Another year has ticked over for Craig, and that can only mean one thing. It was time for a climb. It so happened that he had just come of his shift yesterday. Meaning he was in town, available, and keen as mustard. There is no need for the gifting of gizmos, gadgets, trinkets, or other such items between us. A bit of time on rock and being in nature is all the presents that are required. It took a bit of wrangling to make things work but we got there eventually. Even the weather gods played nice today, aided by a purposefully late’ish start:
It rained for a fair bit of the drive out, however the stiff westerlies did their work and blew the gloominess away. With only the remnants of a few drops here and there, and a barely visible rainbow that adding a splash of colour in the sky as we arrived. We had picked Castle Rock for today. The reason for coming here ended up not being a reason at all, so we could have gone elsewhere. But that is another story. The routes here did however provide the perfect playground to allow us to go lead for lead, without messing with Craig’s head too much:
Another front had rolled in overnight, with near gale to gale force winds. As a result the ocean looked brown and mucky, something that I could not recall seeing here before. While I’m quite used to it at our local beach, this bay in my memory has always been blue and inviting. Even when the clarity has been a bit down the colour has still been vibrant. Delving into my image library, which includes images from all seasons spanning over a decade, I was not able to find a trip here when the water had looked as churned up as it did today:
Despite the overnight and morning dampness the rock was in remarkable condition. Quite possibly due to the stiff wind, which persisted as the morning wore on. Also the way the castle sticks out on the coast making it a prime target for even the slightest breeze. Even when the sun was on our backs the wind was biting, so we stayed rugged up for most of the morning. The good thing about the coolness being the air can’t hold as much moisture and skin is harder. Both of these result in improved friction, which is no bad thing when climbing:
I wasn’t sure where Craig’s head may have been. Especially having just come off a two week shift yesterday, and with his lack of time on rock of late. There was no sign of resistance when I gently suggested he may want to kick the proceedings off with nothing too silly, just a fun warm up. In truth we didn’t hit anything silly all morning, bar one route. For such a small crag, it is surprising how it is possible to pack in a great variety of routes with flakes, chimneys, cracks, and slabs. And all at a sensible moderate to low grades of 17 or less:
Some may disagree with that statement, but I have used the term moderate because in John’s soon to be published book of grade 17 and under climbs that is the term used. Then there was the line shown below. Graded 16, by yours truly. Slightly overhung, rounded, and pumpy. Fair to say it really is a sandbag route, and felt by everyone I bring here to be considerable harder than the two 17s that Craig led today. During my last visit Howsie was ‘keen’, with a bit of persuasion, to lead it. Craig did not feel the same ‘keenness’:
There was no getting out of it, it was down to me to take this one on. That is not strictly speaking true, Craig did say we could just not climb the line. But I could feel it calling me, then once on it taunting me, and then it spat me off. Not wanting to admit defeat, I got back on and polished it off. Craig fared better on this one with the rope above him. In fact he did really well bagging four clean leads, as well as following up three other lines all in good style. You could say the gift of his time on rock today couldn’t have gone better:
There is however the second component to the birthday gift, and Mother Nature came up with the goods too. It was Craig who spotted them. A Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), identified by its dorsal fin, along with its calf was cruising past. You’ll have to excuse the slightly blurry image, but it was the best we could manage with our phones. Not that we really needed an image. Seeing it was good enough for us, and the sighting certainly put the icing on the cake for Craig’s birthday climb:
Sandbagged 