This was the day where Avariel and I realised that vertical adventures were not our thing.
And the day we decided to rename Sarah Coldheart -> Sarah Hardcore.
We went to climb that. Okay, not all of us made it to the top but what mattered was that we tried. HAH.
So as part of Sarah Coldheart’s new “Sarah does SG” column for her blog, we hit Orchard Central and headed towards the rock wall from Border X for their Feratta Walk.
For those who are not sure about the difference between the walk and the rock wall, the rock wall only stretches halfway up the wall on the left half, with an auto belay system. The walk, however, stretches up the entire wall (we were at Level 4, it ends at Level 8 ) and uses a manual belay that holds the climber from a cable that secures itself along the wall.
The stars for the day included Sarah “Hardcore” Coldheart, Nerwen & Avariel. Ended up being late because of heat induced headache so ended up running down like crazy. Word. So after all the formalities and stuff, we climbed up to what was to be our adventure later on.
So there were cabinets to put our stuff and the key was later handed to Sarah before we harnessed up and got through with the tutorials. Apparently we had to go up in pairs and used a manual rope safety procedure while climbing up the ladder. Quote one of the instructors, “When transferring your hooks across the clips, do it one by one. If you transfer it both at the same time, there will be no more you.”
Scary.
So Sarah and Nerwen went first, followed by Avariel and myself. This is where the funny part started. Sarah and Nerwen got a head start because they went through the instructional demonstration first. Nerwen was already about an eighth through with it and she said, “I’m only five metres in the air and I’m tired already!”
Avariel started out with the ladder first, crossing the first “pigtail”, which is kind of like a rope tension point before I started. Funny bit started when I climbed a bit, all the way to the first “pigtail” to uncoil the rope before continuing as Avariel continued on her way. Past the first “pigtail”, I looked up…
And saw psychedelic colours.
Aside from the fact that psychedelic colours can be very pretty, they can also blind you. So I was hanging there together with Avariel for a bit (her hands hurt then so she stopped for a while) until one of the instructors came up to me, saying that I looked pale and had to stop. GAH. I guess the heat induced headache caught up with me. Avariel joined me soon after because her hands, despite being gloves, got cut and stuff.
Hence the two of us swore off vertical adventures for a while. HAH.
So we waited at the bottom until Sarah and Nerwen were done with their climb and met us where the lockers were. They thought I still looked pale so we fast forwarded to Gelare. The place where I wisely forgot to snap a picture of what I had (Regular waffle with Cookie Dough Ice Cream) *headdesk* and where we took a look at the people who climbed after we did.
So after the sugar fix and tummy filling, we headed around Orchard Central and made our way to the Rooftop Garden, which seemed interesting after being etched onto the elevator doors. The garden is located on the 12th level, accessible through the 11th level via escalator amongst a whole load of fine dining establishments.
While I let the pictures speak for themselves, whatever happened next was this close to hour long horizontal adventure done by Avariel and myself, walking from Somerset to Clarke Quay for pizza cones. We may be totally blah-ed out with vertical adventures but we rock at horizontal ones, if I say so myself.
So while I come to the end of the post, I shall, again, finish it off with the interesting picture of the day:
The Blanket Fortress is a Metaphor! 