Epic afternoon of climbing stuff
Feb. 15th, 2015 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylEpic day of climbing, starting with a bunch of top-rope with M. Following a fortifying pause for tea and cake, I carried on lone-wolfing it with a bunch of bouldering and auto-belays until E arrived. Eventually losing interest in the 40 degree board, G took pity on me and we climbed a handful of lead routes on the prow.
Apart from poor clipping technique on the first few routes — my off-hand clips were pretty rubbish, largely due to a lack of practice — I breezed up most of the routes, including things I'd previously tried and bottled, and generally really enjoyed myself in a way I haven't done for a while. G pointed out that everything was good when I was relaxed; that when I knew I had to make a quick clip I was smooth and precise and it was only when I had time to pause and think that I messed things up; and also that I flashed everything I tried — I went as far 6a+ — giving the impression that everything was under control and I was well within my capabilities. Which is impressive considering I was four hours into an unexpectedly mammoth session.
G, master that he is, breezed up everything, making it look smooth and easy. It took a while to get used to his trick of clipping two quickdraws from the same position — which, as he says, makes sense if you can reach both points from the same place because it expends less energy and means you can make do with one good position rather than having to search for two — but it was a fun end to really good afternoon...
ETA: I really paid for this on Monday, spending the whole day in a state of tired, uselessness. I spent a solid hour trying to debug hostbased authentication before I realised that I'd disabled it in my own secure shell configuration file and that was why it wasn't working...
Apart from poor clipping technique on the first few routes — my off-hand clips were pretty rubbish, largely due to a lack of practice — I breezed up most of the routes, including things I'd previously tried and bottled, and generally really enjoyed myself in a way I haven't done for a while. G pointed out that everything was good when I was relaxed; that when I knew I had to make a quick clip I was smooth and precise and it was only when I had time to pause and think that I messed things up; and also that I flashed everything I tried — I went as far 6a+ — giving the impression that everything was under control and I was well within my capabilities. Which is impressive considering I was four hours into an unexpectedly mammoth session.
G, master that he is, breezed up everything, making it look smooth and easy. It took a while to get used to his trick of clipping two quickdraws from the same position — which, as he says, makes sense if you can reach both points from the same place because it expends less energy and means you can make do with one good position rather than having to search for two — but it was a fun end to really good afternoon...
ETA: I really paid for this on Monday, spending the whole day in a state of tired, uselessness. I spent a solid hour trying to debug hostbased authentication before I realised that I'd disabled it in my own secure shell configuration file and that was why it wasn't working...
