Afterwork Adrenaline (Rock climbing)

Sunday 15 June 2008 07:53PM

I’m nearing the end of my time guiding on Skye (finish in 1 week), meaning I’m feeling restless for getting some climbing done for myself before I go, and that I’m less bothered about getting completely exhausted, since the end is in sight.

Last night and the afternoon before I went to Neist with my friend Ben, who lives on Skye and was instrumental in my ridge record run (he also took this photo:

). I’d not seen him since the ridge run so it was good to catch up.

He had this line at Neist that he thought we should try, and try we did. The first afternoon I got rained off before committing to the first crux, so it was after work the next day before we met up again. The route turned out to be awesome, right at my limit, intricate and difficult to protect at first, then relentlessly pumpy higher up. I was gutted when, a few metres from what looked like a rest, I had to hang on the rope as I was so pumped I could hardly see. After a bit of resting I made it to the top and into the teeth of a howling gale.

Now ethics are a funny thing. In the eyes of a “redpoint ethicist” I still haven’t climbed the line, since I had to rest on the rope. True, I was very annoyed to have to rest, and if I get a chance to go back and climb it clean before I leave I’ll jump at it. But to me, to try it ground up, have a full value adventure, fail to completely free it, and submit it as “new route x, grade y, 1 rest point at crux, still to be led clean” is much better (more satisfying, more adventure) than toproping it first, cleaning it with a wire brush, testing out the gear placements, working out the best line to take, where to place protection from, exactly how hard it’s going to be, where to get a rest etc. If I had toproped this route first then leading it would have been a formality, as it was it was anything but.

So, my new route that maybe doesn’t count yet is “Afterwork Adrenaline”, and about E5 6a. Couple of pics in the photo section.