Recently I joined a small group of twitter friends for a 2 hour taster session at "The Wall" climbing centre in al Khuwair. The centre is effectively 2 main rooms, one a bouldering room, and the other various climbing wall routes with varying (and increasing) difficulties and there's also an abseiling tower too. The wall is run by the Muscat Diving and Adventure centre and represents only a part of the services they offer.
We started out in the bouldering room, learning how to fall first, this quickly became something I was good at, falling, so it was good training for me. The room has foot and hand holds bolted into it all over the room's walls and ceiling, with crash-mats lining the floor wall to wall.
After a few exercises and games ("plus one") in the bouldering room, we moved on to the actual climbing wall proper, and put on our climbing harness' or whatever they were called and got stuck into the actual climbing wall routes.
I have to say, it was surprisingly hard for me - the centre has many pairs of climbing shoes available, but seemingly only 1 or 2 size 11, 12, 13 pairs of climbing shoes, all of which were taken by the time I showed up, leaving me to use just my trainers. I never realized just how much effect having the right footwear for this would have - so bear that in mind and be sure to wear strong shoes if you have big feet like me :)
The Climbing Wall has a facebook page here and the centre is a very popular spot with budding climbers of all ages and abilities in the week. There is "Open Climbing" on Tuesday & Sunday evenings, 6-8pm, at a rather attractive cost of 2 RO per session. It's a pretty good work out, and if you are not used to it, various muscles in your body will probably start aching a couple of days later!
More soon!
le fin.
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