On this episode of Appalachian Outdoorosity, Dr. Joy James, a professor in App State's Department of Recreation Management and Physical Education, interviews App State graduate, Britan Sides about their time at App State and more specifically the huge impact working at Outdoor Programs had on their life. 

Show Notes

UREC Outdoor Programs

Outdoor Equipment Rental at App State

Handshake

Bouldering/Climbing Rating

Price Lake Blue Ridge Parkway

Rough Ridge Trail on the Blue Ridge Parkway Info

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Contact Information:

instagram username: @britanns

Transcript

Becki Battista

Welcome to Appalachian Outdoorosity where we encourage you to get outside and keep going outside. Hey, we will share Appalachian State stories that entertain, inspire and inform listeners about living an active outdoor lifestyle. Each episode features a story the goal to get you outside and keep you going outside to improve your overall wellness. This podcast is presented by the Hope Lab, where our purpose is to investigate the role of outdoor physical activity, exercise and play on the health, environment and human development.

Becki Battista

The vision of the Hope Lab is to continue developing the foundation for promoting and supporting outdoor physical activity, exercise and play through interdisciplinary research. Feel free to check us out at www.hopelab.appstate.edu.   Hi, my name is Becki Battista. I am a professor in Exercise Science at Appalachian State University and a self-proclaimed outdoor physical activity addict. On today's episode, team member Dr. Joy James, a professor and recreation management, interviews Britan Sides where they tell us how they got into outdoor recreation and how working at Appalachian State’s UREC/Outdoor Programs, has built both their skills and community.

Joy James 

We’re here today with Britan Sides, a student here at App State. Would you please introduce yourself and tell us where you're from and why you chose App State and what your major is?

Britan Sides

Yeah, of course. So my name is Britan Sides. I'm a junior anthropology major at Appalachian State University. I'm actually a transfer student. I transferred from Wingate University. I just felt like I wanted to be here. I really didn't feel like I was just in the right space. So I ended up applying to transfer to Appalachian State University and got here and absolutely love it.

Britan Sides

I love the atmosphere. I love the outdoor culture here. I'm from a really small town in the middle of North Carolina called Oakboro, North Carolina. It's pretty close to Charlotte, about 45 minutes from Charlotte. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.

Joy James 

Cool. Can you tell us about your favorite outdoor activity?

Britan Sides

Yeah. So I actually just recently got into climbing, specifically bouldering. It's one of my favorite things to do. I've been going almost every day for the past two months to the climbing wall over at the University Rec Center. It's really awesome. I haven't been climbing outdoors yet, but I really want to do that. I'm just trying to get some people together to go because it definitely could be a dangerous sport to do by yourself.

Britan Sides

But there's some really great spots over at Grandmother Mountain and just around the area in general to go bouldering. It's a really good workout. It's just really fun and you meet a lot of cool people through it. And I also am really into water sports, specifically stand up paddle boarding. That's another one of my favorite things to do.

Britan Sides

It's also like a full body workout. It's very fun, especially down at the beach. And you can have dolphins. I have a dolphin swim up right by me one time, which was really awesome. So.

Joy James 

Oh, I'm jealous. Give me the timeline on bouldering. Was that something since you've come to app like in the last two months, or is it something for a year you've been doing?

Britan Sides

Yeah, I've been app since the fall of 2020 and I was really scared to get it. Go to the climbing wall. I started working over Outdoor Programs in the University Rec center and I was watching people climb a lot because I got a good view of the of the wall right there. And I was like, I really want to do that, but I'm so scared and I don't have any climbing shoes.

Britan Sides

So I was like, I'm just going to wait. So I heard it's really terrible to try and climb in regular, like running shoes or tennis shoes. So this year I was like, I'm going to get into it. This is something I really want to start doing. So about September, I really started to get into it. I started going bouldering a lot. I haven’t done top roping, but that's the goal of mine.

Britan Sides

My biggest goal for this year is to do...there's different levels, so it starts at V0. It goes up pretty high into the double digits for how hard the problems are. Right now. I've been doing mostly V1s which is pretty easy. You don't really need a lot of climbing experience, but my goal is to get to a V4 by the end of the spring semester.

Joy James 

Okay, so let me roll back just a bit. So what's the difference between bouldering and top roping?

Britan Sides

Yeah, so bouldering is just climbing. No ropes, no nothing. And you have a crash pad that you have below where you're climbing up. So if you fall off, you're going to land on this soft little pad and you don't have to worry about getting hurt. So that's no ropes, no harnesses, no anything. I usually don't go up pretty high.

Britan Sides

It's just a pretty good workout, pretty fun top roping is where you get into a harness and somebody belays you. So you have somebody who's pulling the rope and you're going up pretty high. You could go all the way to the top of the climbing wall, if you’d like, or wherever you're at, if you're on a mountain, wherever you're at.

Britan Sides

And it's really fun. It's really scary because you do go up pretty high and it's really hard cause it's way more climbing than you would normally do, just bouldering. So it's definitely very difficult. But because you're tied into a harness, if you need to take a break, you can kind of sit back in the harness for a minute and take a break.

Britan Sides

But yeah, I haven't tried that yet, but I'm looking forward to trying it soon.

Joy James 

So you mentioned that in bouldering there is these different levels, V1 being very basic and it goes up when you said it's like kind of like solving a problem. So the problems get harder as you go up in the levels.

Britan Sides

Yes. Yeah they do.

Joy James 

Thank you. So V1 is if I wanted to start bouldering, that's where I would be at and that's just as much fun, if not more if you've never done it. Yeah.

Britan Sides

Normally it starts V0, which are absolutely no climbing experience and then as you get up V1 is a little bit harder than V0s. I started doing just V0s, then moved up to V1s and now I'm trying to get...there's a specific problem at the rec center that I've been trying to get. It's the Halloween themed one, and so I've been working on that one and it's a V2.

Britan Sides

It takes a lot of work and a lot of practice to be able to build up that strength and build up that grit because it can be really painful on your hands. I definitely recommend doing research on different holds and how to do those holds because you can really hurt yourself if you're not grabbing them correctly. There's different holds.

Britan Sides

There's jugs which is just like a normal wrap your hand all the way around it. There's crimps which are basically just your fingertips and there's just a number amount of different holds. I mean, it gets more difficult as you go. But yeah, it's really fun. It's really hard. But I definitely recommend doing it and trying it out, especially being here at Appalachian State where you have kind of on campus that you can go to.

Britan Sides

They're super nice, super willing to help out and teach you those different holds and teach you how the problems work and everything like that.

Joy James 

Cool. One other question with this just because, you know, sometimes it can be intimidating to go to that sort of wall. And it looks like you work there. So that kind of kind of lowered some of that intimidation factor. Is there any other advice for like, if I'm intimidated, what advice might you give me coming in to do that?

Britan Sides

Yeah, I definitely recommend going with friends. Maybe ask a friend, you know, hey, like I've been really interested in climbing, I would love to go. Want to come with me? Do you want to try it out with me? Usually having somebody you know there real