Don't Look Down

We went to Railay primarily because it seemed like a nice beach and a pleasant area to relax. It certainly did match these expectations, but the highlight of my time there was certainly my first couple times rock climbing.

I went out on a beginner trip each of the two mornings that I was there. I found climbing to be more fun and more interesting then I imagined. Also, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of challenge they would throw at you as a beginner. I have spent a lot of time climbing up little steep rock faces in New England without ropes, and did not want to just end up doing that with a guy holding a rope at the bottom.

The deal with beginner climbing in Railay is more or less this. You go to the office in the morning and they set you up with a harness, chalk bag and climbing shoes. The shoes are meant to be very tight, so you pick ones that are barley comfortable, knowing that you only wear them when climbing the wall. You then take a 10 minute walk with your Thai, rope carrying guide, to the end of the beach and arrive at a place I found out is called the 1,2,3 wall. This wall is evidently the easiest to get to area and is suitable for beginners, so it seemed like pretty much everyone who is doing the beginner half day rock climbing trip ends up down there, meaning around 10-15 climbers and the various Thai guides.

As you can see from someone else's picture, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this is a real wall, it is basically vertical in all places and is at least 100m to the very top. The first thing you do when you get there is learn how to tie yourself to the end of the rope, and how to belay, i.e. work the bottom of the rope, for someone else. You then get to put your belaying skills to the test as the guide lead climbs up the wall to get the rope to the top. The guide makes it look easy as he climbs up to the permanent ring anchor that will be used as the top of the rope for the rest of the day. He does clip in to the intermediate anchors so he has some protection, but between the fact that he is lead climbing and being belayed by someone who does not know what they are doing, I am pretty sure they prefer to never fall. After he reaches the top, around 10m up for the first climbs, he hooks the rope through the ring and then you lower him down.

Most of the initial climbs are only around 10m high, so soon after you arrive different groups and guides have strung up around 4-5 top ropes. At this point the tourists start going up and it becomes more interesting. The first climb I did was not too difficult. It was very steep, but the craggy limestone rock in Railay provides a ton of hand and footholds. I did make the climb more difficult then it should be because I was still climbing like I was scrambling up a ledge in NH. By this I mean that I was mostly using my feet and taking no risks, this ensured not falling, but limited the number of things you could do.

The Dutch guy with me did pretty much the same thing and we moved to the next rope. This is the kind of nice thing about being on a busy wall. When you get done with your rope, you just hop in line to use one of the other ropes set up by another guide. Before climbing the next rope the guide showed us how to climb using our hands more. Rather then using your hands to pull yourself up like a pull-up, as you might imagine, you can use your hands to hold your body away from the wall, giving your feet a better angle to grip small footholds. I would never do this without a rope, because if you hand lets go, you fall, but taking risks is the point of having a rope, right?

Now knowing this allowed me to take more risks and climb things that I would have never been able to make it up with my previous technique. We had fun the rest of the morning climbing the various routes, touching the ring at the top, and getting dropped down to the bottom. My highlight was climbing up a longer route that was around 20m high. My lowlight was running out of arm strength and ending up hanging by my fingers in an untenable position. There is an instinctive moment of panic, but then you remember that if you just yell "Tension" down below the rope gets very tight, and you can just hang for a minute to catch you breath and then pick it up again.

This seemed to be the most common problem people would have, running out of arm strength and not being able to make the final push over a difficult part. The Thai guides do have a little trick however. When someone can not quite make it, they just lean heavily on the rope, giving the person above the 20kg of upwards assistance they need to get over the hump. I don't think I got any help like this the first day (or perhaps I am just deluding myself), but that was how a lot of heavier guys and girls were making it to the top.

I liked it so much I went back the next day for pretty much the same program. Now with more practice, and a night to recover some life in my arms, I was able to breeze up even several of the harder 10m climbs. To give me a challenge they let me climb the 30m climb to the top of the main part of the wall. This was the limit of the 60m ropes that we were using. I was equal to the first 20m, which was a interesting, but not too hard climb I had done the day before. The last 10m however was a vertical, sheer wall with only a few handholds to use. I should have taken a longer break before tacking this beast, because I once again ended up dangling by my fingertips and needing to yell a long way down for the rope to be made tight so I could take a break. I was completely spent after this ordeal and it felt pretty good to touch the ring and take the easy ride down.

I was also entertained this day watching the other guy in our group who was a burly Nordic guy of some description. He was a lot heavier then me, but also a lot stronger. We were about equal as far as climbing, with him being a little better, due to his better time on the top of the 30m beast. He did not climb like us lighter guys, but rather just used his arms to lift himself up the mountain. It looked like he was in a bar brawl with the cliffs, thrashing around and powering himself up, but he always did make it to the top.

There should be some of our pictures of the day up soon as well, so check them out.