Hey guys! I recently visited Denver and joined a climbing group to find a belay partner since I was traveling alone. I ended up meeting with a guy who responded to my post in the group, and honestly the whole experience left me feeling kinda uncomfortable?

He was pretty socially awkward and made a lot of self-deprecating comments. At one point, he mentioned he didn’t mind lead climbing because he has mental health issues and doesn’t really care if he dies from a fall. Low key did not know how to respond to that. He also put on my belay glasses without asking while he was actively belaying me.

What really bothered me though was one point when I was just looking around the gym. I had my back turned towards the wall he wanted to climb on and when I turned around I noticed his phone pointed directly at me, even though I was nowhere near the climbing route he was about to do. When he noticed me looking, it felt like he tried to play it off as though he was setting up his phone to record himself climbing. But like, he didn’t even check if the camera was facing the route before putting it against his water bottle.

He also offered to take pictures of me using his phone, but I asked him to use mine instead. While he had my phone, he made a comment about me having Discord, so I realized he’d been looking at my notifications.

I don’t know if he was actually recording me, and maybe he was just socially awkward, but the whole experience gave me a really weird feeling. I tend to freeze up when I’m uncomfortable, so I didn’t say anything at the time, and I’ve been having really mixed feelings about it since. I know I should’ve spoken up, especially about the pictures, but I ended up just going along with it to avoid conflict.

I’ve been debating whether I should mention this to the group’s moderators, especially since other people use it to find climbing partners. Am I overthinking this, or would you guys report it?

TL;DR: Had a really uncomfortable experience with a belay partner. Need to know if I should report it to the group moderators.

Edit because this comes up in the comments: it's not an issue of my partner giving me the time. He's been urging me to go much more than I actually do. It's how enthusiastic I manage to get myself into climbing, and how much of it was part of me and now just... Isn't as high a priority as I want it to be

This is a random rant about momming and climbing.

I started climbing in 2015, and it's been such a major part of my personality for years. It was my happy place and safe space all through my twenties. I had my whole climbing community, I went outdoors on weekends, went on climbing trips with friends, got my partner into climbing (he joins us once in a while, it's not his thing), fanthasized about taking my kids abroad to boulder.

Then I got pregnant, and realized I'm too afraid of falling, and stopped climbing. I worked my butt off to stay in shape, but also cried every time my partner went climbing with my climbing crew. But even this wasn't what broke me, because I went back to climbing.

The thing is - now that I'm a mom, I'm a mom first, and everything else second. Suddenly climbing became just something I do when I have time for it. I stopped rope climbing because setting times with partners became too hard. I stopped outdoors climbing because spending a whole day away from home had a cost that was too high. Climbing sessions became a task done for fitness and health.

It's been two years, and we just moved to a new place that has a huge climbing (including lots of outdoors) community, and I feel this so much more. I hate that I'm not the climber I want to be.

That's it. Just venting.

Hi everyone! I'm taking an outdoor climbing course and I noticed that I sometimes get a specifica kind of panic. It happens mostly if I'm top-roping and it starts when I'm already about 20 meters up on the wall. I then ask to be lowered because I'm tired, but I could have gone one. It doesn't happen everytime, I did summit some routes, and it doesn't depend on the percived difficulty of the route.

I look at my knot, I look at the ground and I think I did something wrong and I am going to die, specifically because the knot will "slip".

I understand that it's completely irrational, that the moment to worry and check the knot is before starting. I check myself and my partner, and they check me. Since we are almost at the end of the course, the instructors don't check us before starting.

The explanation that I gave myself is:

- the panic is physical and it's just a high heart rate

- it's because instructors insist on a double bowline knot instead of the usual double eight knot that I used to use for indoor climbing. I did it right every single time, obviously, but I still don't trust myself doing it and sometimes I don't trust my partner checking it (we are all beginners).

- it's actual fear of heights (my indoor gym goes up about 15m)

Any ideas of what could help?

TW: Discussion of weight
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I have been climbing off and on for ~7 years. I got into climbing through gym bouldering, but in recent years have really only been sport climbing. Recently, however, I've been interested in bouldering a bit to get better at explosive movements for sport climbing. However, since I last was routinely bouldering, I've gained a bit of weight for a variety of reasons (~25-30 lbs I'd guess).

On lead, I'm climbing as hard as I was at my lower weight, so I don't necessarily feel like I need to lose weight for performance reasons, but falling bouldering feels much scarier now. Maybe it's partially just that I'm out of practice, but I really do feel like I'm falling harder at my current body weight, and I'm worried I'm more likely to injure myself if I fall off-balance/awkwardly with the added force. Has anyone else dealt with this?

Going to the Red later this week (yay!) and planning on checking out the Miller Fork area, but I’ve heard the road to get there can be gnarly. Any advice would be appreciated!

Some questions off the top of my head:
- Anyone know the current conditions of the roads?
- Mountain project gives two routes to the parking lot. Which one is better / preferred?

As the weather changes, people do sometimes fallen ill with common colds, flu or worse. I was wondering apart from using common sense of only returning when you are better. Is there anything else to consider? How long does it take to get back to your normal performance?

Also how do you guys avoid catching something at the gym?

Thank you folks!

P.S. I have a condition that gives me transient muscle weakness if I am sick. Given that I am surrounded by the push through culture and a friend caught norovirus from the gym recently , I have to ask.

Llevo 2 años escalando ocasionalmente. El primer año solo escalé Top-Rope, el segundo empecé en Lead. Empecé con amigos y practicando, pero me daba miedo volar y sentía que no sabía hacerlo, así que decidí realizar un curso de escalada en Lead y aseguramiento.
El curso estuvo interesante, había un énfasis en falls y catching; sin embargo, conforme progresaba el curso sentía cada vez más miedo de escalar en punta.
Terminé el curso y por cuestiones personales dejé de escalar dos meses.
Cuando regresé al gym y a la roca, me sentía completamente insegura y nerviosa. Me desacostumbré totalmente y ahora siento un miedo paralizante al intentar hacer movimientos o pasos que podrían hacer que caiga.
Antes del receso escalaba a nivel 5.11b, meses después de retomar, sigo en 5.10b. Es cierto que regresé con menor condición física, pero la limitación es principalmente mental. Me da miedo arriesgarme y tener que “volar”. A veces no disfruto las sesiones por el mismo miedo y frustración.
Algún consejo para salir de ese bache?

Hiii any girls out here climbing? I’m new and would love to go with yall! I usually go to bainbridge and would love to go outdoors

Hello everyone! I am just wondering what stuff you do to improve your dynos? I am looking for stuff to improve them both inside and outside the gym :) I do weight training, so anything outside weights would be very helpful.

Thank you :)

Edit:: I want to be able to jump really high as I am 4'11