CLIMBING CLUB 6TH FORM TRIP, MONDAY 23 Oct at Milton Keynes Big Rock Centre

Following on from the SES climbing club’s recent adventures to the peak district, Mr Smith opened up a grand new idea. A trip for the 6th formers.

The 6th formers of the club (Jonty Mason, Charity Stow, Katie Wood and myself) have progressed further with our climbing due to our 6/7 years of service compared to other members, so it is only natural that Mr Smith gave us a new challenge of learning how to Lead Climb.

Lead climbing unlike normal top-rope climbing is when the rope is clipped in on the way up the wall by the climber, instead of being fixed at the top of the wall. This means that at some points, when you are above the clip you have just used, you can fall twice the distance.

Now, obviously this is still very safe but physics is physics which means that you can get quite a fright when you try it for the first time. Especially when Mr Smith asks the belayer to jump up at the same time the climber falls! (This is to try and create a softer landing, but does result in both climber and belayer ‘floating’ in mid-air)

Of course the natural solution that anyone could come up with to this is to get everybody to start jumping off of the wall (the natural solution for Mr Smith at least). Jonty and I had previously tried jumping off of the wall as suggested above (with some attempts resulting in Jonty being the same height as me!). However, both Charity and Katie had not which resulted in some scenarios where the climber would say ‘I think I’ll just come down’ but there request becoming a pointless one when the reply from below (Mr Smith) is ‘don’t worry its completely safe’ or ‘you’ll be fine’. To add to this the press (Mr Hilton) was on-hand taking photos and videos of the dilemmas whilst they unfolded.

After the four of us were more comfortable with the idea of falling whilst leading we moved into the pit, where the walls are nearly double the height of most other walls. Here we attempted some easy leads at first, and then some more challenging leads and general climbs, which resulted in some screaming and shouting whilst the climber was in a difficult position and trying to move (see any video of Chris Sharma for a demo).

After the exciting, scary and educational day we had some food, logged our 9 climbs and leads, and then returned to Stamford, via a 2 hour traffic jam, which resulted in some excellent DofE navigation from Mr Smith and Mr Hilton!

By Sam Brunswick, Lower Sixth, November 2017.