Well I spent a part of the day at Tremadog with Rocio from Ibex Guides. The weather was very wet and dry. With outbreaks of light rain as we started, but never amounting to much. As such we decied on route we can quickly do, as well as more obscure possible work routes, so it was a little bit of CPD for us work wise.
To start the ball rollign I nipped up the slab start to Reinnetta on the Merlin Buttress, before head over to Rio. I did nearly make a joke about how many instructors it takes to balls up a retrievable abseil off Yogi, the answer is two by the way. So I lead Rio with one rope, and then Rocio fired up Yogi.
To the side of us was Tim and Jez, I hadn’t seen Jez fro what seemed like years and it reminded me of those days working at the Beacon Climbing Centre. They did inspire me to have a go at the rotue they were on. Although I tried the route to the left, only to remember that I am about 6 inches too short to make the crux reach for a good pinch, although I did reach the pinch, at this point is was raining hard, and my foot slipped off the hold it was on, so I quickly engage reverse gear, and down climbed to the junction with the HVS they were climbing.
I tussled up this, making it look harder than ot was, mainly because my eye for gear was a littel rusty, so took me an age to find a poor runner, where I should have got a bomber wire. We abseiled off this and headed home, ironically just as the sun was taken over the day!
Was good to get out though, so cheers Rocio for making me go out today. Although it wasn’t a hard sell, “Mark do you want to go out climbing”, “yes!”