Rock 1 progress

Last Saturday (2nd March) I spent the day with Adrian Kladnig and his climbing Rovers doing outdoor climbing for the first time.

We spent the day at Mount York, in the Mezzaluna Area and First Year Uni Area. I discovered fairly quickly that the technique for toproping outdoors was not any different to indoor (except outdoors you need someone to lead climb the route first), and my few experiences bouldering outdoors has prepared me a little bit for working with real rock. I got up three 15's, a 17 and a 19(!!! I think my record indoors is 21 or 22 so I'm pretty stoked about this). Adrian said my success seemed to lie in my footwork, which I was very happy about. For a while when I was climbing with my cello injury I spent several months climbing with as little pressure on my top half as possible, so I suppose it paid off.

Hanging out at the top of the 19

By the end of the day, Adrian was happy enough to let me try lead climbing a wall - just clipping in, not setting up the quickdraws. The wall was just a 16 but the change in my attitude was startling. Lead climbing means if you fall off the wall you swing down to your nearest clip-in point, which is quite a startling experience, I found. I was much more nervous about climbing and Adrian pointed out that my footwork deteriorated fairly quickly because of my nerves. It is something I will have to work on further. I fell off at least three or four times at the same point and got both grazed and annoyed. I found my problem was my dynamic moves were just smaller and more hesitant because of the fear of falling, and I suppose a huge self consciousness that I was doing badly in front of a host of people I had only met that day. I think in the end it was just the awareness that I wasn't going to be excused from the climb that made me shove myself up there. Thankfully the climb got easier from there, and I saw that lead climbing was basically a weird cross between bouldering (no rope, but protective mats) and just toproping slowly.

Overall I had a really good time, and I am excited to learn more about climbing outdoors. I've logged the climbs in a new tab on my Activity Log.

To complete Rock 1 I will need to do another day out with Adrian. Looking forward to it!

Mezzaluna Area has some tasty views