Although I had never climbed before I had been told by plenty of friends, who are regular climbers, what a great sport it is. So, encouraged by promises of a quick way to get fit, make friends and eventually go on trips to real rocks, I joined KCLMC.
On the Saturday we took our climbing gear – most of which I had absolutely no idea what to do with – to a crag in Snowdonia and set ourselves up for the day. It was at the bottom of the crag that it suddenly occurred to me that I am actually quite scared of heights. I had somehow forgotten this when I was happily clambering around on the multicoloured wall at The Castle. I decided that climbing wasn’t for me and I wasn’t about to start hanging around on large pieces of rock that were beginning to look incredibly unstable.
I hadn’t reckoned on Jen. Before I knew it I was standing at the bottom of what suddenly seemed like the biggest piece of rock in the world armed with some rope and a hard hat. I think that if Jen’s attention had been diverted for even a second I would have untied myself and gone and hidden. However, it wasn’t, so with lots of encouragement and cheerfully delivered tips from both Jen and Joe I started to make my way up the crag.
I slipped several times and it wasn’t until about the third time that I realised that it didn’t actually matter because with someone belaying at the bottom, I wasn’t really going to fall anywhere very far. It did take those couple of slips to really trust the rope. Some of the committee members made the climbing look so easy, but half way up I found myself stuck and aching. Jen promptly started encouraging me to look around for footholds that I could push myself further up with and to my shock and delight I eventually found myself at the top. Now for coming down...
Actually, the descent wasn’t bad at all. I was so pleased just to have made it the top that when Jen told me to lean back and start walking down I found that I was surprisingly optimistic about my chances of surviving. I was so slow that Joe had been stuck belaying me for what must have seemed to him like hours, but when I apologised for my lack of speed he was really lovely and said that the only important thing was having made it to the top. Considering the rain and the cold this was incredibly generous.
The Freshers on the trip were a hardy lot and decided to keep climbing and bouldering despite the weather; I sloped off to the pub. Some of them, like me were complete novices, and others had varying degrees of experience but it seems that as long as you are prepared to give it go it doesn’t really matter how skilled you at climbing; there is plenty of enjoyment to be had whether you are honing your technique or simply trying to conquer a fear of heights, as I was.
When everyone had finished we headed back to the hut, where the committee produced a delicious vegetarian chilli and lots of alcohol in the form of beer and what they claimed was wine. This led to various alcohol-influenced games, the most memorable of which was undoubtedly table wrestling. For the uninitiated this is a highly dangerous game which results in strangely placed bruises. I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you are really keen, you need to manoeuvre your body around the table in a circular motion without any of your limbs touching the ground as many times as you can in a minute. A big hurrah for Fresher Sam, who on his first attempt managed four turns of the table.
On the Sunday we split into two groups, some went climbing again and others walked up Snowdon. Once I had ascertained that the walkers were definitely not going for a jolly on the helpfully placed train, but really were planning to walk up and down Snowdon in just a few hours, I decided to climb again.
The second day was a completely different experience from the first. I had a go at few more climbs, learnt to belay and I think really got the bug for climbing. Suddenly the wind and the rain weren’t enough to put me off and I had a really brilliant time attempting to do the climbs that the committee set up for us. Although the climbing that we did was fairly straight forward, for a novice there were some really tough bits but I found on the second day (as I suspect everyone else had realised on the first) that these are the bits of climbing which make it really enjoyable and give you such a sense of achievement when you get to the top.
A big thankyou to the committee!
