More Nav and back to Trad climbing

Well, its been a fairly quiet last 10 days - hardly surprising given the weather, and I'm sat here looking out at heavy rain for the second day in a row. The road to Mold was a bit of a white knuckle ride yesterday, due to flooding and rivers of water and mud coming off the fields !

I did manage yet another day of nav practice in drizzly conditions, just managing to avoid the huge downpour which hit a DofE Silver group my better half was monitoring.

I also did my first bit of DofE work with the Queen's School Bronze group on Saturday, getting them in a fit state to set off with much repacking and re-arranging of 70 litre rucksacks.  Most of their packs were heavier than I'd take on a 3 day winter expedition, and their Mums had sent them off with enough food to last them a week !

We also managed to make the best of the 1.5 days of good weather over the week-end by getting out and doing some long overdue trad climbing.  I've been desperate to get out and hopefully capitalise on the gains I feel I've made on the sport front, but the weather has had other ideas.  We went to Pinfold on Saturday and Pot Hole Quarry on Sunday, both Clwyd limestone venues and I definitely feel progress has been made, though having to place gear came as a culture shock and I was definitely rusty in this area, being both slow and inaccurate in gear selection, which up the adrenaline somewhat !  I warmed up on a horrible VS 4b before attempting a Pinfold classic, Toccata (VS 5a) a climb I backed off on  a little under 3 years ago when my shoulder problems were at their peak and finally clinched the decision to go for a shoulder operation, which I had a little over 2 years ago and so far has been a success, allowing me to climb with confidence and focus instead of wondering when my shoulder would pop out !  Anyway, back to the climb, the crux is supposed to be a block at 3 metres but I found the first 2 metres harder !  Once established, I managed the block pretty well and sailed up the remainder on an emotional high, the biggest indicator yet that I am ready to make forward progress from where I was pre injury.  Julie followed me up in some style, especially given her reduced reach, which she reminds of only half a dozen times every outing.  I followed this up with a romp up Devil's Alternative (HVS 5a) which after working out the crux sequence was despatched comfortably.  Not sure why the HVS compared to VS for Toccata as the gear overall was just as good - maybe a little less so at the crux where I used a DMM brass offset and it needed double ropes - but I always find grades a bit of a puzzle anyway !  

Now high on success I went for a final flourish on  Maranda, an E1 5a ... and got spanked ! Not only that, I took my first ground fall, even if it was from only 2.5 metres.  I faffed loads putting the one piece of gear in which then popped, couldn't work out the pull onto the ledge with fading strength and finally peeled off with totally pumped out arms, pulling the gear in the process and hitting the deck with nothing hurt beyond my pride - gutted ! I was sure I was going to nail this E1 on-sight. I had another half hearted attempt, but my arms were blown so we called it a day.

With a worsening forecast for Sunday, we stayed local and went to an old fave, Pot Hole. I warmed up with a TR on the Dog (HVS 5b) the classic of the crag (and E1 in the older book) and then lead it, my second successful lead of this climb, my gear placement efficiency still being found somewhat wanting, but it is a lovely route, steep technical limestone crack climbing at its best. I then move on to an other classic, Ceba (E1 5b), which I'd done on a solo top rope a few weeks earlier and now wanted to lead. As such, It couldn't be an 'on-sight' but a clean E1 lead was the goal here.  It is another technical crack climb with a few tricky sequences to be worked and a final strenuous section round an overlap. I found I didn't really remember much from the previous top rope, but made steady progress to the overlap, finding the 'thank God' jug above it and placing two welcome cams in the break, including a new totem cam in a pocket (early indicators are that these cams are superb on limestone) before executing the shuffle sideways and reach for the top to complete a successful E1 just as the rain started .. and it hasn't stopped since !