GEAR! GEAR! GEAR!

In my three years on and two years off of climbing I've owned the bare minimum (shoes, harness, belay device, chalk bag and crash pad). It was probably because I started climbing in a gym and stuck to bouldering for a long time. It wasn't my trip to New Zealand that I really got into sport climbing and Thailand made me realize how sweet it is to be a climbing bum.

In the last month I bought a new backpack - big enough to carry a rope and small enough to not look like I'm backpacking through Europe. I also bought a helmet, although now I wish I bought a sturdier one, six quickdraws and a daisy chain. Since yesterday, I am the proud new owner of, not one but, two ropes. The first is now my dedicated outdoor rope. I think it's pretty bad ass rope. It's soft to the touch, feels thinner than 10.2 mm but is extremely gentle when taking a fall. This is opposed to the Sterling rope I bought yesterday. It's strictly the climbing wall rope. There's nothing really fancy about it. It does the job - stopping me from splattering on the ground. Even when being lowered on the Sterling rope I could feel how much more unforgiving it can be (compared to the Beal rope) when taking a fall on it. If you want to read more about fall ratings and impact force of a rope check out Beal's website. It's pretty interesting, to me at least. There's a cool video to explain the physics of it too.

The main reason I got the two ropes was because I didn't want to abuse the Beal rope. The Beal rope is also 60 meters long, much longer than necessary when climbing at an artificial wall. The Sterling rope is 50 meters. I wanted to get a 40 meter rope but what the hell. I actually wasn't even planning on getting another rope. I've been dirt poor the past two weeks because of all the purchases. Oh! I forgot. I bought some light hikers for hikes to the crag too. So, yeah, two weeks of being poor but climbing!

I mentioned to one of the guys at the climbing wall near my school I wanted to buy another shorter rope for the climbing wall. He said he'd keep an ear out for anyone wanting to but a 100 meter rope and splitting it with me. That was Tuesday night. When I got to the wall yesterday, one of the guys who works there (Seung-woo) said he had my rope in a locker. I told him that was impossible cause my rope was in my backpack. He pulled the rope out of a locker, gave it to me and told me it was my rope.

What happened was this. Last week one of the women I climb with had to replace her rope. It was core shot (frayed to the point of seeing the core of the rope). That's not as bad as it sounds. The core is still pretty strong, but once you see it, it's time to retire the rope. I assume she went ahead and bought the 100 meter rope and split it with the intention of selling the other half to someone else. Turns out the guy I spoke to mentioned it to her and now I have two ropes.

I'm quite happy with all my spending recently because I've used everything twice while climbing around Korea and will be using it to climb at Seonunsan this weekend. Plus it looks like, for better or worse, I'll be staying in Korea for my summer break. This is mostly due to the fact that summer break starts in three week. I'll have to do an English camp for a week or two during the break and I still don't have any information as to when and how long I'll actually be off from school. Instead of feeling frustrated (which is how I've been feeling all week anyways) I've put the word out to folks at the climbing wall I'll be here for the summer break. I hope to hit up the major crags without worrying about crowds. A couple of weeks of being a climbing bum around Korea will do me good. Now all I have to do is start looking at starting up my trad rack.