You can if you tell yourself you can:
Susan Harper
Instructor of the High Ropes Confidence Course for Women
Susan Harper combines her love of climbing, her background in therapy and her ability to motivate into a class she created that can literally change a person’s outlook on life — “The High Ropes Confidence Course for Women.” The class challenges participants to work together in teams to overcome physical obstacles and to understand the concepts of team dynamics. The experience often creates a unique bond between the participants and a renewed, deeper level of confidence that can be carried forward to apply to other challenges in their lives.
Susan says that the course teaches people, “If you think you can’t do something, then you probably can’t. If you tell yourself you can do something, then you’ll be able to do more than you had originally thought.”
To the left, Susan and a fellow staff member, Jim Painter, demonstrate how team members learn to rely on each other for balance. In this exercise, they lean in to form a stable tripod, which enables them to maneuver on the high wires with no other support. Typically, Susan’s group offers a High Ropes class through UNM as a contractual training session (which can be customized). The High Ropes training can help a group, department or organization improve its teamwork, confidence and ability to communicate. The class offered through Continuing Education differs in that it is a specialty class open to the public. It is designed to invite women to overcome challenges using teamwork, drawing on their own courage and inner resources. Usually but not always, students have no relationship with the other students prior to the class. There are no preconceived notions and no set roles. The exercises cannot be completed without relying on a partner, so teamwork is one of the vital lessons of the day.
How does the High Ropes Course work?
A High Ropes training session may start off with preparatory team building games to loosen up the participants. Then it’s off to the course itself, which is 25 feet in the air. This doesn’t sound that high, until your feet are swaying on a thin steel cable with that much empty space beneath you. The “fear of falling” is primordial and basic to the human psyche. While experiencing this fear, participants attempt a variety of challenges, perched on steel cables strung between telephone poles and platforms. In fact, the telephone pole is a good analogy, because the experience is a lot like trying to move along while standing high atop a telephone wire. At all times, the participants are harnessed and clipped to steel cables overhead for safety, so there is no danger of falling to the ground. One’s mind knows this but not one’s body as it reacts to the situation!
In this exercise, the participants hand each other off to ropes dangling from overhead that they use for balance, while traversing their respective high wires to a central platform. The ropes are placed far enough apart that it takes both people hand-in-hand to reach far enough to grasp the next rope. It takes real courage and trust to let go of your rope and rely on your partner’s hand for balance while you make your way along to the next handhold. The High Ropes Confidence Course takes “teamwork” from an abstract concept to a necessity of in-the-moment survival. While all participants are safely harnessed at all times, the sensation of height felt deeply in the solar plexus, the swaying wires and the challenges of balance combine to “concentrate the mind wonderfully” in the present.
What the course gives participants
To the left, it is the bow of tension in the pole that creates the balance for the team members. They push and pull with their arms to create tension on the balance pole, while the steel poles they are walking on diverge, so that they must constantly adapt and adjust their grip outwards, using greater leverage to create the tension in the pole.
“High ropes course work is about gaining new perspective. It’s about the realization that you can do things if you tell yourself you can, and you can accomplish almost anything if you are focused.”
Participating in a High Ropes exercise is a wonderfully focusing experience, as there is no way to survive without it. It takes complete attention to retain your balance. Teamwork — working with and relying on other people— adds an interesting dimension to this. As one student described it, “I think I got a glimpse of my issues as they flew by, but then I forgot about them because I was a little busy.” Everything leaves your mind but retaining your balance, with the goal you accepted in the background, guiding your mental and physical efforts: get to the other side!
Susan says, “I try to teach people basics on the course, but they end up learning much more. I have people stop me on the street and tell me how their experience on the high ropes course helped them pull through tough situations. People tell me, ‘When I first saw the course, I said no way can I do anything up there, but then I did, and I have used that knowledge time and time again. If I did THAT, then I can definitely get through this.’”
About Susan Harper
Susan grew up on a Quarter Horse ranch in Wyoming where she began climbing at the age of five. The family barn was a perfect place for her to play on the beams, swing on the ropes, and get her first exposure to what would become a lifetime passion. She moved to New Mexico with a background in Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Therapeutic Recreation, and accepted a position running a high ropes program at a psychiatric hospital with high-risk individuals. When she saw the course, she said, “That looks just like the stuff we used to set up in the barn, the woods and over creeks back in Wyoming.” Then it was on to Albuquerque Academy where she taught a wilderness program that included high ropes, backpacking, kayaking, and other outdoor skills. Susan has been with UNM since the early nineties. In 1997 UNM stopped offering rock-climbing as a credit PE course.At that time, Continuing Education contacted Susan and asked to offer the course. Currently, Susan teaches the High Ropes Confidence Course for Women for Continuing Education in addtion to her contractual training. Susan is currently working on her PhD, with a research emphasis on empowering female welfare recipients with a study of their learning styles on the high ropes course.
Susan’s current classes may include:
| High Ropes Confidence Course for Women |
| High Ropes for Youth (ages 10-17) |
Note: Titles above link to our online registration site, which does not post courses after they are held. Course lists are updated at the beginning of the semester. Depending on when you click a title on the list above, some items may have already passed. You may always refer to the course index or to the printed course catalog for course information.
Teach a class with us
Have you spent a lifetime of learning on a favorite subject? Is there something you can do that nobody else can do? You can teach a class with UNM Continuing Education!
Turn in a course proposal. (PDF file to download, instructions on the file.)
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Contact
For information call 277-6320 or email ddel@unm.edu
