Feeding A Child’s Climbing Passion

This post may contain affiliate links where we earn from qualifying purchases. As an amazon associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Find out more in our disclosure.

Lately, Mason is really loving climbing.  I’m still on the fence determining if this will develop into a full on passion, but for now, it is definitely an obsession!

So, as you can probably guess, we’ve been spending a lot of time climbing lately.  Thanks to the seemingly constant spring snow we’ve had this year, the gym has become quite frequented.  Sometimes we all go together, but a few times a month, Andrew takes Mason and Chloe to the gym for some fun while I’m helping with the young women at church.  Most of our spring hikes this year have also been accompanied by requests of hiking by cool rocks.  As you might guess, we’ve been doing a lot more scrambling than hiking.  What?  You wanted to know how long it took us to hike .5 miles last week on a boulder laden hike?  Almost 2 hours – NO JOKE!

So far it’s working great.  We have a happy little boy who’s learning who he is.  I’m thrilled beyond belief (despite the fact that I’m not a huge fan of climbing and it scares the crap out of me).  

Knowing that climbing will likely play a big role in his future adventures, we knew that it was time to upgrade some of our gear.  Our kids are pretty set with their C.A.M.P. USA and Trango harnesses, but most of Andrew’s climbing gear goes back to college and beyond (which when I count how many years ago that was, I feel quite old 🙂

When he was looking for a harness we knew that versatility would be key.  He needed something that was very adjustable on both the waist and legs to fit his slender body.  Something that would work well for climbs with the kids as well as hard climbs with friends and canyoneering expeditions.  And to top it all off, something that was not flashy (since he’s a modest sort of guy who prefers to stay out of the spotlight).

Enter the Petzl Adjama

We looked and looked and this was one of the top harnesses that met all of these qualifications.  It’s adjustable, versatile, and simple (color-wise).

After using it quite a bit, we’re even more impressed with it.  Andrew’s favorite feature is now how easy it is to put on.  When you’re wrestling 3 kids, the last thing you want to do is wrestle your harness to get it untangled.  No messes here – just pop it out of the bag and slip it on, adjust, and you’re good to go in under a minute.  This harness has gotten some good gym use as well as some outdoor use and has worked well in everything we’ve thrown at it.  Although we haven’t taken it on any major expeditions yet, we are confident it will do well.

The only thing that we didn’t like are the haul strap in the back is pretty small making it hard to clip a carabiner into.  Also, the sizing is a little weird so pay close attention to their size chart when buying one so that you order the correct size.

Go here and you can get it for about $90 – a small price to pay to feed a climbing passion!

Petzl provided this harness to us for purposes of this review.  As always, these are our honest opinions and are not influenced by any outside compensation.  

About Jessica Averett

Hi, I’m Jessica, a mom of 5 kids and married to my favorite adventure partner. I love to bike, ski, camp and hike. We've visited over 40 countries with our kids, but are equally happy on the road as we are exploring our home state of Utah.

Leave a Comment


two × 3 =

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.