Cliff Hangers

Trek down from the parking lot at BREC’s Perkins Road Community Park in Baton Rouge and you’ll see to your left a skate park flooded with zooming teenagers, to your right some peaceful families on benches beneath an awning, and in the center, thirty-five feet above the ground, something that stands out from the flat Louisiana landscape—a few swinging figures dangling from a free-standing rock wall.

One of these figures is Lee Guilbeau, decked out in Lululemon—for which he is an ambassador—and wielding an electric drill, moving into place the final handholds on a newly-designed route for that night’s climbing class. Guilbeau, who began climbing at the LSU Student Recreation Center around 2001 as a university freshman, moved his expertise to the BREC location after climbing facilities at LSU shut down. Now, he hosts climbers at the wall every weekday in addition to being the founder of the third annual Louisiana Rock Climbing Series, a competition with stops in Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.

Guilbeau’s approach to his role as teacher, mentor, and enthusiast is to ensure that the sport feels accessible to everyone, regardless of age or ability. “We see some special needs kids,” he said. “And we had a guy last year with two prosthetic legs. He made it about halfway up this wall.”

This elicited a nervous chuckle from recent Cornell graduate Rena Bae, a new student to rock climbing who came back for her second lesson after getting halfway up the wall—with both legs intact—the day before. “I used to live in some apartments across the street,” she said. “I’d just see everything happening over here and think, Man, I wish I could do that!”

Guilbeau offered verbal guidance and support to Bae and the other climbers, trying to prevent any “emotional injury” (a possible consequence of rock climbing actually listed on the waiver that participants sign before gearing up). Ironically, these doubts and difficulties are part of what Guilbeau said makes rock climbing so good for the psyche. “For me, rock climbing falls in the same vein as yoga, in terms of a mind-body connection,” he said. “There’s definitely a level of focus you need to have if you want to do well.”

The next step for any climber hoping to master that mind-body connection, of course, is to test these skills in the arena—or in this case, on a variety of artificial rock walls and boulders provided via the Louisiana Rock Climbing Series. The series is composed of three competition dates, one that already took place in Lafayette in July, one scheduled for September 20 in Baton Rouge, and one at the just-opened New Orleans Boulder Lounge on November 8. “The competitions are linked by a collection of points, with a grand winner at the end,” said Guilbeau. “The higher the difficulty level of your climb, the more points you earn.”

Although the competition caters to climbers with at least a little bit of experience, Guilbeau hopes this doesn’t dissuade beginning climbers from getting involved. In fact, he sees such a wide variety of climbers both at BREC and in the competition itself, that Guilbeau can’t always pinpoint a major demographic. “The youngest kids big enough to climb are as young as seven years old,” he said, “but there are people out here who just start climbing at age 60.”

The series also has multiple skill-level, age-level, and gender-based categories, making distinction possible no matter where you fall on the spectrum of expertise. As far as Guilbeau is concerned, it’s one of the series’ best features, removing the typical competitive pressure that might risk ruining the experience for newbies.

“If you do thrive off of that kind of competition, then that’s great,” he said, “but we want to make sure that everyone feels like they can get started, that anyone can do it if they want.”

Details. Details. Details.

For more information on the BREC climbing tower’s operating times and classes, visit brec.org or call (225) 766-9030.

To learn more about the Louisiana Rock Climbing Series and see photos of past competitions, go to facebook.com/LArockclimbingseries.