As the end of the year is upon us, I decided to reflect on our year within Climbridge. 

Born from a meetup and 2 WhatsApp groups, It is crazy that we only started this club in April! It has grown way beyond our wildest expectations and this is only thanks to our amazing committee, members, community, and of course local support from Rainbow Rocket!

We started this club as a few of us noticed the lack of a climbing community outside of University clubs. Hence, we aimed to start Climbridge as an inclusive club for all climbers, where we could easily organize climbing trips and build a community around our shared hobby.

Starting the club was no mean feat, unsurprisingly there is a lot of paperwork to do! But thanks to the great efforts of our committee we were able to build a website, social media network and sort out financial documents very quickly! 

Our main goal when starting this club was to affiliate with the British Mountaineering Council (BMC). This allowed us to become a more genuine climbing club, where we could have protection when climbing outside for example. Despite a few headaches with the club constitution and rules, this was achieved relatively easily. With this out of the way, we could proceed with growing the club!

Events

Trip to the Calanques National Park

Our first trip took place just after the creation of the club. We spent 7 days in the Calanques National Park near Marseille, France. This was my first time climbing outdoors, and what a first experience! The scenery was lush and incredible. The highlights included climbing near the ocean in Calanque d’En Vau and ascending a 30m climb!

Jared wrote a great personal blog on this trip, which you can check out here: https://jaredkhan.com/blog/single-pitch-sport-calanques

Trip to Portland

Later on in the year, we took a trip to Portland, in Dorset UK. We were spoilt with the weather and we managed to climb ourselves to exhaustion for 3 days. Climbing in Portland is a must for any UK climber and we all managed to push the limits of our climbing ability during the trip!

If you want to read more about this you can check out a full blog here.

Bouldering trip to the Peak District

Our last climbing trip outdoors was a bouldering trip to the peak district, a great day trip with some great boulders. We will aim to plan more of these types of trips in the coming year since it is just bouldering they are more inclusive to our community!

You can read more about this trip here.

Indoor Roped Trips

Alongside outdoor trips that we ran this year, we also organized monthly climbing trips to indoor centers, mainly Big Rock Bond in Milton Keynes. These were open to anyone of any climbing ability and were designed as a way to teach members how to rope climb such that they could join us on outdoor trips. During this year, we taught 5 new members how to rope climb and it was really rewarding to do so!

Weekly Climbing at Rainbow Rocket

Of course, we must mention our weekly Wednesday climbing trips at Rainbow Rocket. It has been great to see a community form around these weekly sessions. This year we have had at least 10-15 people each session and have had great support from Rainbow Rocket, whom we can’t thank enough for all their support during the club’s creation.

We have also introduced bi-weekly pub trips part way through this year, which have been great to get to know each other outside of climbing.  

Future Plans!

Now that the grunt work for the club has been completed, this frees up more committee time to plan indoor and outdoor climbing trips. The ball has already started rolling on these and we look forward to sharing more details in the new year! From the bottom of our hearts, we are grateful for all the engagement in Climbridge this year. It is amazing how much this club has grown and matured. We as a committee are excited to continue to grow and expand the club in the next year!