A funny thing happened on the way to the climbing gym....

Actually when I say "funny" I mean "humiliating" and "rude", but my story does involve a climbing gym. So there's that.

Last weekend a group of the Petra climbing ladies and I motored up to Montreal to visit Horizon Roc, an indoor gym with top rope and lead and bouldering aplenty. Oh the bouldering. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to sample hardly any of it.

Before I go further, let me say that I am in no way recommending Horizon Roc. They have non-existent customer service, an unclear operating policy and rude counter staff. I am biased. This is my explanation:

The other ladies had all gone up to Horizon Roc a few weekends before to pass the belay certification test. Their test was conducted by an English speaker who gave advice as he went: hey your harness is on backwards, upside down, on your head, hey we don't use that belaying style here so change, please. This last bit was key. Three out of the four of us learned our belay style from the same instructor at PetraCliffs, and it basically boils down to never ever take your brake hand off the rope. Not even if you or the rope are on fire. Never. And it's the belay style I use to catch people all the time. All you have to remember is that your brake hand is immutable. It never leaves the rope.

I'm sure you can see where this is heading. At the belay accreditation test, I was one of only two non-French speakers in the group, and right off the bat the instructor got on our cases about pulling the waist ends of our harnesses through elastic loops because, as he said, if you pull the ends loose, there's no double-back loop to stop them from coming out. Except....there are. I stared down at the double-back loops on my waist ends and I knew he was never going to pass me for the belay test.

He didn't just fail me. In front of the whole group, he explained that my belay style was so wrong that he would never have time to explain to me all the ways it sucked, and I needed to leave the premises immediately.

He radioed the manager to come escort me back upstairs, and they conferred about my wild and crazy belay style. Translated back to me, the manager reported that the belay accreditor maintained I take my hand off the rope. Which, see above. And that's the point she told me I needed to leave because, and I quote, I was "unsafe in the gym". They refused to let me even boulder, because of the belay issue. Even though bouldering uses no ropes, no harnesses, no belaying.

To say I was upset is an understatement. I was sort of devastated, and finally when one of my fellow climbers came to the locker room to find out what the heck was taking so long, she was not thrilled with the situation either. Of course, Jeanne's a take-charge kind of gal (Channel 4 shows up on her lawn every time there's a contentious local civics issue because they know she's good for a charged and pithy quote), and went upstairs to find out why one instructor taught and accredited, and the other just belittled.

Jeanne convinced the manager to re-test my belaying. So I went upstairs with her, tied in, started belaying, and...it was even worse. The manager expressed shock that I would even think of belaying in such a manner, and told me how surprised she was I hadn't killed anyone. Yup. You read that right. And there was no translation difficulty there. So I got thrown out again.

At no point did either instructor explain that they wanted me to use a different belay style. At no point would either of them demonstrate which belay style the gym accredits with. And while I was being tested, the original accreditor went over to Jeanne and began harassing her about her belay style (the same one I use), and told her she was putting too much strain on her shoulders.

There's more, about how I was allowed to climb for an hour with a monitor holding the belay rope, and how said monitor let me boulder for 10 minutes before the original accreditor threw me out again (???), and how I was unable to get either a refund or a straight answer to my questions from the counter girl upstairs (who insisted she would not help me unless I spoke French, and then corrected my pronunciation when I tried), and how I got to sit and watch everyone else climb for four hours (along with watching a number of people belay incorrectly and/or while sitting down, which is a huge safety issue), but the bottom line is this:

Horizon Roc is not a friendly place for climbing unless you speak French and can read minds.

I was so freaked out by the experience that the next day I flew over to Petra Cliffs in full lost-my-mind mode, found my original instructor and totally spazzed at him (sorry Dave!). And it turned out that I'm right: my brake hand will continue never to leave my rope. Just as I'll never go back to that gym, even after only one bad experience. There's another climbing gym in Montreal, and the eight of us interested in going up there will take our business there instead. We live an hour from the border. We like climbing. We like Montreal. We had an incredible, incredible vegan meal at Aux Vivres, complete with great service, coffee, and wheat-free dessert options.

I'm sure there are tons of people who climb at Horizon Roc all the time and love it, but welcome to the Internet, Horizon Roc. This is my journal. This is my story. This is why I'll never "climb" there again, or recommend them to anyone I climb with.