Learning to Lead Climb in El Chorro, Spain

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5 жыл бұрын

Five days spent climbing in the beautiful El Chorro, Andalucia, Spain just before Christmas.
I took the opportunity of being outside sport-climbing to become confident lead-climbing.
While top-roping means having a rope above you set by a climber before, lead-climbing means clipping the rope into quick-draws and bolts on your way, so protecting yourself.
See the full blogpost here: wildandwords.com/blogpost/learning-to-lead-climb-el-chorro-spain
athenamellor
wildandwords.com

Пікірлер: 32

@GregHartSk8er 4 жыл бұрын

Well done! Grade six is respectable. Some hints for nerves:- 1. Learn to read the rock (difficult art), spend time at the base of a route before you climb it and suss out what you think is there and how it will climb, discuss with your partner. Climb the route and see if you were right, again discuss your findings. This goes a long way in preparing you for a route and can help avoid any nasty surprises. 2. On route if you feel a panic immediately pay attention to your breathing, slow it down and deepen the breaths, ease up on your grip and weight your feet properly heels down. If you get a bit of vertigo narrow your awareness down to a little bubble just around you from your footholds up to the next handholds above - ignore everything else completely. 3. Falling: this gets all of us, the longer you go without falling the worse it gets. So practice it! Only do it in a safe environment, only above the fourth bolt (NOT near the ground!), preferably on overhanging terrain with nothing you could smack into (avoid slabs), TRIPLE check your knot and belayers set-up. Start in the gym, go a little above the bolt and jump off, go a bit higher and repeat, then do it outdoors, get high enough above the bolt that you get a bit of airtime and crap yourself - then realise that everything is ok and nothing happened. Be careful do it safely. After a few sessions of this you will be able to shelve that fear and simply concentrate on moving, once you get into grades that take you onto overhanging rock everything becomes a lot safer and you will feel freer-er to push yourself. 4. Getting stuck: downclimb to the last rest, practice this. Grade 7 soon! - will take quite a bit of training to break out of the sixth grade, bit of a watershed.

@ianspicer1529 5 жыл бұрын

Nice vid Athena....I'm enjoying your channel, your work & your journey. Please keep it up.

@theyorkshiretrekker7342 5 жыл бұрын

Well done Athena on your first lead. My head can’t cope with heights so I wouldn’t be able to do this, but good for you being adventurous. Great video, all the best x

@alemvisuals Жыл бұрын

Congrats Athena! this is all about, to enjoy and conquer your fears!

@melamartins 2 жыл бұрын

Going to El Chorro later this year só amazing video !! Thank you Athena !! Will hopefully lead for the 1st time. 🥰

@TheRackdog 5 жыл бұрын

Well done on your first lead climb👍

@Sanctuarysurvival 5 жыл бұрын

Well done! that looked a nice climb. the first lead is always scary. Take care. Tom

@graya44 5 жыл бұрын

Well done guys ⛰ .. El Outstando 🙌

@filmic1 5 жыл бұрын

Very cool. I took my belay certificate at Allez-Up in Montreal (Canada). Should go and get a refresher.

@NathanBetts 4 жыл бұрын

Searching for El Chorro vlogs and yours appeared! We're thinking of going in early March - but I've never led outdoors haha...

@RambleFamily 4 жыл бұрын

Nathan Betts haha nice! You should definitely go!! I think it’s a great place to learn as there’s so much variety of grades and styles 😊 there’s a really easy area right by the place we were staying (Olive Branch) where lots of people were learning to lead (including me!)

@largeformatlandscape 3 жыл бұрын

Great video and nice climbing!! (just a quick note on leg behind rope - a bad and potentially dangerous habit to get into)

@steveooooo4423 5 жыл бұрын

You ąre so special, I wish we were neighbours x

@RTmadnesstoo 5 жыл бұрын

Thanks for another great video ! Good job on the rocks. I'm glad to see you tie in instead of clip to the belay loop. I never got used to the European grading system. Can you call it leading when you're clipping bolts? Just kidding! If you ever get to America we have the best sandstone around Chattanooga.

@kentaro_y 4 жыл бұрын

I have a question Ascensionist 40l.What is the back size? S/M? L/XL?

@RambleFamily 4 жыл бұрын

kentaro y mine is S/M and I’m 5’6” 😊

@kentaro_y 4 жыл бұрын

Athena Mellor ✨thank you✨ Are you a Patagonian ambassador?

@RambleFamily 4 жыл бұрын

@@kentaro_y No, I just used to work for them and acquired a lot of gear!

@onemanandhiswhippet 5 жыл бұрын

Well done it help when learning to lead climb to do lots of seconding your next challenge is to lead climb on a non-bolted rock face 👍 that’s true lead climbing Best regards 👍😀🐾🍺🍟

@jenniferclapham6539 5 жыл бұрын

Well that is trad

@largeformatlandscape 3 жыл бұрын

Lead climbing is lead climbing, whether trad, mixed, bolted belays or stitch up bolt ladders. I think you're talking about trad climbing which is great but has no more inherent value than lead climbing (p.s. I prefer trad but wish there were a couple more sport venues in the Lochaber area)

@rucksackadventures4878 5 жыл бұрын

Hope You Found A Nice Cafe Again 🙂 facebook.com/RucksackAdventure/

@davidredshaw448 4 жыл бұрын

The fact that you spent two thirds of the video on peripheral stuff Athena and so little on the climb symbolises the inherent boredom of bolted climbing. You appear to be doing trad in your Peak District video - do you not find that more exciting? Proper trad climbing appears to be in decline - I hope we don't succumb to the Continent's habits; what Rheinhold Messner called the murder of the impossible. Only a good schooling in leader/second trad can give you a proper experience and make you "rock savvy" and keep what's called the adventure of the lead.

@GregHartSk8er 4 жыл бұрын

What nonsense. Sport climbing has its own fascination, that of difficulty and gymnastic challenge. It is not necessary to put yourself at risk to get a high out of climbing. Ive climbed for 36 years and the greatest satisfaction (best vibe) came from achieving hard sport projects after investing some effort. The trad climbing so often was a case of being scared silly all day (for good reason on run out climbs) and a huge rush of relief when it is over, Trad climbing is something you enjoy in retrospect once the memory of the terror has faded! PS Messner is an old fuddy duddy - he never cranked hard above a bolt his entire career. Why should there be an "impossible"????

@davidredshaw448 4 жыл бұрын

@@GregHartSk8er It's precisely the risk element that gives trad climbing its attraction. And of course you have to stay on route as a leader. Bolts merely show you the way. Trad makes you more "rock savvy". Makes you read the rock better. Bolts are fine for technical practice and challenge but they still fall short of real mountaineering.

@davidredshaw448 4 жыл бұрын

There's another factor in play in this discussion and it's environmental. Do climbers have the right to litter every bit of climbable rock with a line of bolts? One of the ethics of trad climbing in the UK has been to take your gear with you so no-one would know you have been there.

@largeformatlandscape 3 жыл бұрын

@@davidredshaw448 Having seen people clean routes and also the damage to rock placements, polish to footholds and wear and tear to belay areas and access trails I think the idea that trad is so less impactful than sport doesn't really add up. For less visited locations in more wilderness areas, yeah I can see that, but for popular crags the damage from trad usage is just as obvious to the average visitor as sport. p.s. I live in Scotland and there's pretty much only trad around here and I love it!!

@davidredshaw448 3 жыл бұрын

@@largeformatlandscape It may be that some rock is hard to protect with nuts and cams, and this may be the case with El Chorro, but the ethic in the UK used to be that bolts or pitons should only be placed to protect perhaps one move on an otherwise classic free route (Joe Brown on Kipling Groove springs to mind here). I've led on bolts on St Bees Head in Cumbria but of course its friable sandstone, and elsewhere in the Lakes the ethic has always been "free" (ie no bolts). Long may that be the case. I was once climbing on Shepherds Crag in Borrowdale and there was an international women's meet taking place. It was some time after Glasnost and there were a number of Eastern European climbers. The British woman running it told me that these girls were very good technical climbers but she said that today they were all over the place because they'd never had to lead and belay on rock like ours or indeed stand in balance while struggling to extract gear.

@leewknight1979 3 жыл бұрын

Your English... Why in all your video do you try and speak the language ... When mentioning place names...

@RambleFamily 3 жыл бұрын

I speak Spanish and Italian so especially in those countries I try to speak the language as much as I can. I also think it’s respectful if you at least try to speak some of the language, most of the time people appreciate it 🙂