The Beginning Of Challenges To Come!

I suppose we'll start this blog with this challenge I'm currently trying to do which is the 12 Month Crag Challenge. Basically. A different crag each month, even if its just a day, it doesn't matter, as long as I touch rock and actually try hard on something, it counts! This started off in March and to kick things off, myself and a few of my friends from my local gym headed up to the Peaks with some Stanage Plantation action. The drive up was pleasant and the weather was looking perfect for the whole weekend. Everything was going well until I opened my bag to find that I had left my climbing shoes at work... You'd think going for a climbing trip, you'd remember your shoes, but obviously not and I wasn't prepared to do the 4 hour drive back home.

Day one started off pretty well, borrowing my friends solutions that were 2 sizes smaller than my normal climbing shoe size and also has a small hole in the toe, so was rather painful but still managed to get Not to be taken away (V4) fairly early on. Later throughout the day I struggled on Deliverence (V8) and tried my hand at the classic Green Traverse (V6) but failed miserable due to tiredness. During lunch time we hit up the Outside shop in Hathersage to buy me a new pair of shoes! I've have been looking at the Tenaya Oasi's for a little while and wondering if they'd fit or not and to my surprise the 7's fitted perfectly! But decided to go for half a size up just so I didn't have to break them in as much. After lunch and a bit of a break we headed back out to Burbage but was getting extremely cold and windy so cut the climbs short and went to the pub!

Day two went a little better, going back to Stanage I popped onto the Green Traverse and crushed it on the 3rd go! Also hopped back onto Deliverence smashing the bottom section up to the dyno and coming inches away from the top with not enough dynamic power to get my fingers over the top. A little disappointed with that but still fairly chuffed on a short day of climbing and getting that far so quickly. The drive back was decent but would've loved to stay for longer but unfortunately had to be back for work.