Picture yourself 12m off the ground strapped into a harness with only two blue ropes and a belayer to stop you from plunging to the ground below. Sound scary? Many in Taiwan think so.
"Even now I don't think [indoor climbing] is popular because many parents — and even teachers — think it's dangerous," says Nancy Pan (潘蘭心), a climbing instructor and teacher at the Institute of Developing Effective Adventure (IDEA) in Beitou.
Duck Chung (鍾明均), manager of the adventure company Ecopower and operator of the Y17 climbing wall on Renai Road, agrees: "When children grow up with their parents and their grandparents telling them not to climb, it's difficult to break that kind of thinking."
PHOTOS COURTESY OF IDEA
But a trip to an indoor climbing gym is usually enough to allay their fears. "Usually I want parents or teachers to try first. The danger is in their minds and after they try they will let their kids climb," Pan said.
Indoor climbing has come a long way since 1964 when university lecturer Don Robinson stuck slabs of rock onto corridor walls for his physical education students to practice on. The simplicity of this structure — and those that followed — left little room for challenging or interesting climbing routes because of the steepness of the walls and limited handholds.
Today, however, many climbing walls are built with a reinforced fiberglass compound that has the look and feel of rock, complete with indentations and protrusions. Bolted onto the surface are a variety of grips, often of various colors and sizes that denote routes that climbers can take.
With around a dozen facilities in Taiwan, indoor climbing is becoming popular because it is more controlled than outdoor climbing, making it ideal for beginners. It can also be done all year round.
The color of the handhold tells the climber how challenging a particular route is: green and yellow represent beginner-level routes; blue, red and black are respectively for more advanced climbers. Chung says the different color schemes come from the Yosemite Decimal System (UDS). When following a route, climbers should only use grips of the designated color as handholds, though it is common to allow climbers to use any grip, protrusion or crack as footholds.
"There are no black grips on these walls because the level is too difficult," he says. But even without the expert-level routes, the red and blue are spaced far enough apart to make the journey to the 12m pinnacle enough of a challenge.
The cheapest kind of climbing is called "bordering" because a harness and rope are not required. This style of climbing familiarizes neophyte climbers with the wall and grips by having them move horizontally across the wall's surface. Though learners are less than a meter off the ground, bordering gives them a level of confidence necessary for vertical climbs.
Basic courses at both facilities last six hours and the primary focus is to teach students how to belay. Simply put, belaying is the ability to control the rope so that if a climber slips and falls, they don't plunge very far. Belay is also used to refer to the place where the belayer stands. After completing the course, students take a test to determine whether they can belay and if they pass they receive a certificate.
"If you don't climb well, it's still safe. If you don't belay well, it's dangerous." Pan said, summing up the importance of belaying. "Climbing takes time to train yourself but belay takes attitude because it is about respecting your life and other's life."
Advanced courses teach "leading." Like the name suggests, leading involves being the first person up the wall. As it is more complicated than belaying, courses generally last 10 hours before the test is taken. The advanced course is also directed towards those who want to make the leap to outdoor climbing.
Both facilities offer tailor-made exercise programs including corporate courses that can either take the form of recreational climbing — where the coaches will do the belaying — or learning, where students learn the basic facets of climbing where they themselves can become belayers.
Pan and her climbing colleagues have taken indoor climbing to the next level.
In addition to teaching basic and advanced indoor climbing skills, both individually and in groups, IDEA also offers a variety of programs aimed at corporations.
"We have some programs with educational ideas. For example, we have business training for some companies, like team and leadership building."
In addition to corporate clients, Pan and her colleagues have also been a big hit with schools.
Pan is particularly proud of a course offered to college students known as "experiential activity." Similar to socials in the West, the idea is to bring the students from boys-only and girls-only colleges together for a day of conversation and activities, of which indoor climbing is the highlight.
"The school wants them to have a chance to meet each other and also understand more about communicating with the opposite sexes. So we do co-educational programming."
In order to facilitate dialogue between the students, Pan takes them through a series of scenarios meant to elicit deeper insights into themselves and the opposite sex with teamwork being the ultimate goal. According to Pan, this reduces the fear students often have communicating with the opposite sex and increases the effectiveness of teamwork when they later hit the climbing wall.
"This kind of confidence-building and team-building moves outside the walls of the gym [so that] students use their experiences inside [the gym] to overcome fears they might have in their lives," she said.
It is also a great way to spend an afternoon.
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