I'm a woman

I'm a woman
Photos copyright Laurence Gouault
No reproduction on other media without the photographer's permission.

Saturday 1 April 2017

Bad day at bad rock, by Stevie Haston.

There's good days, and bad days. Most of my days are admittedly good, but it looks like tiny clouds are gathering on my own private horizon.

 typical top out on the north coast.

I spent the morning talking about access with various people, which can be depressing sometimes, but the Mayor of one village was very interested in climbing, partly because his villagers fish from the high cliffs.



 In passing, I said hello to this cat, and gave it some food.

So good days, bad days, good years, bad years, only one life, and it breaks down into being ok, especially the climbing bit! 
When you talk about climbing with people who don't understand about it, the question of danger is always brought up. Is climbing dangerous? I would personally say it isn't very dangerous, and statistics would probably back me up to some degree. It would largely look like this, "safe climbing, done by some one who is safe, is very largely safe"! An idiot who goes climbing most likely will injure himself getting to the rock climbing area by crashing the car!

a little light abrasion.

I took a fall today, the rope somehow got caught around my leg. The fall was because it was a new route, and had a brittle loose hold. As I flew off, I grabbed the rope, some times this is good. In this case it was both bad, and good. With a rope the wrong side of your leg you will flip over, this is bad. If you hold onto the rope, and your hand then takes the force, normally you tear either your hand, shoulder, or lat muscle. So as I flew through the air I had to make a very quick decision, to hold onto the rope, and not be flipped over violently, and so not run the risk of bashing my noggin really hard. Option two was let go of rope, and save any possible torn joint, muscles etc, but bash the rock in an uncontrolled way. I took option three, grab the rope with the other hand as well, and take the fall on my hands, and back muscles, and get possible rope burn. Well it worked out ok, just the usual rope burn on the thigh, a bruised arse cheek when hitting the slab, and a slight graze. Feeling lucky, I didn't even rest, and finished the route, because I knew the correct thing had been done by the onboard computer! Hopefully my computer will let me get to my birthday without blowing up. Good judgement to you all.