Love Letter to BlocHaus Will Salkeld

There are few feelings quite as good as climbing a tree as a kid. Laughing at gravity, reaching your way above worldly concerns, and staying up there until dad yells at you to get down. It’s no wonder it seems like everyone at ANU is getting into bouldering. On a Friday night, BlocHaus (Canberra’s main bouldering gym) has the hustle and bustle of Badger on a Thursday afternoon. Lately, I’ve been the one swapping pints for chalk, reflecting on why it is that so many people our age get hooked on bouldering.

The idea of bouldering is simple, for those who don’t know it. It’s like rock climbing with no harnesses on low walls with fun coloured blocks. You squeeze your feet into pointy shoes you swear will cut off circulation to your toes, add too much chalk to your hands that you have to rub it in both sides, and contort your way up the wall from which you may often fall.

Yet the first step is stepping into BlocHaus. Indie RnB blasts pleasantly through the warehouse speakers. An array of happy looking people cheer on and coach their fellow climbers from the soft white mats below the walls. Immediately, there is something completely welcoming about these people. In an age of LuLuLemon and tank tops, BlocHaus’ style is refreshingly casual. Like the unsuspecting 6-pack of Ned Flanders, you will see veteran climbers in jeans and a t- shirt hanging upside down from a hold. The best climber I know there must be close to triple my age and kind of looks like Carl Barron.

After my first session on the wall, I fell in love. I was back every morning for two weeks, having a go at absolutely every climb I could. My friends would ask about it and I would report back to them like a coach. Yep, I’m working on that climb - I’ll definitely get it next time. Soon, I realised they didn’t care. Unlike the cricket and AFL I dedicated every free afternoon in high school to, no one else had a stake in how ‘high-level’ I was performing at bouldering. The only benefactor of my climbing was myself.

For many of us, high school sports could never be a place of complete relaxation. If you were average at sports, you had to make the choice to either work hard and compete with the athletes, or join the theatre sports team. If you were great at sports, you were impulsively compelled to train and pursue some higher level of that sport – like the elusive regionals of Glee.

If you were bad at sports, well… I bet you learned how to tell a really funny story.

Then this strange thing happens when you get to university. Besides the assortment of characters across the ten halls who treat ISO like the Olympics, no one cares how good you are at sport anymore. You begin to do things for the sake of doing them. For some, the lack of athletic validation can be jarring. For most, it is a relief.

by George Hogg

by George Hogg

Here enters bouldering. Unless you went to some boutique climbing high school, bouldering is an activity where practically everyone begins on the same foot. In contrast to the competitiveness of high school sport, the bouldering gym contains the perfect environment for self-acceptance and the room for growth. No one is shunning you for spending your session getting familiar with the Blues. If you’re stoked you got a Purple, I’m stoked too! To those unfamiliar with what grade of difficulty these colours correspond to, I’ve left that unclear on purpose. Because when you enter the gym, no one cares.

To dabble in a cliché, climbing is like meditation. There have been several times I’ve entered the gym in a huff because of some relationship worry or Week 12- induced stress. Recently, my friend Jack and I have taken turns lying on the mats, ranting about our personal lives as the other listens from the wall. No matter what head-noise is rattling in my noggin before a climb, there is a primal concentration that comes with preventing myself from falling that brings my head back to the present. As my arms twist in ways I thought only possible forby Mrs Incredible, my body enjoys the full embodying benefits of yoga (minus the embarrassment of not being able to do downward dog).

Bouldering might not be for everyone. But I think it is. Perhaps it was the prohibition of me climbing trees as a kid which has fuelled my bouldering obsession. Or maybe the fuel is the feeling of being a happy-go-lucky monkey when I swing from hold to hold. Likely, the free beer my mate from Capital Brewery pours me post-climb has something to do with it. Whatever it is, if you want to forget the needless pressures of sport and do something for the sake of doing it, bouldering is not a bad start.