Strong week- good effort everyone!
Rehab Diaries Week Thirty-twoSTG- "Retro-redpoint" Consenting Adults by end of March, onsighting HVS/ low 6s by end of September.
M- Rest. Stock check thing at work that had me constantly bent over slightly looking for kids’ library books on very low shelves all day- the worst thing possible for my back.
T-Delighted to wake up without a sore back- didn’t seem to have any residual effects. AM- Foundry autos. Unexpectedly did the red route I’ve been unsuccessfully sieging third go. It’s steep and virtually all on pockets (the crux is on shallow two-finger pockets
) which has always been a weakness for me so very pleased. PM- went for a walk up to Stanage High Neb which was lovely.
W- Rest. Stock check again. Sore back again.
T- Malham. Nervous. Met thekettle
I reckoned on my previous visit that if I warmed up on Consenting on lead, did all the moves and fell off (deliberately or otherwise) from the three hard bits I would be relaxed enough on my next go to clip from sensible places and lead it clean. That turned out to be exactly right!
I nearly blew a few of the moves which in a way made it even better.
Didn’t have anything planned for after that so just wandered around the catwalk chatting to people and chuckling to myself between belaying stints. Climbed the start of 7th Aardvark (my “project” on my most recent pre-accident trips) to the second bolt like a kind of boulder problem a few times as well- got quite good at it by the end of the day.
F- Rest. The anniversary of my accident. Bought everyone at work cake. Extremely busy day at work (last of the financial year) which was eased by the afterglow of hitting my goal. When I woke up alone, barely able to twitch my toes, in an unfamiliar Spanish hospital a year previous I didn’t think I’d be able to scramble up to the catwalk again let alone tick a route there within a year.
With my unplanned, month-old grade goal ticked a new phase begins. No more top-roping or repeating routes- on sport I want to get back to onsighting in the 6s (not an attractive proposition locally but I will hopefully get down to Dorset at some point) and get back on the harder routes that were my aims before. But more pressing now is the target I dreamed up for this season in the winter-
*kazoo fanfare* All the three-star (in the current definitive books), sub-HVS Peak grit trad routes I haven’t done before.
Turns out that there are 20 of these, most are VS (a grade Cheque 2.0 has yet to lead) and all are either at out-of-the-way venues, are steep cracks, or both. Attempting to tick this list will hopefully:
-Prevent the “all the routes I can climb are shit or I’ve done them before” malaise that I’ve known to affect other injury-weakened trad climbers.
-Get my trad head/ efficiency/ fluency back
-Get me out to crags I’ve never or seldom visited before (with some leg-strengthening approaches in there too)
-Make me better at the steep crack climbs style that I’ve often avoided
-Have a good time with my mate who I used to do trad with all the time until I decided I was going to get good at climbing, an urge he’s, possibly sensibly, never succumbed to.
So without further ado;
S- Five Clouds. Never climbed here before apart from on the Trust boulder. After seconding a few very easy warmups I got on my target route Crabbie’s Crack- “Crack climbing of the utmost quality, at the upper limit of the grade”. First go up I climbed down from the crux in shock at how tough it all was. Second go I found all the holds but found it very tough to get my foot round to the left before the crux sequence due to my Alsatian hips. Lowered off, pulled the ropes and psyched up for a glorious successful go
with most of the gear already in place which didn’t happen- still couldn’t get round onto the left below the crux crack and got pumped trying. Left it for another day, led a HS and seconded a Severe then headed to;
Hen Cloud. Bachelor’s Climb the target. It’s a big, honest-to-goodness VS jamming crack with big ledgy rests up a buttress too tall to do in one pitch on my 30m grit ropes. Which didn’t help with the speed I climbed it- we had to bail from halfway as we were running out of time before my mate’s curfew.
S- Black Rocks. First visit in almost 2 years, even longer since I climbed there,
even longer since I climbed there with a rope. Also the first time in more than a year that I’ve attempted to climb two days in a row.
Started on the dark side which was a mistake as it’s still a bit damp there and it needs a clean and tidy. Found a VDiff I used to solo on every visit pretty tough
so we went to the sunny side and got on my target route, the biggest gap on my BR CV, Birch Tree Wall. I slipped out of the offwidth bit on my first attempt years and years ago and have only seconded it since- always found the thin-jamming-with-bad-feet start too sketchy to solo. I had nowhere near the requisite oomph for it today- three goes up and the best one had my left foot refusing to go in the round pocket that’s the start of the first crack easing off. I was out of breath standing below the wall after every go!
When a guy turned up with only shoes, chalkbag and towel and began soloing about as I stood, puffing and panting, with helmet, crack gloves, rope and generous rack attached to me it was like looking back at my previous self from an unfortunate future
and that was
before I failed to lead Lone Tree Gully.
There’s always a new challenge eh?
Still got a way to go on the trad front, a lot of which is due to lack of familiarity and possibly just as much is due to how much standing on your feet and carrying a rack is involved- I’ve been amazed by how little my still-weak legs affect sport and indoor climbing but I really feel it on trad. If there’s one thing my rehab has taught me though, it’s that doing the thing and feeling worked after will lead to being better at the thing.
