Pen and Rock

 Climbing and the Olympics: 2024 Summer Games By Zoltán Ágoston The sport of indoor rock climbing made its Olympic debut in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan (postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Long before climbing became a competitive - let alone an Olympic - sport, it was an outdoor activity enjoyed by small groups of outdoor enthusiasts and mountain climbers. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, outdoor climbers began to experiment with creating artificial indoor climbing walls as a way to train in the off-season, but it was not until the late 1980s that the first dedicated indoor rock climbing gym opened in the United States, in Bend, Oregon. (Reference: https://www.climbing.com/places/history-of-climbing-gym/) In the nearly 40 years since that time, indoor climbing has grown exponentially and evolved into a popular indoor sport with a highly developed national and international competition circuit. The competitive sport is organized around three disciplines: (1) spor...

This past weekend my mother and I got the amazing opportunity to climb in the New River Gorge with some family friends from the gym. The first climbing day – Saturday – we went to a couple crags right by Summersville Lake. Specifically, Narcissus Cave and Orange Oswald wall. The second climbing day we went to the Butcher’s Branch area.  This trip was my first time sport climbing in the New River Gorge. I was extremely eager to learn the ropes (pun intended) and learn how to lead climb outdoors. It is a rewarding and refreshing feeling to be ten feet above my last piece of protection and fussing with gear.  The feeling of climbing on New River rock is now my favorite thing about climbing. The rock is cool, comfortable, and intricately shaped. Unlike holds in a climbing in a gym, one handhold can contain multiple angles and multiple edges, creating a much more interesting climb! One of the largest challenges on this trip was confronting my fear of falling on lead. For my readers...