Adventure on the Rocks

What comes to your mind when you see a place full of rocks in front of you? If you are one of those who think to rock each and every rock out there, this page might help you out .

In this blog I will show you some of the techniques of scrambling. Scrambling is something between hiking and rock climbing, where the climb is easy using the other rocks and the supports are big.

This is not a blog for technical bouldering, for that I am not the right person for it.Priyank Shah or Ranga are better people to help you out on that. Here we will do some fun activities on the rocks.

Lets start with Chimney climbing.

Do you know how does Santa enter your home?

chimney at machleshwar

Chimney climb is a technique to navigate between two parallel rocks(or walls). The technique is simple, stand facing one wall, push your back to the other wall behind with both hands on wall ahead, now move one leg on the wall ahead and other below you.

moving up during chimney climb.

The more one pushes himself into the walls, more he is firm and wont slip. Now you have to interchange your legs, front one comes back, back one front and slide yourself according to where you want to move.

Chimneys are seriously a lot of fun and pretty easy if you learn the technique.

Sukumar, Sowjanya and me.

Now some basic bouldering tips.

Bouldering is climbing a rock without use of any equipment. In bouldering we climb up to 10-15 feet at max, with the help of our body only.

The technique is to use cracks or flat surfaces (irregularities) as holds for hands and feet. Using these holds, one has to climb up. A person has 4 holds (2 hands, 2 feet) with the aim to balance our body weight on 3 holds and move the the 4^th part accordingly. While moving one hold, make sure you don’t move other parts.

climbing at machleshwar.

Never put your weight away from the rock and try to stick to the rock as much as possible to the rock. Try to find holds that are placed a little far, so that your weight could be balanced properly on the rock.

I attempting the Snake rock.

While climbing or having fun on the rock, ensure that your legs are firm and not slipping. See for holds that are big and balance your weight properly. Never attempt anything alone, always have one person with you who can guide you and watch out for any mistakes.

stopping rohet from jumping off the rock.

In this picture you can see my left hand on a strong hand hold, my right leg on a plain surface, leaning backwards in order to give support to Rohet (to do his one leg stunt :P), so that my body weight is vertically aligned .

a hybrid of chimney climbing and bouldering

The above picture is of me doing a climb in a small gap between two rocks. The space between these rocks is not much for a chimney, nor can one do bouldering over it. So it is hybrid of bouldering and chimney climbing.

a click from the top of previous picture.

Then comes caving.  I know it sounds strange when caving is related to rocks. A lot of space is left in between rocks when they are placed on each other which may lead to interesting caves in between the rocks. In these caves you can easily find bats sitting at the top, a smelly bat shit, or may be some animal if you are lucky.

Caving requires squeezing into small gaps, crawling, scrambling and lot of patience.

in a cave at machleshwar.

This picture is of me inside a cave, on a rock stuck between two rocks.  In Kajaguda, Hyderabad there a lot more caves , also the ones that can have 100 people inside. For more caving practice and knowledge, Aleem Quadri is “the” expert in this field.

Now let us see what not to do.

fly high

Aren’t the jumping pics really cool? And so cool are the consequences if you make a little mistake. One should avoid jumping from rock to rock, it may lead to disastrous results. If you want to get clicked, jump on the spot where you are standing or on the same rock.

All these adventurous activities, however simple they may be have a factor of risk involved with them. A person can get seriously hurt easily even from the silliest mistake one could think of.

Never use your knees to get up on a rock, they will hurt badly afterwards. See for loose rocks, have another person to spot you. Do understand when the situation is dangerous and be extremely careful then. Watch out for others and help them only after securing yourself. Also, never pull a person from hand to give support.