Rock climbing and rappelling for one of your next true adventures is a great day outdoors for a fun and exciting adventure.
Simply put, climbing a cliff or a steep ascent is the skill of climbing, while the way back up requires another skill known as rappelling.
Some tours may simply be a rock climbing tour where you start the tour at the bottom of the cliff or the object you want to climb and vice versa for rappelling tours, starting at the top of the cliff.
The question is which adventure should I choose? Climbing or rappelling?
The simple answer would be both if possible. Both of these exciting adventures require some skill or mindset to pull off and I personally prefer to kill two birds with one stone.
Rock climbing will use your physical skills, strength and will also test your mental strength, while abseiling requires skill, although the mental barrier here is to casually drop yourself off the cliff.
Some people may feel nervous at heights and may not be sure if this adventure is for them. Well don’t worry, I too get extremely anxious and nervous at open heights and I certainly had second thoughts when I visited Port Vila Vanuatu where I had organized a rappelling tour.
For this Vanuatu rappelling adventure, we climb up the side of the mountain to reach the top of a 50-meter waterfall. So not only was I exhausted from the steep hill to get to the top, I was looking forward to being 50 meters up and having to deal with rappelling as a ton of water rushed down on me.
And even though I had doubts that morning about whether or not I should try this experience, I got to the bottom safely and wanted to go again and again.
The experience of both rock climbing and rappelling is undoubtedly exciting and an adventure that I will live with me personally for the rest of my life.
Although I am nervous about heights, I want to do this adventure a few more times and try it in different places, but the most important thing is to use both rock climbing and rappelling within the climb.
I’m sure it will be hard to find a rappelling tour that beats the Mele waterfalls in Vanuatu, however I want to go to some areas near my hometown and try it again. The Blue Mountains is one of the places that offers these climbing adventures as well as many others including caving experiences etc.
I hope you too will be able to rise to the challenge, whether it be rock climbing, rappelling or both.