I finally got to climb outdoors! And it was no where near as awful as I’d been led to believe. Although that may have had something to do with it being a beautiful sunny day and being able to climb in a T-shirt. I went to a place called Warsaw with one of the guys from university and his friend. It was about a two hour trip to get there, and yes it was limestone, but it was totally worth the trip. By limestones standards the crag is relatively solid and it’s in a beautiful location on the edge of a reservoir.
Both of the people I went with climbed into the 5.11s (hard F6s / easy 7s) which was a bit hard for me but I still managed to second three sports routes. I managed two 5.9s with some resting on the rope and a 5.10a clean – guess what route suited my style better! I’d hope I’ll be climbing better than that by the time I leave the US but given I hadn’t climbed that much in months I was quite pleased with what I managed.
Unfortunately the uni guy I went with is also the most keen of the people I’ve been climbing with and he’s cunning managed to get teaching Monday-Thursday evening for the rest of the semester and the wall is shutting early on a Friday. Oh well at least now I know the nearest climbing isn’t as rubbish as I’d been led to believe.