The thing about trad climbing...

"You have to be strong in your body, but also strong in your mind"

The quote is by Didier Berthod, sponsered by BD. A swiss guy who comes from the land of bolts (Europe) but is very ethical about trad climbing.

Anyway I went to Llangollen the other day. I went climbing with James. Many a drive through or past Llangollen I looked up at the limestone escarpement running up along the valley. Eventually I've finally made it to the base of them. We went to Trevor rocks. Now being pretty aposed to bolts myself we went to Quarry wall as there was a bunch of trad lines. Recently I've been pitching off routes left right and centre and I'm getting quite sick of it. Maybe I'm just not as good as I think I am, or I'm just getting tired and not listening to my body when I should stop.

Anyway like I said, pitching off things which I sort of getting me down. I told myself not to climb anything at my limit and therefore shouldn't fall off. Me and James started on a HVS 4c (I must apologise that I don't rememeber the names of any of the routes as James still has the guide book), This went fine, there was less gear than I would have liked and more loose rock than I would have liked. It went well, so on James lead he took a 40m VS 4b traverse. He split it into 2 pitches and climbed it well, although he did wander all over the face ("james your a little too high!").

The one face of quarry wall (if you havn't been there) is almost slabby. The other is vertical and unforgiving on the forearms, as I was about to find out. For god only knows what reason I jumped on E2 5b, described as pumpy in the guidebook. I didn't feel like climbing it, and if the gear was anything like the rest of the cliff, there wouldn't be enough to feel happy.

So half an hour later I find myself completly gripped, my forearms burning and screaming. I was so pumped I couldn't even squeeze a cam trigger, god knows how I even opened the carabiner to get it off my harness. Panic welled up inside me. I wasn't high above gear, but the rock wasb't great and I didn't trust my last piece too much. I started bricking it, talking quickly and trying to stuff in a good piece of gear. I crammed the cam in, almost screaming as it hurt so much. Not that I would have done anygood because I fell off. My arms just failed and popped off.

I only fell about 4m any my gear held. I lowered off and felt sick. "The best climber is the one having the most fun" (Alex Lowe). For a while now, I've been climbing hard and falling off. I'm not having fun.

James lead another VS 4b, then I did a HVS 4c and then we went sport climbing (and ticked off 2 6a's) for the last hour further down the climb. All in all it was a good day out with James, but not with myself. I'm away in the lakes with Claire this week, then going to Wales with the lads. I'm not going to fall off, I'm not going to push it.

(obviously thats a lie and I will, but its nice to think I'll try not to)