. I was kind of proud of that. I even managed a sort-of mantle (mantling is sort of like the motion you make when you hoist yourself over the side of a pool), which I have yet to pull off in the gym. I scraped up my leg doing it, but I did it!

We set up one more rope on the biggest formation--you can see the spot above along the streak of white. Sadly, we were running out of time, since I had a gig that afternoon, so I let Dylan go up. I didn't get to try this one, but it was probably for the best, since it was the tallest and hardest of anything we'd done. Maybe next time. Hopefully we will get some more climbing in before the weather turns.