Lisa Fernandez who took the Rock Program in the spring of 2016 tells her tale of how she went from learning knots at Quincy Quarries to summiting 14,000 footers in the High Sierra.

"So there I was on a wet Saturday at Quincy Quarries just outside Boston, in a mix of sleet, rain, and snow, trying to embrace a piece of vertical rock. It was brightly bedecked in enamel paint graffiti which, in the icky conditions, made the climbing that much harder. Not that it mattered in my case, because I had come clad to follow a leader in my new mountaineering boots, which I was trying to break in for the Palisades trip. My guide for the Palisades had insisted they were the right footgear for the technical climbing we would be doing: up to 5.7 or so, over multiple pitches on rock and potentially ice and snow, at 14,000 feet with lots of exposure.  I felt like Sisyphus at QQ..."