With the largest piece of coursework of my degree due in within two weeks I am of course heavily procrastinating at the moment, with the beautiful weather on Sunday I was desperate to get out on some rock to make the most of it before it got cold and wet again this week but no one in Exeter wanted to play. So I drove up to the Symonds Yat in the Wye Valley picking Simon up from Chepstow on the way to introduce another one of my friends to outdoor climbing.
This meant going back to VDiff again to determine what Simon could climb so we climbed the classic VDiff of the crag, Snoozin’ Suzie, which was fantastic and a great introduction for Simon into outdoor climbing. Climbing up out of the woods and being presented with a view of the Wye Valley was just fantastic! After this we headed over to the other side of the crag to climb up a big pinnacle, up the opposite side to us is a classic VS which is on my to do list but that can wait for another day. We headed up a climb called Vertigo which was a severe which Simon sailed up and standing on the top of the pillar was just fantastic, it was just a shame the sun went behind a huge cloud at this point! With the sun starting to get low in the sky it was time to abseil back down and climb the final climb of the day.
From where we were we had the choice of a long walk around the edge of the crag or a short VDiff (The Little Red Edge) climb up to the top, so we chose the climb. It was fairly bold as far as VDiff climbs go as I don’t have any tiny cams so in the 10m climb I placed 1 piece of gear half way up and one piece at the top of the climb before the scramble to the belay!
It was great being back on limestone as I am far more comfortable on it than on Dartmoor’s Granite, and I am looking forward to climbing with Simon again and getting on some harder routes this summer as he lives 30mins from my house and on the way to all the great local climbing venues! I have now also set myself a target for the end of the summer which is being happy leading HVS routes, which should be possible especially as I will be able to go out and second climbs with my parents at harder grades to improve my technical climbing ability.
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