April 14, 2010 George Foster

Above the sea………

I’ve been pretty poor with the old blog as of late, but then nothing much of note has happened so you can forgive me i’m sure.

Life till now has mainly been work and lots of indoor climbing. It’s fun for a while (indoor climbing i mean) but after nearly 4 months where none of the routes have been changed it gets a bit dull. I feel like i’m climbing pretty well though, i’ve been doing some actual proper training on the campus board set-up in the boulder room and starting to feel quite good. Most importantly i’m currently in a sustained period without major finger tweaks since i started climbing! ZOLTAN!

I was given the chance last week to head down to Pembroke to meet up with my friend Tom (have a look at his Don’t Work, Climb blog over there on the right) for a quick snatch of the awesome weather we’ve been having of late (in fact i’m off up to the Lakes this afternoon to make the most of it!) Pembroke is AMAZING. We were a bit restricted due to the bird bans (fair enough of course) and the Special Army Soldiers firing rockets at the sea so had the option of Carreg-y-Barcud (been there, done that – still awesome though) or Mother Carey’s Kitchen. Mother Carey’s has quite a reputation for being scary and committing but then so is everywhere when you have to ab in the and the only way out is to climb. As it turned out i feel this reputation to be a tad unfounded – you can always swim after all!?

It was baking hot and due to the restrictions further along the coast the place soon drew a crowd…..and with good reason. The other side of Mother Carey’s reputation leans towards super-classic routes and clean lines. It has these in abundance and although our climbing wan’t exactly prolific we still managed 3 or 4 excellent routes. 

It’s been a while since i’ve climbed trad, bar a couple of trips up to Yorkshire grit, which didn’t really constitute trad, i’ve not placed gear since long before Xmas! It felt good then to be able to figh my way up the direct E3 finish to the classic Brazen Buttress. Brazen was my original target but having been confused by the chalk i followed the wrong line and soon found myself pumped and running it out on positive holds miles above the sea. AWESOME. The indoor training certainly helped my recovery on some of the slightly marginal holds and i was soon dodging sea-gulls at the top. Lovely.

I’m off to India in 6 weeks for a 2 month jolly up in the Himalaya’s doing some ‘mountaineering’ (in the sense that we’re going up mountains…..though apparently they’re about as technical as my nan’s stair lift). Proper psyched for it! Never been to India and certainly never been up as high at 6-7000m! Boom!

Lame post. Sorry. I’ll try and do something a bit more interesting but it may be some time.  

Comments (4)

  1. no no it’s only mountaineering in the sense that we’re heading up a mountain or two. apart from that the only technical thing about it is how to tie my boot laces.

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