They may not have surmounted a massive statue of the Jolly Green Giant, but a group of ISU rock climbers braved nature’s perils in Minnesota last weekend.

The Outdoor Recreation center’s second trip of the semester took six participants to Blue Mounds State Park for two days of rock climbing on polished, slippery cliffs, said trip supervisor Steve Smith, senior in physics.

“[We had] beautiful weather and an enthusiastic, fun group,” said trip supervisor and outdoor recreation program assistant Chad Ward. “There was lots of camaraderie, joking around, and a little trash-talking.”

It was a form of that trash-talking that spurred Jessie Clemans, junior in veterinary medicine, to accomplish the highlight of her trip.

“There was a chimney climb where you have to scramble up between two rocks without any good holds,” Clemans said.

The first two times she attempted the climb, Clemans didn’t even get past the starting point, finally giving up after three failures.

“[Smith] kept giving me grief about it,” she said.

He told her it would bother her all week if she didn’t make it up that route.

The fourth attempt was a charm for Clemans, who finally conquered the challenging climb with encouragement from Smith.

Lydia Moeller, sophomore in animal science, had only climbed indoors on a climbing wall before this trip.

“The smoothness [of the rock] definitely added a degree of difficulty,” she said.

Though the rock was much larger than anything Moeller had climbed indoors, the height bothered her only at the top of her first descent. But Mother Nature brought challenges besides new terrain and staggering height.

“I hate spiders,” Moeller said. “There was only one route I went up without someone going first to clear out the spider webs.”

Although climbers had a certain amount of independence to climb what they wanted, how they wanted, they also had the opportunity to learn new skills and more advanced techniques.

David Raithel, sophomore in mechanical engineering, took advantage of the workshop atmosphere.

Like Clemans and Moeller, Raithel had been climbing less than a year, but he did some outdoor climbs over the summer, including a weekend trip with outdoor recreation.

Raithel said that the climbs were all set up for the top rope technique, in which someone walks up the backside of a cliff, sets anchors and throws the rope off the side to the climbers below. Using a top rope, Raithel said, the climber can’t fall very far.

In a more advanced method called lead climbing, the climber has no rope above him or her, Raithel said, so the climber must place equipment called protection in cracks as he climbs to protect himself from falling.

Lead climbing is crucial on the high walls in the western United States that Raithel hopes to climb in the future.

On this trip, Raithel practiced lead climbing by mock-leading — using lead climbing gear with the security of a top rope. It’s a time-consuming technique, especially for a beginner.

“What would take me two or three minutes with a top rope took me 20 minutes mock-leading,” Raithel said.

“It’s tedious for the belayer (the person holding the rope at the bottom).”

Raithel said the supervisors were more than happy to belay over that long period of time. They also climbed up after Raithel to give him feedback on his techniques, he said.

“These guys allowed me to take the next step in my climbing career,” Raithel said. “You have to work your way up, and you do that through mock-leading like I did. Hopefully in a few years I’ll be able to do that big wall stuff.”

The trip leaders looked for an area with a variety of rock that climbers of all levels could climb together, said Smith.

“Blue Mounds is really nice in the fact that there are so many climbs in such close proximity,” Raithel said.

He said one reason he went on the trip was that he had heard such great things about Blue Mounds from other climbers.

The group wasn’t without a sense of humor, stopping to take pictures with a 60-foot Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, Minn. But did anyone climb it?

“We talked about it,” Ward said. “There was some speculation.”