Climbing Valentine’s Card

For our first Valentine’s Day together, I wanted to make a climbing themed card for Christine. This was about 5 years ago, and we had only been dating for a few weeks. We had first met in the climbing gym, so I decided it would be cool to make a “Would you be my Valentine?” card and hide it at the top of a route for Christine to find.

That night I had the Valentine’s Day card hidden in my chalk bag as I asked Christine which route she’d like to climb first.

“I’d like to try that 11B” she said, pointing to one of the tallest routes in the gym.
“Really? That looks kind of hard.” I replied, “Maybe we should warm up first.”
“You don’t have to climb it.”
“No” I said, as I started threading the rope through my harness, “I do.”

I had only been in the sport for a year and was most comfortable climbing 10Ds at the time, but I tried my best to finish this long route. I didn’t flash it, but I did successfully sneak the card at an easy to find spot.

Christine went next and flashed the climb. As I lowered her back down, she had a big smile on her face as she read the card. She said “Yes”.

Ever since then, Christine has kept pushing me to climb a little bit higher and try new things.