Was out yesterday, well if the truth be known I was in, as the weather was so awful that we didn’t venture outside instead opted for the more positive learning environment of a indoor climbing wall, so wasn’t so much touching stone but touching plastic. We covered a whole host of skills from making belays with ropes and slings. Right through to belaying from the top of a crag and abseiling off with a prussik to back up.
In the afternoon we did a movement skill workshop with them looking at the fundamental skills of good movement, to looking for hands off rests in a variety of situations, the difference between making upwards movement and stopping to place/clip protection. Before putting it all together on top ropes, where we added activities like climbing as corner by only pushing off holds and then back and footing.
The feedback was good, and despite being inside the team seemed to see the cross over of the skills. Hopefully they will be outside today. Although not with me, and actually get to touch some stone.
I didn’t get to the Beacon for any data collection, as I had been there every night for the last week and a half, instead I took the night of and went to the Gallt Y Glyn. There was a reasonable team there although a notable absence was Pete “Liquid Amber’ Robins. Despite finally redpointing this amazing F8c, a route that is rumoured to be extremely hard for the grade. He had been poisoned by Pizza Hut during his celebratory meal, looking at the photos on UKC, it looks like it might have been his first meal in a while. I have not seen Pete that ripped ever. It seems to have worked though. A great achievement for local climbing, as the 8c grade is starting to get worldclass, if the conversation i had with Stevie Haston is anything to go by.
Stevie lives in the Pyrenees, a place where he assured me that the starting grade for ‘climbers’ is F6a. and that the average cavers climbing grade is F8a. Shit the bed I need to buck my ideas up. Just think about that people who describe themselves as cavers climb F8a, and grandads who climb 8c. We are all little fish!