Logbooks and leg warmers

I have often written about the difficulty I have in quantifying whether I climb better now that I used to, but the other day, the curse that is the Facebook memory showed me a picture of my climbing leg warmers and old climbing shoes, and I became curious as to exactly what I had been doing one year ago.

21st January 2015

My logbook tells a story of fear. Easy routes rested on, panic attacks and a strong desire to vomit. There were no overhangs, grades were low and sessions were short. There was clearly not enough tea.

Logbook entry for 21st January 2015

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also went climbing on the 21st January 2016. New routes had been set in the gully and my climbing partner and I, together with half the Leeds regulars, were on those routes like Winnie the Pooh round honey. Our session was long, there was lots of tea and I felt like I was climbing pretty well, but was there any demonstrable improvement?

I think I'll let you decide that for yourself.

Log from 21st January 2016

New beginnings

Leaving my life in Orkney behind in 2013 was more difficult than I think even I realised at the time. I went from being unable to shop in Tesco without meeting at least 3 people I knew, to knowing almost no one - my best friends all hundreds of miles away. There are no traffic lights in Orkney, no dual carriageways or motorways but suddenly, after 6 years on a wonderfully idiosyncratic island, I was thrust back into this alien urban environment. In my quest to adjust to a new home and a return to student life after 11 years as a commercial archaeologist, I didn't paddle, I didn't climb, I didn't run and I was miserable. It was as if I had lost myself.

By the end of 2014, things were improving but my boats were still in the garage and my box of climbing kit remained untouched beneath the coffee table. I felt sad and frustrated when I looked back at the photos from all the paddling and climbing I used to do. It felt like another lifetime. But then I met someone who made me see that despite this huge change in circumstances, I was still the same girl, with the same interests, the same dreams and passions. It was as if I was a broken boiler and my pilot light was suddenly reignited.

Perhaps things didn't take the course I expected, but through the shit, that pilot light stayed lit and I regained the drive to start making some changes. I found out a friend at uni did some climbing, I wrote a UKC post to find a regular partner and I started running again, with week 6 of Couch to 5K. And slowly but surely, I rebuilt a life. As a result of that post I met the wonderful Simple Chick and together we climbed, through good times and bad. I battled with a severe, vomit inducing fear of falling, wimping out of leading 4s and kept going until the grades kept increasing and the improvements were even noticed by others. At times my own health was far from good but through it all I kept climbing and I kept running until I could run 5K, then 10K and over 20K, ending up as a member of Queensbury Running Club. 

Witnessing a near fatal climbing accident was an obvious low, but paradoxically, it was climbing, and those that I climbed with, that helped me deal with that and everything else - it gave me a purpose and at times the only reason to get out of bed. Things got better, of course, and as they did, my climbing continued to improve. I found the climber that I had left behind in Orkney and then I overtook her.

On a local paddle, in another lifetime...

In my other life, sea kayaking was a huge component, I lived 5 minutes from the sea in two directions and at one point I seriously considered starting a summer kayak guiding business for visitors to the island. Although for various reasons that never happened, I did obtain my coaching qualifications and coached extensively for both local clubs. So as I climbed more, it made sense to me to also qualify as a climbing instructor. So I did. And of course, the more I shadowed, the more instructors I met and with that another part of life was rebuilt, as I made friends and climbed with these new people.

So, although it is a cliché to look back at the past year, 2015, for me was somewhat pivotal. I still miss my friends desperately, and the network of climbers and paddlers that I left behind, but at least things are now going in the right direction. I wish I had a 'go to' friend who would greet my mad cap ideas with even better suggestions for summer and winter mountaineering, camping, fell running, climbing and anything else in between; there are so many things I want to do that I can't, merely because they are the sorts of things that need two.

This year, I have to finish my PhD and I suppose I have to decide where my life is headed, but I like it here and I like the life I have started to build. What I do know is that in 2016 I will climb more mountains, strive hard to make my own adventures, continue to build a network of friends, jump at all opportunities to get outdoors that come my way and most importantly, I am going to run my bloody stove on petrol. Gas is expensive and I am now an adoptive Yorkshire woman...

New Years Day - starting 2016 in the right way...

Under the night sky

I arrived in what can only be described as a monsoon, I had expected it to be raining, but not like that! I stopped the car, and as I peered out through the window, Hogmanay Plan F disappeared rapidly out of sight. As the strengthening wind whistled through the trees and the road pooled with water, the decision was made, and feeling rather crestfallen, I turned the car round and headed for home.

I think I had been in the house for all of 20 minutes when I sat down at my desk, almost out of habit, and clicked on the forecast. It was now fantastic. Outside, the weather was so shit that it was hard to believe it could change, but I had borrowed a tent and I felt like it was only right that I should use it. I picked up my rucksack, ran down the path through the storm and got back into the car...

Peering out into the darkness a few hours later, I didn't know whether the gamble was going to pay off, but with the cloud thinning and the stars becoming visible, it seemed like a risk I had to take. I am fed up with being too scared to do the things I want to do because I think something bad might happen to me and of feeling that life is passing me by because I have no one to accompany me on the adventures that I long for. But as I walked up that path alone, with the world's brightest torch strapped to my head, I felt no fear at all. 

Several hours later, tent pitched and belly full, the wind had dropped considerably and it seemed a waste to spend the bells sat in my tent, so I set forth towards the hill, map in one pocket and hip flask in the other. Scrambling upwards, the rock was icy and a thickening layer of hail stones lay on the ground. Reaching the steepest cliff, I chickened out - it was 11.30 pm, it was very dark and not one person knew where I was. I sat down on a suitable rock. 

Stars and silhouettes

I tried in vain to capture what I saw from my high perch but nothing could do justice to the sheer beauty of witnessing those thousands of stars and planets shining out above the dark silhouettes of the hills. I heard the cheers ring out at midnight and enjoyed numerous firework displays stretching far into the distance below me. And as I sat on that rock, watching the landscape being illuminated by flashes of light from every direction, and as I stared up at Orion and at the plough, to me, it didn't matter where you were, or how you were celebrating, nothing in the world could possibly be better than being where I was, sitting alone, under that cloudless Lakeland sky.

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