Coyotes, Feb 28

"One of the best field trips ever" - Mika. That sums up our day very well!

We quickly got the chance to climb after the instructors demonstrated how to belay. Then the Coyotes had to tell the instructors what they needed to be doing and saying to stay safe on the wall as both climber and belayer. Working as a team and helping each other is what the Coyotes do without even thinking about it so they rocked it!

There were both nerves and excitement for climbing. Everyone challenging themselves in their own way. It seemed it was quite the adrenaline rush as there were some giddy Coyotes afterwards.

Here are some of the highlights:

Ellie: What stood out to me the most was climbing and that the instructors were excellent at explaining everything. My favorite section of the wall was the first area, it was fun to climb. On the way there I enjoyed playing grounders at the park. The only thing disappointing was that there was no Zara Pearls that we had wanted to find.

Satya: A little bit before we went into the rock climbing place, we had fun playing grounders on a playground. I liked it because it was something new that we all did together.

Katie: Hi this is Katie! I had an incompressible amount of fun today, not just rock climbing but eating in the “Dragons Den” too, and even chatting while on our way to find Zuzu Pearls. (Note for Coyotes: after very careful research, I found out Zuzu Pearls is currently open; and just had no outside advertisement. And remember our rugby research!)

Mika: Rock climbing is awesome, period. Learning to belay each other and getting to climb cool routes was so fun. Belaying is not very hard if you just fall into a rhythm, but it's like a different world. One little bubble of concentration, you're totally focused on the climber. And climbing up is no different, just you and your belayer. You're just focused on getting to the top. And trusting is the most important part, you need to trust the person who is belaying you because they keep you safe. When you are the belayer you also have to realize, trust is key. Knowing you're keeping someone safe. But after this morning's trust falls we all trusted and successfully climbed and belayed.

Safiya: Before we started our walk to the rock climbing center, we did some trust exercises. At the rock climbing center our instructors went over how to safely rock climb, and the proper ways of communication. We had to know proper communication so that the belayer and the climber could know what each other needed. The belayer was in charge of pulling up the slack for the climber to catch them if they fell. For rock climbing, we split into pairs of two. One person was the belayer, and one person was the climber. We realised that the trust exercises at the beginning of the day were to strengthen the trust between us since we would have to trust each other to ensure we didn’t fall. Rock climbing was so much fun, and it was a great way for us to step out of our comfort zones.