At the Easter Cairngorms meet we had many fine ideas in the pub, as you do, and one of them was to organise a day of easy climbing at the start of the season to allow newish climbers to find their feet leading. So the promise of a sunny April weekend seemed a good opportunity to follow up on this.
Luke, Roy, Ian, Rob and myself from YAC all turned up, as did Ali from York Climbers who is doing her SPA and so happy to help out, and Carlos, also from York Climbers, who is an experienced climber but has somehow never got started leading, so I had promised to help him break his leading duck.
Both Rob and Ali put their SPA skills to good use and by the end of the day everyone was merrily placing nuts and cams on the lead, setting up anchors, using the correct swearwords at the appropriate times, and similar important skills. Ian had in fact never climbed outdoors on rock before so this was a double first for him – very well done. Also well done to Luke and Roy who were building on the Indoor to Outdoor course we were able to put on in September with funding from the BMC, and got lots of mileage in, well done guys, and to Carlos who was looking pretty cool and confident by the end of the day.
Ian on the sharp end of the rope
All in all a very succesful day, and hopefully the start of a succesful and fun outdoor climbing season for everyone.
A nice competition of how many bits of shiny gear we vould get palced
developed during the day and resulted in no space for handholds when Ian and Roy combined forces.
A good day out and i was surprised how good it was for leading, with plenty of laceable cracks and breaks.
Pretty windy on top mind 🙂