Immediately after my first year at I.M. Marsh, I spent a few days bivvying underneath the Shelter Stone (a huge rock underneath the crag of the same name) in the Cairngorms, with Murray Hamilton and Pete Whillance.
Pete was a couple of years ahead of me, also studying Outdoor Ed (in the same year group as Phil Davidson and Ian McMullan). He wanted to check out and hopefully climb a big new route on the impressive Shelter Stone crag.
At the time, I was looking after Gavin Peat's new Vauxhall Astra whilst he was away somewhere. A nice long drive up to Scotland would be perfect to ran in the new engine. The three of us had a luxurious drive, none of us were used to travelling in such comfort. The car ate up the miles and eventually we parked up at the Cairngorm ski lift car park. It was a long walk and we had very heavy loads (Pete even had a long static abseil rope).
Whilst it was a completely new experience for me, Pete and Murray both seemed very calm and laid back, they were obviously very familiar with the tasks of new routing in the mountains and knew each other so well.
They did inspect their new line but, unfortunately, the weather wasn't very good, it was pretty cold and damp. So they decided not to try it. However we did do "The Needle" and "The Pin" whilst we were there, before making the sad decision that conditions weren't good enough. None the less, we had a fun time together (despite Pete's chain smoking). I was very relieved Gavin's car was where we'd left it (and even more relieved when he was really cool about the massive mileage we'd done in his new car).
 |
| Typical climbing on the Shelter Stone. Murray Hamilton on "The Steeple" (photo Rab Anderson, from Extreme Rock). |
 |
| Murray Hamilton on "The Missing Link" (photo Rab Anderson from Extreme Rock). |
 |
| Pete Whillance climbing in typical waist belt at Hodge Close quarry (photo from Cumbrian Rock). |
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire