Top-roped an E1 :-)

Lots of successes (and a couple of failures) to report from the last few days, including my first climb of an E1 equivalent indoor route.

Katie and I had an epic 3-hour session at the wall in Inverness on Monday night, with me doing all of the climbing because Katie wasn't feeling well. There were a couple of routes that I wanted to tackle, both graded as HS (hard severe). There was one that looked very challenging due to the sparsity of holds and several sharp overhangs, so I started on the other route that looked easier:

Well good lord was it difficult!! I worked at it for hours and always ran out of steam at around the same point, my arms completely zapped of energy. I also had my first fall when I went for a hold that my by-then-feeble left hand couldn't grip.

So eventually I took a break from that route and tackled the one that I thought would be even more difficult:

Went straight up it, no problem! There were a couple of times when I thought the next move was beyond me, but there were good rest positions so I was able to take time and think about the moves. They all turned out to be fairly easy.

On Tuesday night we had another session with our instructor Martin. We went back to Kingussie Crag and spent a good couple of hours learning about fundamental safety techniques, such as how to correctly set-up an anchor point for a belay at the top of a climb:

An introduction to using a shunt to secure yourself to an anchor point while preparing the belay point at the top of the climb:

Martin demonstrating that the shunt does actually work!

I then had to take the shunt off the rope, put it on again myself under Martin's supervision, and (cautiously) go to the edge to prove to myself that it would hold:

With the belay point rigged at the top of the climb, we walked round to the bottom and did some work on knots. Homework from the previous session had been to find out how to tie-off the rope when belaying, and although the technique I had found was good, Martin soon demonstrated its weakness by asking me to tie it with a weighted rope, which I couldn't. He showed how it can be done even with a climber hanging on the other end of the rope, simply by crimping the rope hard against the belay plate:

I'd also been told to learn how to tie a clove hitch. I had learned the beginner's 2-handed way of tying it so Martin taught me a more useful 1-handed way, then had me tie myself on using that knot and lean back to prove that I could trust it:

Katie belaying Martin as he made his way up the Classic Crack route:

Martin was going to place gear all the way up the route, some of it bombproof and some of it weak, then I had to climb up (top-roped) and tell him how solid each piece was. Then I had to remove it, so Martin sent the nut tool down the rope:

One of the demo gear placements:

On my way up! This route is graded as difficult but I found it more challenging than my previous two outdoor climbs which had the same rating. Even though the route is at an angle, so there's less strain on your arms, there are far fewer good holds so you either have to "smear" (which I'm not comfortable doing yet) or keep the side of your foot firmly pressed against whatever shallow ledges you can find, so there's always the risk of sliding.

At the top and glad to be getting back to flat ground!

Nice views you get with this rock climbing lark...

Katie and I were back at the Inverness wall on Wednesday afternoon. Katie was fighting fit again and she stormed up an HVS (hard very severe) route. Naturally that meant I had to try something harder, so I had a go at this one -- graded F6A -- which is at the top end of HVS and the bottom end of the "extreme" E1:

This route was a real battle. Small and medium-sized finger holds, nothing really decent to get a grip on. Many times I had to precariously balance to shake my arms out, coaxing out every last bit of strength that I could find, and I was constantly having to cover my hands in chalk because I was sweating so much.

When I got to the crux move about 2/3 of the way up it took me several minutes to decide what I needed to do. I had to balance on a small hold on my left foot with my left hand on a 2-finger hold, then reach out with my right foot and get on to a shallow hold at full stretch. Then I had to shift my weight on to my right foot and, with my left foot, push off and upwards to reach for a tiny right hand hold, also at full stretch. I called to Katie to "watch me" on belay, took a few deep breaths, psyched myself up and went for it. Somehow, shouting for strength, I managed to grip the right hand hold for long enough to find another hold with my left hand, and that was the job done. Scooted up the last bit and came back down, dripping with sweat and pumped with pride. Awesome experience!

It's not truely an E1, not in my opinion at least. For a start it was inside. I was top-roped so I didn't need to worry about gear placement, and there was no serious risk of injury if I fell.

But the actual climbing was right at the edge of my current personal limit, and I had to work and make moves that I felt were almost sure to fail. I'd say this was a good achievement, only one month after I first set foot on a climbing wall.