My first 1.5 metre fall
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Published: October 6th 2012
There's something magic about climbing.
When your leg finally stops doing the Eelvis, when you stop sweating, swearing and generally freaking out for attempting to ascend 30+ meters vertically in the air you get to this moment of amazing mental clarity. You begin to appreciate how truly powerful your body can be if you trust it. It's only a brief maybe 5 second head space for me, before I turn into a swearing sweaty nutcase again. But those 5 seconds are worth it.
We begin the day climbing up the 1 2 3 wall. Nughn is really patient and great at explaining the technique and theory of climbing and balancing this with just enough practice. I would highly recommend Nughn as a teacher, this guy does not sell himself enough. He climbs a 6b quite comfortably I think he mentioned he can lead most 7's and he used to climb with Chris Sharma whenever he would come to visit from the States.
He doesn't have an email he's getting one soon but best to contact Nughn on his mobile
East Railay Bay My first unassisted route was a 4c. Sure it probably looks easy but it was such a rush when I finally clipped into the anchor above!
I did a couple more leads on a 5a, and a few more top ropes, which I'm sure i got plenty of grey hairs from due to the panic attacks I was experiencing throughout the climb. But I persisted. We climbed from 10 am to about 4.45pm with a brief break for lunch and theory. By the end of the day despite my mind being very much willing the flesh had become weak and spongy.
I was climbing a 5b on top rope and fell quite a number of times. We decided to call it a day with one last lead on my initial 4c. Things were going great I was up to the third bolt.
Then I felt my body give way.
My hands tried to grab around the rock, with the lack of concentration I made the wrong twist and tumbled down. Lucky for me, I fell around where I had clipped into the third bolt.
So the fall was only 1.5-2 meters.
It was unexpected and I felt my stomach floating as I took my first ever fall on lead belay. Luckily I pushed away from the rock and I came away relatively unbruised and unscathed. I decided to do it one more time through on lead for good measure. We finished up shortly thereafter, me beaming from ear to ear.
I did it I finally learnt how to lead!
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