Rock Climbing in Albacete

The peaceful little village of Ayna

Thursday December 8th was a national holiday in Spain. The banks were closed, the schools were closed, and I had no work. Taking advantage of an extra day off, Blas invited me to go rock climbing with him. In the past when I've gone rock climbing my hands have tended to get so raw and sore after just a few minutes of climbing that it becomes significantly less enjoyable after the first ten minutes, so I was wary of my own physical frailty at first and didn't want to accept the invitation. However, about some thought I decided that I would take advantage of the opportunity to get out of Albacete, get some physical exercise outside, and chat and bond with a co-worker. And all for free, too. So in the end I told Blas that I would meet him on Thursday morning and go rock climbing with him and his friend.

Local scenery

And thus began my Thursday: hopping into a car with Blas and his friend Javier, driving south to go rock climbing. We met in the morning with our lunches packed, and Blas drove us about 50 km south of the city of Albacete to a little place called Ayna. The scenery was quite nice down there, with the steep rises and sharp drop offs reminding a bit of the karst peaks of Guangxi. Of course, we didn't drive all the way down there just to appreciate the scenery, so we put on our harnesses, pulled on our cat feet, and got to climbing. Blas is quite a good climber, so he was always the first to scale the rock, setting our rock into carabiners one by one. After Blas had set up the rope on a route, Javier and I alternated climbing while Javier and Blas alternated belaying. This means that I got to be pretty lazy: when I wasn't climbing I just sat around. I had predicted that I would have a good deal of downtime and brought my current book, The Language Instinct, as a shield against boredom while I was waiting for my turn. What I good idea that was, as I have been enjoying the book a lot so far. Although my experience with diverse languages and the research of Lera Boroditsky suggest that I should not accept 100% of his book as factually true, I am enjoying the book a lot so far in spite of what I suspect are occasional out-dated or incorrect facts. It has a great flow to it, reminding me a lot of the writing of Malcolm Gladwell in that references to pop culture abound and an explanation of a highly academic subject is made digestible for the general public. I am only a quarter or so of the way into the book, but I am looking forward to reading the rest of it. But to get back to climbing, some of the routes were really excellent challenges. Blas told me that I successfully completed a 6a/6a+, but knowing that there are a dozen different rating systems for rock climbing, I really have no idea what that signifies. I just know that I didn't fall at all, and that the routes seemed to be just the right level of difficulty for me: not to easy while providing a good challenge. After a few hours of this we paused to eat our lunches and then hiked to another area to climb up a different kind of rock formation. This one seemed to be almost flat, and I found myself repeatedly amazed at how well the climbing shoes could grip the smallest irregularities in the rock. I continually felt that I would never be able to hold me weight on a foothold, and moments later said foothold was supporting most of my body's weight.

Blas and I on the rock. His shirt says "Spider Mule"

Although I had been rock climbing before, it had been a while. I vaguely recall my first experience in high school when some students from Perpich took a little trip to an indoor climbing place in Minnesota. Then when I traveled in Guangxi during December of 2008 I went rock climbing outdoors via a local company with another traveler. Finally, during my senior year at Kalamazoo College I went to Climb Kalamazoo a few times with friends. That, being my most recent rock climbing experience, was a good two years ago. Not to mention that climbing inside and climbing on a natural rock are quite different experiences. I was rather pleasantly surprised how the natural rock didn't tear up my hands as much as I remember the indoor climbing walls doing.

Local Scenery

Despite the fact that I hadn't climbed much in the past, and that it had been a long time since I had climbed at all, I enjoyed it and I think that I did pretty well. This was the second time that Spaniards have referred to me as "que machina!", and I think that I could get used to it. Apparently, Blas and Javier were quite surprised that I was able to use my upper body strength to pull myself up in certain parts of the routes, so I guess that I still got it: despite not being terribly physically active, not juggling, not dancing, not doing martial arts, and nor doing much on anything physical recently, I guess that the physical skills I got from my martial arts-infused childhood are still serving me well.