“Okay, what you do is lean back and sit in your harness until the rope goes tight and I’ll lower you down while you walk your feet along the cliff wall.” “I’m sorry, what did you say?” The sickening adrenaline shot felt like being back in fourth grade; the teacher had caught me daydreaming and asked me to work out a difficult math question on the blackboard in front of the class.

“Don’t worry, it’s easy, and I won’t let you fall,” King assured me, clearly wondering what the big deal was. “See that girl there? Just do the same thing. Except don’t hang on to the rope.”

I gripped a hole in the rock face, leaned over and looked down at the dangling young woman, her knees and shoulders quivering, face scrunched up like a pink raisin with a nose. She was on the edge of screaming.

To the core of my survival instincts, I really did not want to do this. Every cell in my body begged to be allowed to live another day – including the brain cells. On top of that, I didn’t wish to make a fool of myself in front of the climbers gathered at the foot of the cliff. But humans are amazing creatures. We can overrule our instincts and do some really stupid and embarrassing things. And you only have to check out the annual Darwin Awards to see how often the instincts were correct.

I’d always thought climbing folk a bit mad. To me, it seemed a pointless sport. You risk your life grunting and straining your way up a rock face, your back to the spectacular view, and the only remotely fun part seemed to be abseiling back to terra firma, assuming of course that your bolt didn’t break, sending you plummeting to a long stay at a hospital or a short one at the morgue. What was the point? And why are climbers so obsessive?

Against all my better judgement, heart beating like a rabbit, I leaned back over the edge of the cliff, and as King gradually loosed off the rope, bounced feet first off the cliff face for a couple of minutes until the ground rose to meet me. It was a miracle. I was alive – more alive than usual in fact. It was only a taste of what was to come (I still had to climb back up), but a profound sense of relief washed over me. With the agony of fear was behind, it suddenly seemed a lot more like fun. I had the strange desire to throw my arms around King and tell him how much I loved him for caring. (No wonder the climbing guides are famous for their womanizing – it must be like falling off a log.)

And on top of this, if any of the onlookers had felt the desire to laugh, they had been kind enough to resist the temptation.

I had discovered one of the pleasures of the climbing subculture. Nobody laughs at you, no matter how incompetent or frightened you are, and everyone is very friendly and supportive. Jason, an experienced American climber, pointed out, “Everyone has the same goal, and all of us get freaked out sometimes, so it’s easy to sympathise.”

And as George, a Thai Rasta man guide at Railay’s Cliffsman said, “You keep getting scared, because you keep trying more difficult climbs, so yeah, it’s the same feeling for everyone.”

When I first saw Tony, an Englishman in his early twenties, he was halfway up a 20-metre wall, experiencing difficulties. Jason, who was belaying for Tony (controlling the tension on his rope) from below, coaxed him onward: “Reach your right hand to two o’ clock and feel around and you’ll find a hold. Then put your left foot beside where your right foot is and swing your right leg over that hump in the rock and you’ll find a toehold. It’s easy.”

“I can’t!” “Yes, you can.” “No I can’t! I’m stuck! Please lower me down!” Tony’s face was purple and all four of his limbs were visibly trembling. He admitted later that he had been fighting back tears. “There was no way out and I was just so frustrated, I wanted to cry. It was like being a kid. Then I got angry and climbed the rest of the way like a crazed monkey.” Why was he putting himself through this? “I’m afraid of heights, so I signed up for a three-day course to try and get over it. The results have been mixed so far.”

On a technical level, it’s pretty easy to get started. Railay has several climbing shops where you can sign up for as little as a half day introduction, get fitted for a harness that wraps around your legs, groin and waist, and a pair of snug wraparound shoes, (“they make your foot like one big sticky toe,” says King), then you hike a short distance to one of several climbing walls with literally hundreds of pre-bolted climbs.

Your guide scampers up to the top of the selected route (usually only ten metres or so to start), threads the rope, descends, hooks it on to you and you start puzzling out your way to the top while the guide maintains light tension using a mechanism attached to their harness (it locks if they let go, so no worries if they get distracted for a few seconds). And if you lose your grip and fall, it’s no big deal, since you only drop a foot or two, but then have to go through the frustration of getting hold of the cliff again, waiting for your heart to slow down, and resuming your climb with far less confidence than before.

As you get the hang of things, you can belay a partner. Matz and Lillian, a Swiss couple, were belaying each other within hours of starting. “It is a good form of marriage therapy, I think. She is forced to trust me for a change.”

As your confidence gathers, you can start lead climbing, which is a bit more tricky, and involves hooking caribiners onto the bolts and threading your own rope as you go. Further down the track, as you develop shoulders of steel, you can do insane things, like climbing along horizontal surfaces or even sleeping overnight on ledges.

But the first climb may well be the hardest, at least psychologically. When I asked King how to get started, he said, “Just climb, you’ll figure it out -- but try to follow the path of the rope as much as you can.”

The wall wasn’t a difficult one at the bottom and I gripped a ledge, placed a foot, and it was pretty smooth going for the first bit – seemed easy enough. Then the rope path led me to a gaping hole in the rock big enough to swallow a Volkwagen. “What do I do now?” I looked over my shoulder and shouted this to King, who, I noticed was way far down there on the ground. Heights for some reason always seem much greater when you are looking down. Nerves kicked in immediately and my knees and hands began to tremble. “There is a hold above your right hand; feel for it, then swing your left foot and then your right – no problem, there’s lots of things to hold on to.”

From the ground it seems simple enough, but when you are up there with your face pressed against rock, trying to flatten yourself to reduce the load on your fingers, you can’t see a damn thing. Fumbling around, I finally managed it, climbed another few easy steps and got stuck again, this time in a position that was ripping my underworked arms from their sockets.

The fear gripped harder. I had no idea where to put my hands or feet next. I wondered what the hell I was doing there and wished I was somewhere -- anywhere -- else. I had been told by several experienced climbers that climbing was 80% mental. To make it worse, you know that you can jam out anytime and be lowered to the ground, despising yourself for being such a coward. After gathering myself for a minute or two and more shouted exchanges, I swung myself into it and grunting with the effort, somehow made it past the tricky bit. A wave of satisfaction hit, and it was another easy bit, a hard bit and then I was at the top, ready to be belayed back down. Coming down this time, I actually trusted the rope, the same way you might trust the brakes in your car, and gliding back to the ground was actually a pleasant denoument. I even stopped halfway to take a photo while suspended in midair. I had a glimmer of understanding as to why people get into this thing. In only ten minutes, I had swung between more emotional extremes than in a month of normal life. Optimism, fear, courage, frustration, despair, satisfaction, gratitude and a few others I didn’t recognize. All that, plus an overwhelming desire for a beer.

And over the next couple of days, this range of feelings replayed with every climb – like an ongoing argument with yourself.

Am I likely to become a fanatical climber? Probably not. Will I go again next time the opportunity arises? Most definitely -- once my shoulders stop aching.

Box:

Prices are standard for most climbing places at Bt800/half day, including equipment and guide. Ask ahead the maximum size of your group so you get plenty of attention for your money.

Places to climb around Krabi (plus other up and coming destinations around Thailand).

Various climbs
Stuff to bring: Equipment is provided, so all you need is loose fitting clothes, sunscreen and water – fear makes your mouth go dry.

Pa Nga Islands opening, doing overnighter ledge sleeping.

Cliffsman has a climbing wall you can use to train.

According to King, there isn’t any government support for climbing. “The national parks aren’t yet sold on the idea of half-naked foreigners swinging around on their sacred cliffs.” So routes are developed and maintained independently. All of the routes were bolted by visiting and resident climbers, usually at their own expense. The bolts aren’t cheap and donations are welcome.

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