Flute of No Hope

It's strange how quickly you can switch from having great days, climbing well and cruising your hardest route to having a nightmare day. Well, yesterday was one of those days. There's usually no explaining it. Well rested, motivated, good skin, plenty of sleep, well fed, etc. etc. And yet it goes wrong....

It was Noaksie's suggestion to hit Higgar Tor and I was keen to mix things up a bit with some grit onsighting so off we went. My hopeless navigation skills landed us a fair way east of the leaning block but I'd already planned to warm up in that area so no worries.

The warm up was great untill Noaks managed to tipple off the very top of Huge Slab. Unfortunately, I happened to be spotting at the time. Events unfolded in slow motion, Noaks swearing and slowly coming down towards the grim landing, with me in between. I'm not too sure what happened as we came together, I was just acting on instinct, trying to break his fall and at the same time divert him onto the mat. Sure enough, Noaks ended up face down on the mat and I ended up face down on Noaks. I knew I'd hurt myself a bit and was sure Noaks must've come worse off. Luckily for him he was just a bit winded! I started doing that 'school boy hopping around because it hurts too much to stand still' malarky. I noticed a large hole in my jumper which correlated with a large hole in my elbow when I pulled back the sleeve. Left hip and leg were also smarting. Not a good start to the day then!




above, bad photo of huge slab. Yup, noaks fell from hand on the top.....

I dressed my wound and we headed over to the leaning block. I did Mighty Atom but badly, finding the top out fairly horrendous. Noaks knocked off a couple of the HVS's there abouts. I had a fairly lame effort at Flute of Hope. I optimistically thought my relative good form would see me through any route of this sort of difficulty, even feeling quite shit and on a bad day. Wrong. You've got to want 'em on the grit!

Noaks put in a similar performance on the Rasp, so we scuttled off back eastward from whence we came.

And it was great. I've never climbed around there before but there are a few lovely easy slabs of nice rock which we (re)started on. Lapping them until they're like stairs, using different sequences, one handed, other one handed, no hands.... I reckon this type of thing is a fairly crucial bit of training for the trad climber and it's actually good fun too. Plus it doesn't cost you any skin. I delivered a bit of a masterclass to young noakes and it was good to see him improve so quickly. I say mastercalss, I'm no slab maestro and could do with one myself but still, he did improve at them in the little session and so did I. Next time he should walk up huge slab, someone else can spot though.