Today at Castle Naze we did a girdle traverse. This means that rather than climb upwards for 10m on any of the normal routes, we instead traversed horizontally for most of the width of the crag. Incredibly fun but also highly antisocial! Some climbers find these routes horribly contrived, we thought it was hilarious.
After work trip to Fairy Cave Quarry, home of endless slabs and softly graded routes. I'll be back for some E2 before long.
Yesterday's claggy weather was gone and with Snowdonia bathed in sunshine we unwisely chose to hide in the shade on Glyder Fach. Direct Route took up most of the day, shivering and slithering up the final steep chimney, before returning to the bottom to balance up the runout Alpha.
A great day out with Becky, which began with a rainy lap of Tryfan, before we escaped to the Llanberis Pass for some lower crags. We began on Nea which has a superb 3rd pitch, followed by Diagonal on Dinas Mot which had a pair of excellent first pitches, although we sadly abb'd off after that with darkness impending.
An early evening rush with Ross to Demo Route after the rain cleared. Being a military man, he insisted we followed it up with Civvy Route, fortunately for his career he got the lead clean.
Ita had never been climbing outdoors before, so Cat and I took her in at the deep end with a five pitch tidal sea cliff route at Chair Ladder. We initially ab'd in to the wrong route, and then traversed across too low so by the time we topped out of Pendulum Chimney we'd finished seven pitches of climbing.
Ross and I finished on the Hard Rock route Bishop's Rib, although I fell off on a section helpfully described by Ross as "that was so easy, how did you manage to come off?".
