The WMC have a meet at Cornwall next week, right down by Land's End for the bank holiday and me and Kate are heading down after work Friday :) Kate hasn't done much climbing and less outdoors so I thought rather than have a first go with the sea bashing away at a cliff below you; a nice bit of top roping in rural Shropshire would be a good idea so we headed to Pontesford Rocks.
I decided on a moderate and difficult grade routes to start so I soloed up West Crack (Moderate) in my fell running trainers and set up a top rope on the oak tree. Kate went up but we didn't bother with the scrambling after the first pitch. Kate came down and had another go on the slightly harder Moonlight Variation (Diff) which she found easier.
Kate on Moonlight Variation (Diff)
After this I started looking where we could move the top rope to, Kate went down the descent route and I scampered across the top to the other two tree's. The higher of the two trees looked quite dead and had a huge boulder resting on it so I decided to downclimb to the next tree which felt mega exposed! I set up the top rope and decided to abseil off, I was a bit nervous about this as I set up an autoblock for protection but it seemed more trouble than it was worth so I took it off. I got going fine though and soon Kate had a couple of goes on Stoat's Chimney (Mod).
Kate on Stoat's Chimney (Mod)
When we were driving over it was all black and grey clouds in the sky, with a few breaks of strong sunlight. We had our doubts, it was even spitting as we pulled up so it worked out great all in all and Kate had a good time too :) I even got chance to try out my JetBoil in the car park making a brew and pot noodles for lunch (inspired from Nescliffe? I haven't eaten one in years!).
No comments:
Post a Comment