By Hudson Jacobus

(Hudson Jacobus, a student at Vestavia Hills High School, is president of the VHHS Climbing Team. Jacobus won two Birmingham Interscholastic Climbing League competitions during the 2019-2020 season and placed second in the 2019 Southern Grit men’s intermediate competition.)

Even after a year and a half of climbing, I still get the same joy from finishing a route or taking in the view at the top of a wall as I did the very first time I tried it. Some days, I feel like there’s nothing I can’t do on the wall. Other days I feel like a complete beginner. The enjoyment, however, is there every time I put on my shoes and reach into my chalk bag. 

I started climbing regularly during my sophomore year of high school. The newly founded climbing club at my school was looking for members, and I had visited climbing gyms enough to know that I wanted in. The next week, I paid for a gym membership and showed up ready to get started, with brand-new shoes, harness, and chalk bag in hand.

I must have looked wide-eyed and clueless on my first day. Luckily for me, the climbing community is one of the most welcoming and friendly groups of people you can find.

Climbing and problem-solving

Climbing is a sport based around struggle and repeated failure. I learned this early on. The difficulty of the sport can sometimes make for some frustrating sessions, but it also means that other climbers taking on the same challenges will share the same struggle. 

If another climber and I are taking turns failing over and over on the same bouldering problem, then both of us can empathize with the other over how impossible the problem seems or how bad our forearms are burning. However, there are two sides to every coin. When both of us finish the problem after what seems like dozens of failed attempts, we can celebrate our success together. To me, this is part of what makes climbing such a great sport.

The zen of climbing

Another reason I love climbing is the pure isolation I feel on the wall. Although climbing can bring a sense of community and camaraderie when I’m standing on solid ground, it brings the total opposite as soon as I step off of it. Something about the act of clinging to a slab of rock by only my fingers and toes has the ability to demand my focus like nothing else.

In fact, many climbers will even describe the feeling that comes over them on the wall as a zen state. When I’m purely and totally focused on getting to the top of a route or problem, all the stresses and burdens of everyday life completely vanish from my mind.

For a moment, all the noise of the world falls silent. Often I find that I climb my best on the worst days when I just need to escape from it all for a few hours and enjoy climbing.  They may seem like small details, but the small things I enjoy most about climbing are the things that would pull me into the gym two or three days a week.

Favorite days

When the weather is perfect and the sun is shining, I get to enjoy my sport outside in Alabama’s picturesque climbing areas. My favorite days are the ones spent bouldering under the thick green canopy of  Moss Rock Preserve or leading up the towers of stone at Sand Rock.

Interested in climbing? Check out this video on building your own climbing wall.

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