Victoria Chia

You wouldn't believe that you will be able to climb it until you've done it.

I enjoy rock climbing, doing ceramics as well as reading books during my free time. But I guess my favorite thing to do is probably rock climbing. For ceramics it’s quite hard to find a place to practice. On the other hand, rock climbing is more convenient. I only started rock climbing a year ago, around last year’s February. It’s quite a recent thing. I started because I was interested to watch my friends climb with my lecturer. After watching them climb, I started myself. My lecturer also passed me some of his climbing equipment such as the shoes and the carabineers so that I don’t have to pay so much.

I enjoy rock climbing as an exercise; I treat it as a form of workout. I like the thrill of. It helps me de-stress and it is quite satisfying when you reach the top. They have different grades starting from 5A, 5B, 5C, and it gets harder all the way to 6A, 6B, 6C. I will always go there and watch other people. These people are often good climbers. Whenever I watch them, I will feel like climbing too as it’s really amazing to watch how they climb. They make it seem so effortless.

I usually rock climb with my friends. We used to rock climb regularly on every Mondays and Fridays. But recently my friend has been busy so I rock climb with other friends. I climb both indoors and outdoors. The experience is quite different. For outdoors, I will climb at Dairy Farm Nature Park. I will go there with my friends who are more experienced with outdoor rock climbing as they have the equipment, the rope, the carabineers, and the skills required to lead climb. They are required to lead the wall first to put up the carabineers required before I can top rope. The experience is quite different from the indoor gyms because I can grab anywhere I want on the rock, and there are no colors to follow. Also, when you are climbing outdoors, you get amazed by the scale of the mountain, the rock wall and you just wouldn’t believe that you will be able to climb it until you’ve done it.
Victoria Chia