On Oct. 13, the elective gym class “Adventure Pursuits” took a trip to a rock climbing wall at Parkway North High School. This gave many kids the opportunity to see what they can accomplish on a rock climbing course and see if they want to climb more in the future.

“If jumping off a 30 foot log counts as an accomplishment then yes,” Sophomore Wilson Chen said.

Few people get to experience rock climbing with their friends in a school environment so for many this was a first experience.

“The trip was great. Our class got to do something that very few kids get to do in school,” Senior Jack Allen said.

This trip was planned in effort to introduce students to something they haven’t tried before and to give them new and skills and experiences to continue with after they graduate.

“I enjoyed it very much and it was very stress relieving,” Senior Hope Mueller said. “I really did love this trip.”

The field trip to the climbing tower gave a lot of people who have completed rope courses and rock climbing a time to bond with people in the class while doing something new.

“This class is super fun and you bond with people you never thought you would,” Mueller said. “I have completed a couple of rope courses before this one and I loved those as well.”

This experience offered people who haven’t experienced something like this before to experience it even if they thought they wouldn’t like it.

“I really enjoyed the field trip a lot better than I thought I would have and it was pretty fun,” Chen said.

The opportunity to go rock climbing allowed kids who didn’t know really what they could do, to see what they can challenge themselves to. Rock Climbing requires many skills that aren’t in regular sports. Many sports are team focused but rock climbing is much more individual, you have to set the goals yourself and figure out how you want to try to climb wall. Rock climbing also uses many arm muscles and core muscles that other sports don’t use, like soccer has a large focus on leg muscles but in rock climbing you don’t need those type of muscles as much.

“This class shows a different side to physical activity that is often forgotten about in our younger audiences,” Allen said.

Rock Climbing is something that is very different from other sports. Rock climbing uses a lot of different equipment from normal sports, like belaying rope and spotters. You wear a specialized harness to hold yourself to the rope and you don’t fall, something like this isn’t used in very many other sports and it’s a new experience for many people.

“Its an interesting experience in the sense that it’s unlike anything else you can do. No other sport is like it and it’s really incredible for you to experience a whole other activity,” Allen said.