House Repelling

For whatever reason this morning I was reminded of a my first climbing and repelling harness.

I was probably around 13 or 14 and our boy scout troop had just finished our first repelling trip and I was in love. I quickly learned every knot and researched all the equipment. That year I spent my birthday money on a harness and a carabiner. As soon as I was equipped, I wanted to test my new equipment. I rigged a towing rope to the top of our house and threw the rope down the side of our 2nd story deck. I checked and rechecked every knot, tightened my bicycle helmet and was about to leap... but suddenly realized that I needed a someone running a belay at the bottom. Crud. No one in my household knew what to do so I had to be the belay and I someone else would have to make the jump.

"Audrey!" I yelled. My younger sister would be perfect and was much lighter then me so I sized my harness for her, sized her bike helmet to make sure it fit snuggley and prepped her on what to do. We were finally ready to go.

I don't know why she let me coax her into this situation but there she was, hanging onto the railing on the outside of our house deck about 9' above the ground. "Go ahead Audrey," I would yell, but she wouldn't budge. "Come on Audrey."

Finally she jumped and I immediay realized a miscalculation. As she leant backwards and began her repel, there was an overhang where the deck ended. When she jumped past the overhang, she swang right into the side of the deck with her head. Luckily she had the helmet, but the wild incident scared me quite a bit.

That was the first and last repelling adventure from the side of our house.

Thanks Audrey for always being my guinea pig.