After completing our Advanced Wilderness First Aid course, we remained at our base in Hattiban and moved onto the first of our two rock climbing modules. We spent the first two days away from rock faces, instead practising skills that would be essential for the entirety of our programme. This included learning how to tie different knots and hitches, belaying, making one, two and three-point anchors and rappelling.
On our third day, we took a very steep, slippy and treacherous path to our first crag, with many of us slipping and falling on the 45-minute walk – thankfully we would get much better at this journey over the course of the next week. We slipped on our helmets and harnesses, divided into groups of three and watched as our instructors set up four climbing routes for us. When the climbing finally got going, those of us making our climbing debuts watched our more experienced peers fly up the wall whilst we climbed and fell multiple times before being lowered back to the ground after numerous unsuccessful attempts. Personally, I climbed horribly – having spent some time in bouldering gyms in the past, I was completely unprepared for spending longer than a minute on the wall and struggled all day long, at one point spending 45 minutes on the wall and breaking the necks of my poor teammates who had to belay me. However, the sun shone and the group supported each other all day long until we finally packed up, went to a spring for a swim and headed back to camp.
The next day, we were split into two groups and sent to two different crags so that people could get more time on the wall during each day. I was lucky enough to be sent to the nearer crag again whilst the other group tackled a gruelling 2-hour hike to a further crag. Their route was even more treacherous, with many falls through leech-infested fields before they finally arrived at the crag and manually cleared the area beneath the rock face so they had somewhere to stand. Unsurprisingly, motivation was a little low by this point amongst some members of the group so varying amounts of climbing were done. Back at the nearer crag, I was pleased to have climbed much better than the previous day, using my legs more and trusting in them. By the time we had finished our evening team debrief, it was great to hear that everyone managed to complete at least one climb on that day and that we were all making big improvements despite some people’s hands looking extremely worse for wear.
We alternated crags for the two days thereafter, with my group being very fortunate to take a much safer route to the further crag. The routes there were not as difficult as at the nearer crag which gave us the opportunity to improve our techniques and try to flash the routes that were set up, which most of us managed along with a couple of red-points. On our fourth day of climbing, energy levels were starting to dwindle which was completely understandable given most of us had never rock climbed at all before, never mind for four consecutive days. However, everyone kept pushing, with some of us trying to work out how to overcome some more challenging routes whilst others worked on perfecting one specific route.
After a much-needed rest day spent mainly in the town of Pharping, the entire team was reunited at the nearer, harder crag for our final two days of rock climbing. Having climbed in separate groups for a few days, it felt like we’d missed out on a few days of team bonding and relationship-building, so it was super nice to be able to climb and belay with everyone again and see how much we’d all improved in less than a week. The energy within the team was back and the support really peaked around lunchtime on our final day of climbing when two of our team members were attempting to climb the two hardest routes on the crag. It felt like the world had come to a standstill as the rest of us sat, watched, encouraged and finally cheered when both of them overcame the toughest moves on their respective routes and successfully completed their climbs. Willing our teammates to the top of the crag was the perfect way to end our first rock climbing module and brought us much closer as a team. (Pic of Killian and Cole climbing at the same time.)
Both individually and collectively, we made huge strides during our first week of rock climbing together. Personally, I was pleased with my improvements and feel super-confident going into our next rock climbing module. Hopefully we can keep building this team spirit as we tackle trad and lead climbing in the coming weeks.
Ollie Chow, UK
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