Falling

Following on from my woeful weekend climbing performance, bad (ok, atrocious) weather forced us to the wall again last night. Although we got there late, and half the wall was flooded, I was looking forward to climbing. However, once again, by the second route I led (a F5) I was a gibbering wreck, and volunteered just to belay George for the rest of the night.

Fortunately, he was having none of it, and persuaded me to try falling off instead. I unwillingly made my way to the bottom of the easiest route in the middle of the main wall and, after some inevitable prevarication, set off. I got to just below the fourth clip - and managed to let go. Result! Up to the next, level with the bolt this time (though I was still clipping from quite low down).

Pause. Pause Pause.

Let go!

That was ok! I felt steadily more confident even though I was getting higher up the wall, and although the intent was to keep falling off, I was able to focus more on the moves and waste less energy feeling generally sick.

I tried a couple more routes, and although I didn't have a 100% success rate by any means, but things were much better. By the end of the night, I even tried a very overhanging F6b - and got over half way! Well, as they say, you can't get hurt if you're in the air (can you?).