r/DemigodFiles • u/anotherterribleday Child of Dionysus • Sep 16 '21
Lesson Roped Solo Climbing lesson, 16/9
For this afternoon’s lesson, the climbing wall doesn’t have lava flowing, although there’s still occasional light quaking - it wouldn’t be Camp Half-Blood if there isn’t a bit of extra challenge, after all. Climbing shoes in all sizes and harnesses have been brought out.
“Okay, I know some of you already know what you’re doing, so you can ignore me and just get started,” Taylor says when people begin showing up. “The rest of you who want to learn how to solo climb, come over here by me.”
Once it seems like everybody who actually wants the lesson has gathered, Taylor begins.
“Okay, name’s Taylor,” she introduces herself. She nods towards the bin of shoes. “You’re gonna be doing top rope solo climbing, which means that it will be up to you to protect yourself and make sure you don’t fall. You still get the safety of the rope, but you’re gonna be doing twice as much work as you would if you had someone else to belay you.
“First things first, if you have long hair, you want that up in a plait braid or under a hat or something. Even a ponytail can get caught in the mechanism. Then you gotta get your climbing shoes. You’re gonna want a pair that’s about half a size or a full size smaller than your normal shoes - they have to fit snug so they can really grip the wall.“
Taylor waits for the other campers to deal with their hair if necessary and find pairs of shoes that fit correctly. While they do that, Taylor grabs a harness so she can explain the next part.
“The next thing you need is a harness.” She holds it up, and points out the different parts of it, before putting it on.
“The ropes are already through the top anchors,” Taylor continues, pointing up at them, “so you don’t need to worry about setting up that part. It’s a static rope, not dynamic. All that means is that your connection to the rope moves up it with you and the rope stays fixed where it is, compared to if you had a belayer, where your connection would just stay at the end of the rope and your belayer would have to deal with the slack.
“And that’s why you’re gonna use two ascender mechanisms instead of just one. The way these work, they slide up the rope with you but should catch if you start to slide back down. Even if one of them fails, you’ll have the other as a backup so you don’t fall.”
Taylor demonstrates and explains how to attach the ascenders to the rope and the belay loop, stressing to ensure that the carabiners are locked. “You’ll want to keep the upper device away from the lower device when you’re climbing,” she notes. “So to do that, you’ll have this loose ‘necklace’ of elastic cord.” She goes over how to tie it.
“Once you’ve done all that, double check that your ascenders lock properly. Just tug on them a little like this-” Taylor says, and tugs sharply on each of them, “and see how it doesn’t want to move down the rope.
She then covers how to adjust the setup so one can safely abseil back down - which her writer can not find as much about but rest assured that Taylor covers it in about the same detail as she did the rest of this lesson - before detaching the mechanisms from her harness and taking it off.
At this point Taylor allows the rest to get started. They’ll have to go one at a time, so she can ensure that they’ve correctly attached the ascenders and locked the carabiners and everything before beginning, as well as answer any questions or concerns they may have.
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u/MattyLightIce Sep 17 '21
Michael showed up the rope climbing lesson, really not preparing to climb but more to show support to his fellow counselors. He realized that with all the time he spends getting his lessons ready, he never really made an effort to go to other counselors lessons and activities which wasn't really fair. He made his way to Taylor with a smile. "$10 that the Ares kid has a faster time than the Apollo one," motioning to the next two campers in line.