Yesterday was a bit of a milestone for me - I made my first attempt at one of those tantalisingly elusive red-tagged 6a routes. (At The Castle, they use blue tags for 4a-4c routes, green tags for 5a-5c, and red tags for 6a+) It was a hilariously inept attempt, it must be said - I only got just over halfway, and it took me nearly fifteen minutes and a couple of disturbing pings in my trapezius muscles to get that far, with several failed attempts at passing the first overhang.
But nevertheless, I felt quite satisfied at making the attempt at all, considering that just six months ago I was feeling similarly proud of nervelessly leading 4c. Nowadays, I'm comfortably solving probably 90% of the 5a routes I attempt, plus maybe 70-75% of 5b's and around 50% of 5c's. It's definitely encouraging, and I put it down to increased confidence just as much as actual technique. IMHO, climbing is as much a mental sport as it is physical. I still get days when I just can't focus, and for some reason the nerves come piling back... usually it's when I haven't been climbing for two or three weeks.
Correspondingly I've found that the more I climb outside - and particularly the more I lead outside, the more confident I become, and the more I consider the adjectival grade (VDiff, Severe, VS, etc) to be the most reliable indicator of a routes "do-ability" for me. I've even taken to trying to train myself to judge a route by walking around The Castle looking for a route that looks like fun, but do-able - and only then looking at the technical grade to determine if my on-sight appraisal was correct. It comes in very handy when you're climbing outside without a guidebook :)
Monday, November 20, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Southern Sandstone - Strange Stuff!
On Monday we took a trip down to Harrison's Rocks for my birthday (yay!) and a first experience of climbing on soft southern sandstone... and very strange it is too!
The rock is SO soft that it's seemingly permanently covered with a thin layer of sand, from constant erosion. The venue has a couple of hard and fast rules due to the softness of the rock:
Luckily, there's some good bolts on many of the routes, making top (bottom) ropes a breeze to set up. All the routes are short, most about half the height of your average Stanage route, and not much higher than an average boulder problem at the Castle.
One point I should make - it's REALLY hard to find unless you've been there before! We eventually sussed it out after about an hour of driving around near Eridge station. The trick is to go behind the station car park, and there's a very narrow road with some used car lots & garages and things in it. Go down there, and keep going for about a mile and a half or so.... then there's a small and easy-to-miss entrance on the left with a small sign for "Birchen Wood".
Don't keep driving up and down looking for a sign that says "Harrisons Rocks", like we did - the "sign" referred to in most directions that you'll find is actually a sheet of A4 paper with the word "Harrisons" written on it, that may well have fallen down or folded itself over in the breeze. Look for the "Birchen Wood" sign instead! And if you reach a triangular junction with Station Road, and a sign that points ahead to Groombridge, you've gone a couple of hundred metres too far!
Once we eventually found it - about 2pm - the short November day meant that our climbing time was limited, and we didn't manage to get hold of a guidebook so we were climbing truly "onsight". But we still managed to get some good routes in.
Pick of the bunch was what a helpful passerby told me was called "Root Route 3" (5b **). This one's a right sod! Fun though :) I must have hung around for nearly fifteen minutes on this one, searching for holds that I was sure had to be there - and they were, eventually, they just... well... took some finding...
Also, there's a route in the crack to the left that we both did, and reckoned it was probably about 4b / 4c. But the helpful passerby told us that was called "Open Chimney", which apparently is just 2b! If anyone can shed some light on this, please do!
More photos are on Flickr
The rock is SO soft that it's seemingly permanently covered with a thin layer of sand, from constant erosion. The venue has a couple of hard and fast rules due to the softness of the rock:
- NO TRAD LEADING
Top ropes or soloing only - NO running your top ropes over the edge
Make sure that you extend your anchor with slings if necessary, to avoid the rope eroding the rock (yes, really)
Luckily, there's some good bolts on many of the routes, making top (bottom) ropes a breeze to set up. All the routes are short, most about half the height of your average Stanage route, and not much higher than an average boulder problem at the Castle.
One point I should make - it's REALLY hard to find unless you've been there before! We eventually sussed it out after about an hour of driving around near Eridge station. The trick is to go behind the station car park, and there's a very narrow road with some used car lots & garages and things in it. Go down there, and keep going for about a mile and a half or so.... then there's a small and easy-to-miss entrance on the left with a small sign for "Birchen Wood".
Don't keep driving up and down looking for a sign that says "Harrisons Rocks", like we did - the "sign" referred to in most directions that you'll find is actually a sheet of A4 paper with the word "Harrisons" written on it, that may well have fallen down or folded itself over in the breeze. Look for the "Birchen Wood" sign instead! And if you reach a triangular junction with Station Road, and a sign that points ahead to Groombridge, you've gone a couple of hundred metres too far!
Once we eventually found it - about 2pm - the short November day meant that our climbing time was limited, and we didn't manage to get hold of a guidebook so we were climbing truly "onsight". But we still managed to get some good routes in.
Pick of the bunch was what a helpful passerby told me was called "Root Route 3" (5b **). This one's a right sod! Fun though :) I must have hung around for nearly fifteen minutes on this one, searching for holds that I was sure had to be there - and they were, eventually, they just... well... took some finding...
Also, there's a route in the crack to the left that we both did, and reckoned it was probably about 4b / 4c. But the helpful passerby told us that was called "Open Chimney", which apparently is just 2b! If anyone can shed some light on this, please do!
More photos are on Flickr
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