- Decide you want to have the most fun of your life.
- Debate if you’re actually scared of heights (because you know you will be perfectly safe).
- Now here’s where things get shaken up into a choose-your-own-adventure. Do you want to take the Hopkins route or the private gym route? As head route setter at the Hopkins climbing wall, let’s first wind down that pathway. Continue reading if you want to take the school spirit route (yes, I know it’s free and that’s your actual motivator). Otherwise, skip to step 9. Don’t fret, you can always rewind back to here.
- Open the Hopkins Rec app or the climbing wall’s Instagram to find the hours of operation. (You don’t want to walk 15 minutes in the freezing winter to show up to the Rec Center and find the wall closed because our hours are different from the typical Rec Center hours. Trust me, I have driven 20 minutes to a gym just to find it has closed — it’s gut-wrenching.)
- Show up (no, you can’t just watch videos of Alex Honnold free soloing and gain forearm muscle miraculously through the screen).
- Go to the equipment desk and get a pair of climbing shoes (please, for the love of everything, return your shoes after the session and save me from more unnecessary tears of frustration).
- Do you want to boulder or rope climb? Pick your poison, but keep in mind that until you take a belay class and pass the test, you will only be able to climb on the two auto belays (and thus not be able to experience the true magic of our setting).
- Skip to step 12.
- Get to Movement Hampden (no, we’re not sponsored, but yes, we want to be — Movement, if you're seeing this, reach out). Either make a friend with a car, pay for an electric scooter, brace yourself for a long walk or call a Blue Jay Shuttle (and pray that it will drop you off first and not take you on a circuitous route, turning a 7-minute drive into a 20-minute one).
- Your first session is free, congrats! However, if you don’t have shoes, you may need to rent them.
- Stare at the gym and feast your eyes on the color. Realize that this is your dream, not a candy store anymore.
- Sign the necessary waivers.
- Get a chalk bag from the desk — this is nonnegotiable! If your friends babble, “I don’t use chalk, I don’t like it,” just remember this is nonsense and chalk will not only help you stick better but will also help the climbing holds from getting greasy and ungrippable.
- Find a VIntro or V0 if you’re bouldering and a 5.5 or 5.6 for ropes. Boulders are graded on a V scale, and ropes on a 5-point scale. Difficulty gets exponentially harder as the grades increase. Thus, lower numbers are easier (but for some reason ropes don’t start at 5.0 — if you learn why, let me know).
- A few quick tips on technique: climb with straight arms, it will save muscle; keep your hips open and toward the wall, as this also helps keep the inside edge of your foot on the wall; use your toes, preferably your big toe, as this part of the shoe has the best support in the rubber and you have more control; tighten the waist of your harness first, then do your legs, as this will make sure it’s snug around your waist (for some reason, almost everyone puts their harness on in reverse and the waist band is never positioned correctly).
- Some rules: for your finish to legally count as a send, start with two hands on the start hold and two feet off the ground before you make a move, and on the finish hold, have two hands in control. Don’t stand under someone who’s climbing! At Hopkins, never be on the mat when someone’s climbing. At Movement, go to the center of the mats and stay as far away as you can (unless you want to get fallen on, of course).
- Level up!
Talia Lehrer is a senior majoring in Neuroscience from Merion, Pa. She is a Sports Editor for The News-Letter.
