Practice Spanish for Rock Climbing: Send Your First Problema

About this episode

You walk into a Spanish-speaking climbing gym and you don't know the words for the holds, the problems, the chalk, or what anyone means when they say "¿lo encadenaste?" Pablo, who grew up in Monterrey and learned to climb on La Huasteca's limestone walls, fixes that. He takes Maria through the whole vocabulary: the gear and gym basics (el rocódromo, los gatos, el magnesio), the bouldering vocabulary (el búlder, el problema, el agarre), the two words that define the arc of climbing (proyectar and encadenar), and why falling is information, not failure (la caída). Every scene plays out in Spanish and English side by side — so the next time you're at a rocódromo in Mexico, Colombia, or Spain, you're not the tourist on the wall.

The full illustrated comic, study guide, transcript, audio & vocab are in the pack.