By Kevin Miller
My mom always told me that staying indoors during winter would have me climbing the walls. Little did I know she meant it literally.
The massive climbing area at Vertical Reality on Victoria Island in the middle of the Ottawa River gives you a chance to do just that, while escaping the frigid temperatures and getting some exercise.
Approaching the building, however, you may think you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up at an abandoned building in an otherwise empty part of Centretown. The only indication that it may hide something inside is the full parking lot, and the unlit sign atop the roof proclaiming this the home of Vertical Reality.
Once inside the building, you are greeted with huge walls covered in multi-coloured, molded holds and harness-wearing human spiders clinging precariously to various parts of the walls and ceilings.
Strangely, it may take a couple of minutes for you to be noticed when you enter because all eyes are generally pointed up. And when you inevitably look up too, you will usually see someone with a tenuous finger and toe hold hanging from a virtually horizontal ceiling. The truly amazing part though, is that they’re still climbing across the roof.
Vertical Reality was founded in 1993 by Peter Slivka, the former coach of the Slovakian National climbing team. Slivka moved to Ottawa in 1989 and brought his love of climbing with him.
On your first visit to the gym, you have to do a brief training session on using the equipment.
Standing in front of the practice wall, Guillaume Lajoie, one of the employees at Vertical Reality, points to a hold shaped like a human skull. “It’s really a great grip,” he says with a grin. “We put it there to kind of scare people a little. The one thing you need to remember is that climbing is inherently dangerous.” This is something you are reminded of when you have to sign a waiver before being allowed to climb.
However, Lajoie is quick to point out though that if you are responsible with your climbing, and double-check your partner’s equipment as well as your own, it really is a safe activity. “We can guarantee the equipment, and we can teach you the techniques, but it’s up to you to apply them,” he says.
During our 20-minute lesson, I learned how to tie a double-figure eight knot to our harness, and how to use a GriGri belayer. After that, we were off to play Spiderman. I’d been watching the other climbers moving quickly up the walls, so how hard could this be?
Well, I was about to find out. This turned out to be a very humbling experience.
Climbing is not as easy as it looks, and even if you think you are in great shape and this will be easy—think again. After an hour of climbing, I was sore in places where I didn’t even know I had muscles.
It’s also important to wear the right clothes. Loose pants and boxer shorts are not a good idea, whether you’re on the ground, or on the wall.
The harness straps on around your upper-thigh area, and when the climber lets go of the wall, (whether by accident or intentionally) both the belayer and the climber are going to become very uncomfortable when the straps pull any loose material right up into an area that this newspaper is far too professional for me to go into much detail about.
The wall climbing is a great way to get some exercise in the cold, whether you’re sick of the same gym routines or you just want to try something new. It’s great exercise and lots of fun, almost like an adult version of a video arcade. But I don’t remember my arms being quite this sore after playing Mortal Kombat.