The rock climbing bug has really bitten me. Not sure why it should: I’m not a great climber, I frustrate my belayers, I have other things I should focus on. But it has. I have been climbing for almost two years kind of continuously now, and I am reasonably comfortable on 5.10s, at least after I work on them, and have managed one 5.11, although we think it’s overrated.

Find the climber. Location: Olhava, Finland.

All my climbing has been indoors so far, which is a shame because I grew up close to the kind of stuff you see on the right. It’s not actually where I grew up, but where my brother lives, in southeastern Finland. But you get the idea: totally awesome granite walls. Now I love indoor climbing. It’s like a video game: as soon as you master a challenge, you level up, and an entirely new set of challenges crops up. In other words, I see even indoor climbing staying challenging well beyond my abilities.

But I do love the outdoors, and if you ask, “Would you rather do X indoors or outdoors?” my answer is going to be “Outdoors,” unless you are talking about going to the bathroom and maybe a few other things like that.

Two problems: One, my climbing partner, a fabulous person and a great friend, does not share the same fascination with the great outdoors. De gustibus and all that, as the Romans used to say. I don’t have a problem with that because I do so love climbing with her in the rock gym. But I also want to go outdoors.

But, two, while Michigan’s outdoors are much better than you might think, rock climbing is definitely in short supply. The simple answer is: the damned Ice Age. Michigan’s amazing hills — yes, this is not a flat state — are all sand ridges, the results of the movement of ice some millennia ago. So outdoor climbing is not as easily accomplished as it would be if you lived, say, in Lexington, KY, or Bellingham, WA.

Recently, though, I have gotten to know two people in my rock gym who are very interested in outdoor climbing and have been gracious enough to invite, teach, and help me join them on their very cool adventures. Jay and Abby, a father and his daughter, are great climbers and really nice people, and I’m planning a trip with them that I hope to report on in August. But, in the meanwhile, they took me along to a quick half-day climbing trip to one of the only rock faces in Michigan’s lower peninsula, Grand Ledge. It’s top rope, the ledge is short, and it’s nothing compared to some really cool places. But it was my first outdoor climbing, and it was frakking awesome! It was hard, too, as a supposed 5.9 was nothing like the 5.9s that are a piece of cake in the gym, but it was major fun all the same.

Stay tuned — I hope — for more.