Hmmm.... TA x 3, anyone?
Today was Rock Staff Training. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Learned a bunch of stuff. And, yes, I'm now a TA for two climbing classes. Go figure. There was actually a good amount of new staff members, and I knew a lot of people. About 1/3 of IORC and 1/2 of my Gunks classmates are instructors now, too. It's cool. And I had no need to be nervous. There are people with less climbing experience with me, and people with incredibly much more. It's a good group, though. I learned a munter hitch, which is incredibly useful, and a z-drag, which is pretty cool but hard to unweight. Also, we did this teambuilding challenge, where I had to swing a bunch to get to the slab, and later belay from the top of the slab, and later do an assisted rappel. It was fun, it was. And I got to do a tyrolian traverse. We used a z-drag to tighten it up as much as possible, and I was the first person to go across. Of course, the sling was way too long, and so I couldn't reach the rope all that well, but that didn't matter at first. Because of rope stretch I would have hit the floor (again) but everyone was like, "wrap your legs around the rope!" So I did that, which worked for a little while, but then I realized that if I let go with my legs, I wouldn't be able to reach the rope at all. So then I ended up hauling myself across the rope, hand over hand. The pulley was completely useless. It was interesting, I'll tell you that much. And a great upper body workout. When Anna came across, the leash was too short, and so she couldn't get down. I ended up putting her on top rope and belaying her with a munter hitch. Geez. Then we went outside to learn the stadium rappel setup, and, naturally, it snowed while we were outside. Haha. Yeah, it was a fun day. Now I'm really excited. It'll be a good semester.