OP Rock climbing

May 6

We were scheduled to go sailing, but without wind, we decided to go rock climbing instead of drifting. The weather was the nicest we’ve seen so far in Wales, mid to upper 70’s without a cloud in the sky. I was pretty excited. I tried to convince the group to go climbing for our last session, but it didn’t seem to be a universal choice. Everyone ended up enjoying it though.
From the base of Holyhead Mountain, Korey, Jenni, Sally and I scrambled around the easy way up to the top to set up the ropes. For each climbing rope, we tried to find three anchor points so a failure didn’t produce fatal results.
The best anchor is a sling around a spike. We also used hexes and nuts to slide inside of cracks. We used the black dynamic ropes for anchoring because it doesn’t have elastic in it, like climbing ropes do. Climbing ropes have elastic in them so it has a little give when you fall, instead of a solid jerk. Sally had me find a crack to fit a nut into. She warned me that it would work, but she wouldn’t trust it if it was the only support because the cable had to stretch around a corner. While I searched for the anchor point, I slipped on a loose patch. The noise startled Sally, even though I was plenty far away from the edge.
After setting everything up, and double-checking that the karabiners were locked off, we climbed back down to the amphitheater. From there, we started our first climb. Jenni Korey and I teamed up and started with the far right climb. I think this route was called “New Boots and Panties.” I don’t know why people give them such strange names, but I want to name a route. This and the middle climb were graded “severe”. The far left route was called “Laceration”, and was graded “very severe”. It didn’t have a whole lot of handgrips, only a crack that had to be jammed. It was challenging, but I enjoyed it. A lot of us feel like we learned a lot from the day. The whole group seemed to have a good day, except for maybe Jaron who couldn’t participate. From talking with other group members, several of them would not have chosen rock climbing, but everyone was satisfied with the day. If we had climbed a bit faster, we could have had the chance to abseil from the top. I wish we had mountains in Iowa.