Start your weekend Friday evening with a Friday the 13th evening wander around Lake Waccamaw, then spend what promises to be a glorious Saturday high in the mountains at the Elk Knob Headwaters Community Day, or join us in Raleigh at Umstead State Park and get hiking — with our new GetHiking! Triangle program.
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video or slide show of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.
Jason Thomas had one concern when a climbing gym opened in his hometown of Cortez, Colo.
“Will it hurt my hands?”
Assured that it would not, he gave it a try.
“I was hooked immediately,” says Thomas. So much so that despite still being in high school and having now climbed once, he asked the head of the rec center housing the gym who was managing the wall. No one? Well, mind if I give it a go?
That led to an improbable trajectory that saw him head to the University of Colorado in Boulder (to major in Philosophy) because of the local climbing, a job at a Boulder climbing gym, and soon to Eldorado Climbing Walls, where he managed to talk his way into a construction job. That was in 2005. Today — literally today — he stood at the base of the “tall walls” at the freshly minted Triangle Rock Club North Raleigh talking with climbers about his latest creation as Eldo’s lead designer (officially, he’s the company’s Design and Creative Director).
To the untrained eye, the new gym, which opened at noon today, more resembles something you might find at the N.C. Museum of Art with a sign at the base reading “Do Not Climb.” The angular, vibrant orange and yellow walls cover 13,500 square feet, climb to 30 feet and are pocked with an array of equally artsy plastic holds. When Thomas explains his inspiration, though, he doesn’t refer to cubist influences, modernism or realism. He starts with the business of demographics.
“I think of areas in terms of different user groups,” says Thomas. Standing just inside the entrance to the gym, carved out of a cavernous former Gold’s Gym at Duraleigh Road and Glenwood Avenue, Thomas explains the crucial first impression he hopes to land.
The three-day Crystal Coast Paddle Festival opens in Swansboro Friday while the inaugural Green River Games promises to offer some of the most challenging competition the state has seen. Meanwhile, in the Piedmont, it’s the Big Muddy Challenge, big muddy fun for parents and kids.
Looking for a safe way to exercise?
Try climbing at your neighborhood climbing gym.
According to a German study of a half million visits to climbing gyms, only 30 injuries were reported, most of which were minor and none fatal. The rate of injury — 0.02 injuries per 1,000 climbing hours — was lower than surfing, skiing, badminton and Nordic walking, among other activities.
“Rock climbing, especially indoor climbing is a very safe sport,” Dr. Volker Schoffl, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at the Klinikum Bamberg in Bamberg, Germany, and lead author of the new study, told Reuters Health. “It’s a sport that we can have all ages of people perform together, kids and grandpas can go do the sport together.”
Most of the injuries were belay-related.
Read more here.