Climbing out of my comfort zone (geocaching on the local "climbing wall")
All this time, I had no idea what was behind this old concrete wall
As I said yesterday, Im no extreme athlete. The story below of my geocacher adventure is actually quite lame. I wish I was a great climber but the truth is a 4m wall is all I can handle. So far.
Speaking of lame, and wishing I was an extreme athlete, the front page of the sport section here in germany today was an interview with a ski jumper. He was recently on one of those Dance with the Stars Tv shows here and they asked him about that. His answer (translated by me):
Actually Im not that in to dancing but it was a challenge. If you always do the same thing, you never develop. Life is a learning process.
I climbed a bit outside my comfort zone today trying for a geocache.
This cache was only on top of a 4m concrete wall - normally too much for me. Yes Im a wimp when it comes to any exposure - that’s climbing talk for when youre ass is hanging out over the void. 4m is the void in my book.
Or it was until today.
Anyway, luckily yesterday I had read and written about Hendri Coetzee’s motivation to do all the crazy stuff he does.
Which made it pretty much impossible for me to back down out there today.
More concrete walls: the ruins of an old shooting range
I really only went out to see - Id thought Id swing by on my daily run and scout out this new-ish cache. Just scout it out for another day. Yeah, we all know how well that works. It’s like saying I’ll just have one beer with the guys after work and then go right home.
The cache was hidden amongst the ruins of an old gun range (funny we have lived here nine months now yet i had no idea these ruins were down here about 700m from our house. This is why I love geocaching!)
About a dozen concrete walls used to make up a maze or shooting course and now they make up a great spot to hide a cache. The cache was on top of a 5m wall, but with a pulley line running down to the top of a 4m wall.
At first though I stupidly thought I was supposed to unhook the wire from the 4m wall and then lower the cache to the ground. I climbed the wall three times, froze and cut my bare hands on the concrete trying to wrestle the hook free before a better solution occured to me.
the challenge
Finally I figured out I should pull the cache down along the pulley to the 4m wall - duh! - but only one small problem: the pulling motion actually pulled me right off the wall. Twice.
not such a huge climb... but challenging for me
Sat and thought a bit before realizing i needed to push the other side of the pulley away from me - which in turn pushed me onto the wall - the puzzle was slowly coming together.
Still when I tried to turn round to the bird house on the wire, my foot slipped out of its icy toehold everytime. The last piece of the puzzle: I stuck a skinny birch branch in a narrow hole in the wall and presto! a secure-ish wide foothold.
After that it was easy to retrieve the tupperware from the bird house. Signed the log. Smiled. Made one finally climb up the cold concrete, returned the cache to the bird house, pushed the wire away in the other direction, jumped down, threw away the stick and ran home beaming.
Okay, yeah it was only 4m. But I think I might be spending more time down there… maybe working on the 5m wall…
Moral: The best challenges are just outside your comfort zone. Search them out and don’t back down.
Full foto set (including the cache itself)