Enjoyed reading this and I had a similar experience with climbing. I think a lot of folks new to backpacking/outdoor recreation have similar experiences (or risk having them if they haven’t already).
My first lead climb was a route in the Red River Gorge that I’d top-roped once before. My “partner” (it was a fairly unequal partnership where I’d belay them while they projected hard climbs, and I’d get to top rope on the warm up or cool down route assuming it was within my ability — it often wasn’t) said it was time for me to learn to lead, so we headed to the base of a 5.9+ and I put quickdraws on my harness for the first time.
I asked as many questions as I could think of, but not knowing what I didn’t know, I suppose I didn’t ask the right ones. It was comforting at the time, but alarming in hindsight, that most every question I asked was answered with “You’ll be fine”.
After clipping the second bolt, my partner informed me that I had backclipped it and needed to fix it — they walked me through how to do this, but I didn’t even really understand what I did at that moment. Clipped was clipped, to me — backwards, forwards, sideways, whatever. So I wasted a ton of energy re-clipping that bolt and then climbed upward. At the fourth bolt, same thing happened (at least my belayer was attentive, if not exactly a great teacher on the front-end of the climb). I was getting tired, confused, and frustrated. Definitely was not having fun.
When I made it to the anchors, which were a bit runout from the last bolt — with my forearms more exhausted than they’ve ever been — I got so scared about backclipping the anchors (which wouldn’t be an issue since I wouldn’t be climbing above them, but I didn’t know that at the time) that after clipping a quickdraw I couldn’t get the rope through and fell, taking a roughly 20-foot whipper. Wheee! I bailed off that route and my partner led it and cleaned it as I didn’t want to climb back up to the anchors and fall off again.
I eventually started climbing with others that were more supportive/safety conscious and have a lot of great memories of climbing in the Red River Gorge, but that one isn’t my fondest.
Thanks for the inspiration to take a climb down memory lane . . .
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