The muscle aches are gone. Minor cuts are healing. But the purple bruises on my knees are still visible. I’m still finding new wounds, and I cannot tell you where or exactly how I got them. They are temporary souvenirs from an incredible 48 hours of climbing and hiking through North-Central Alabama.

The Alabama Beta Challenge

The Alabama Beta challenged people to get outside and discover Alabama. Friday night, teams were given a list of 144 challenges in 24 locations to complete in 48 hours. Challenges included climbing, hiking, canoeing, stand up paddle boarding, and liter pick up. The adventures had to be chronicled on Instagram using the hashtags #thealabamabeta and #betaobjective18.

I’ve only climbed a handful of indoor climbing walls in my life. Life with small children limits our hikes to a mile, maybe two on a REALLY good day. We don’t even own a canoe or kayak. But organizers had me at the word “challenge,” especially for a good cause benefiting some of our local riverkeepers.

The challenge locations included family friendly spots that we often frequent, like Railroad Park, Red Mountain Park and Oak Mountain Park. There were several “must see” locations that should be on every Alabamians bucket list, like Mt. Cheaha State Park, Little River Canyon, the covered bridges in Blount County, and the Cahaba Lilies at the Cahaba Wildlife Management Area.

The list also include locations not found on any map like Jamestown, Yellow Bluff, Griffin Falls and Hospital Boulders. After exhaustive Googling, we discovered those were climbing sites maintained by the Southern Climbers Coalition. We also discovered that SUVs are highly encouraged to get in and out of a few of those locations.

The Beta Objective

My objective? To win. Now realizing, that’s quite a feat when you don’t climb and have no clue what beta even means. Five days after the race, I’m learning “beta” are instructions to help a climber with a climbing challenge. Definitely didn’t score any points for those crazy (and embarrassing) instructional videos posted online since we only climbed one site.

The Winners

We drove more than 300 miles, logged more than 200 points and completed dozens of objectives in roughly 20 locations. Granted- we later learned, we didn’t do any of the videos correctly. We misidentified several boulders and hiking locations. We lost when it came to logging the most points. But we still won the challenge.

Honestly, I would’ve had no idea what to do with the climbing gear awarded to the winners. But the challenge was more about the journey of discovering our natural resources and understanding why we need to fight to conserve them for generations to come. We were asked to stop viewing nature from behind a windshield, to put down our phones and explore. We did. You should too.

The “Prize” 

Alabama is breathtakingly beautiful. We hiked through rolling hills, mountains and a canyon 500 feet deep. We felt on top of the world at Bald Rock and Pulpit Rock. We camped under the stars before waking to watch the sunrise over Weiss Lake from a boulder in Cherokee Rock Village. Birds soared over rapids and water falls in Little River Canyon. Hikes through the woods and over rocks took us to the bottom of countless water falls, like Noccalula Falls, Griffin Falls, and Desoto Falls. We bathed in the sunlight and cooled down in swimming holes and water flowing into the Coosa, Black Warrior and Cahaba Rivers.

The Alabama Beta challenged us not just to get outside but to take risks. Both my husband and I said “yes” to every opportunity presented to us. We did our first outdoor rock climb, which was equally terrifying and exhilarating. We climbed a nearly 100 foot fire tower in Palisades Park that swayed with the wind. We took off our shoes and jumped feet first into the water. We discovered hidden gems in new places and more familiar places. We found ourselves running through the woods to reach an objective faster and to find cell phone reception to post a completed objective to Instagram.

At the end of the 48 hours, a layer of salt coated our skin. Our challenge shirts were soaked with sweat. Our legs were covered in mud. No doubt our bodies were probably tell us to quit, to sit down and to rest. But in that moment, we never felt more alive, more free and more thankful to live in a state filled with so much natural beauty.

Get out from behind the windshield. Unplug. Make your own Alabama bucket list and connect with nature.