East Gully (IV 3,4)

Abseiling...

So it's been a while since I've done any climbing. Well it's been about 2 weeks, which as far as I'm concerned is a more than long enough! My ankle is taking it's sweet time to heal and now there is an odd lump on the ankle bone itself (off to one side) and still painful bruising over my foot bones and my lower leg. I can't believe all this has come about from a simple trip. I've also been off work, which at first was fun and now I just want to get back so I have something to fill my day with.

Talking on filling my day, I went up to Stoke to help out with the SUMC abseil. I actually went up to hang out on a roof all day, drink tea and maybe do a little abseiling or rigging. What actually happened was that I ended up spending 8 hours dangling over the edge of mellor (the building) operating a safety rope with my friend Tim (he was the SPA). This wasn't exactly something I'd planned for but we made the best of it; drinking tea all afternoon and getting clients down safety. The highlight of my day (well there were 2) was that a couple of disabled people turned up. After a brief discussion downstairs well they made it to the roof (without wheelchairs) all kitted up and ready. It did mean that we had to close one of the lines so that one of us could abseil down next to them should anything happen, but nothing did. Everything went really well and one of the girl actually came up and did it again because she enjoyed it so much. All in all it was a pretty awesome day, and it didn't rain.

The night before I'd also been asked to put my sony vegas skills to the test and produce a short "trailer" type piece of promotional material  for the SUMC to play on a laptop at thier stall, hopefully in a effort to generate some enthusiasm. I kind of threw myself into it because it's the first time anyones actually asked me to put something together for them, rather then me just playing around and making climbing films for youtube. Here is a copy of the trailer:

a day out somewhere fun...?

Pretty much what it sounds like. It's a video of when me and Killian went climbing on Idwal from a few blog posts ago. It is only the first draft as I did want to get some more footage into it but I've not been able to get round to it.

Alps and stuff...

Well I left work early yesterday (I'm going to get busted if anyone at work reads my blog) but I'll put in the time somewhere else. Probably working my lunch for the warhammer painting competition I'm running. You know when you naively take on what is suposed to be in reality a nice simple job, but then without warning it starts spiraling out of control. Welcome to warhammer club. Other than warhammer club admin at work is very boring. Least I'm getting paid so I should stop complaining.

Went to Stoke last night. Why would anyone willingly go to Stoke I hear people ask? Well I love being in Stoke, and think its a great place to live. Other than that I needed to claim back my guidebooks and Toaf's mom's quiche dish from Ceara house, and sit down and plan some alpine related stuff with Dan.

Thankfully planning has paid off. We now know when we're going, what ferries we're getting. The car is sorted (other than insurance). We also spent part of the night rescuing each other from a cravesse. I should probably point out, that if your mate ever does fall into a crevasse, then anchoring off a nearby desk isn't advised. We also practise some tying in in coils. All in all a good evening.

On top of all of this we're going away this weekend to put most of this into practise. I'm not starting my weekly ritual of praying for decent (or at least half decent weather). I'm not to sure whats its going to do. We'll be in Wales, only because we know where everything is and should make the climbing easier. I hope it goes alright as I could do with a hard weekend out climbing.

Anyway I attached the link for the video from last trip to Idwal, and no doubt me and Dan will try and make another.

http://lifeattheendofarope.blogspot.com/2009/05/blog-post.html

A blessing in disguise...

This it the video from mine and Dan's climbing on Idwal. Sorry about the language but I couldn't edit it out as yet.