Fear overcome! First route completed!

Great effort today. My climbing partner Katie and I were back at the indoor wall in Inverness. My single goal was simply to "get over" my fear of equipment failure, and we agreed that the best approach would be to tackle an easy route so I would feel more confident while climbing. I had a go at an F5 and made it about 2/3 of the way up before struggling with the crux move, a mild dyno from a poor right hand hold to a left hand finger hold. I spent so long working out exactly how to do it that my arms got too tired to continue, so I came down. No fears this time, just told Katie I was coming down and then dropped off the wall.

I took a few minutes to get my strength back, then I tackled the route again and hit the same tiredness at the same point. Happy to just drop on to the rope again, and feeling very relieved that I'd overcome the fear which I had worried might be a stumbling block that I'd never get over.

We were going to leave it at that because we were rushing to get somewhere, but we decided to have one more climb each. Katie made light work of an F3 and could have easily climbed a harder route, which she will do next time. And I decided to tackle the F5 again. This time I planned it out from the ground up, and realised that by starting on my left foot instead of my right I could complete the first section of the climb faster, giving me more time at the crux to get comfortable and tackle the dyno. The plan worked and although I did pause a bit too long before the dyno, I made it, hung on, and gobbled up the rest of the route in no time.

And no problems dropping back on to to the rope again! I even rode it down with my arms outstretched.