Very Severe

This was posted on the original Isolationist website way back in 2003 (August 29th) when I was first bitten by the climbing bug.

Another crazy climbing adventure today. We climbed Central Rib on the main walls at the Avon Gorge (VS, 4c).

"Central Rib * 220ft VS. First climbed by B. Page and Miss A. Clark in 1954. Pleasant and popular. "

Very pleasant I imagine, with only a pair of hob-nailed boots for protection. This was first time that I've properly led outdoors, placing gear and relying on it. I'll tell you, it certainly makes you feel alive. The moves weren't technically difficult but I was so scared, particularly when protection got to be a little way beneath me. So scared in fact that I started playing with it a little bit. At one point, I was probably about 150 feet up, and my leg started shaking, really quite badly: I put my hand on a nice secure hold, leg stops shaking, take it off again, leg goes again, off: shaky, on: steady, off: shaky, on: steady. Puny Earthling! So that was fun. It was a multi-pitch climb so I had to figure out how to setup a belay station roughly half-way up the wall, basically on a narrow ledge, to get Ginger up safely, which took forever. But when I finally saw Ginger making the last few moves before joining me I felt this really warm satisfied glow. The kind you get when you've done something important (to you at least). I think we mis-read the guide book a bit for the second pitch because I got up about ten feet and thought there is no way I'm climbing up that and traversed left about ten feet. When I started going up after the traverse I found a section that the guide book had described, back on track, hurray. I'm glad I didn'thave to do that other bit, flashback to images of mountain rescue. I'd never been so glad to see a little crack in rock in all my life as I was today, climbing up towards the two hundred feet mark and suddenly there was nowhere to place protection, the climbing was pretty easy but the last bit of gear was about twenty five feet below me. And that does strange things to your mind: "I know this is safe, it's really unlikely that I'll fall. But if I do, I'm falling at least fifty feet onto a bit of gear that I placed and that may or may not hold."
Add to that the fact that I can't remember what that last bit of gear was rated to withstand. Was it 2KN or 12? That makes a big difference when a sixty-five kilo man drops fifty feet, I can tell you. And remember I was getting on for two hundred feet up at this point. And I'm really quite scared of heights. Fortunately I found a little crack to jam something into. Which was nice. So that was that, 220 feet of pure adrenalin, but man, it was so satisfying reaching the top and then seeing Ginger get up safely too.