After working with the Ceunant Moutaineering Club yesterday covering a variety of belay methods, and covering the fundamental principles of what a safe belay need to do. I use the acronym IDEAS where I is for Independent, as the anchors need to be independent of each other so if one fails the others aren’t shock loaded. D is for directional, as the anchors need to be set up for direction of pull a fall would create. E is for equalised in that the anchors need to be under equal tension, so that the load is shared equally between the anchors. The A is for Angles, a pointy angle is good, a right angle is OK and any angle above 90 degrees or obtuse angle is bad. The S is for Solid, as the anchors need to be solid for the system to be reliable.
Anyway I got up today, and had to deal with my van that currently has no clutch, it doesn’t seem to be the clutch cable, so could well be expense! Arrrgghhhh!
So I went for a run to unwind from the weekend and stress of the van. It was about 7/8 miles and took a little longer than usual as I had to stop and chat to Si Panton who was heading up the quarries to check the sidings area, and then Dave and Miranda who were heading into the quarries for a climb. I then took a new path back down towards llyn padarn, this was a mistake, as my legs look like they have been torn to shreds by a thousand bramble bushes, and they were as the path was unfollowable, so I had to do some bush whacking in shorts (ouch!). Anyway the run was good. Along to Nant Peris, up the zig zags and then back down to llanberis.