First Leader Fall

My first post for a while so sorry about that! On the 12 July me and dad went up to Tremadog to get some practice on slightly longer routes than the peak district in preperation for our trip to the Alps in August. We decided to start off on Christmas Curry as it's a classic, well known route at our sort of grade, (only HSevere). The first pitch was fairly straight forward but as it was the first bit of climbing for the day it felt harder than it probably was! The second pitch was very comfortable and enjoyable, found a stuck cam near the top of it but after struggling for a bit with it failed to get it out, so decided to carry on up and leave it for dad to struggle with as he followed me up! Dad then followed, taking a slightly different line than me but not by much and then stopped at the cam as well and gave it a few good tugs. The problem with it was that it was behind a flake and must have walked in deeper so that the triggers were out of reach of grasping fingers. The cam was also half a size too big for the placement so that even when the triggers were pulled using a nut-key, the cam still wouldnt come out easily. Dad eventually gave up on the cam as well and continued upwards to join me on the belay ledge. From this ledge the route continued up a reasonably thin crack to another ledge and then followed a smaller crack to the arete before finishing up the arete. I climbed the initial crack, using a combination of jamming in the crack and using holds outside of the crack, up to the second ledge. Once at this ledge I couldnt work out where the route went, i found a couple of thin cracks and decided to start up the easier looking of the two as the route was only HSevere. This crack then headed off left towards the dark green and greasy looking, slightly overhanging corner crack that heads straight up to the top from the large second ledge. By the time I had realised that I was heading to that crack it was too late and I was committed. Climbing the crack I felt on the edge but never the less comfortable and truly believed that I would be able to make it to the top and the realization that I might fall had not even entered my mind. The next thing I remember I was half lying on the second larger ledge and half hanging to the side of it, with a fair amount of blood next to me and a mouth that was definately a few teeth down! A couple of other climbers on the route climbed up to me (I would say quickly but I was unconcious at the time so couldnt actually tell how quickly, however im sure it was as quick as they could and it certainly felt quick) and set up a belay to lower me and dad down off of as I was still trying to work out where I was and wasnt really up to carrying on with the route, however in hindsight I wish I had carried on up! the same two climbers then stripped the route of our gear and then met us at Erics cafe to return it, thanks go to them.
Well there you have an account of my first leader fall and to this day (21st August) im still having dental treatment from it, but will be good as new fairly soon.

My Home Wall

I have recently finished building my home wall in the attic and i thought i would upload some pictures of it for everyone to see, sorry for the rubbish photo taking and bad posting!!

Goals for the Future

There are many things that I would like to achieve with my climbing, some short term, some long term. I will outline some of them here:

Short Term:
Onsight Lead F7a indoors or outdoors
Onsight Lead E1
Alpine AD (for the Lion Ridge on the Matterhorn)

Long Term:
Onsight Lead E5
Onsight Lead F8a

There also various routes that I want to do (on the right hand side of the blog) and mountains that i wish to climb but as I prefer Rock Climbing to Alpinism most of my goals are for Rock Climbing. My main goal however is just to keep climbing as much as possible and keep improving.

Introduction

Hi I'm Jon, you can read more about me on the right hand side as well as my current grades and some other bits and pieces. Climbing is, as you have probably guessed, by far my favourite sport and it is my aim to make a career out of it in someway. My main activity in climbing is indoor climbing as my school has a climbing wall which I am able to use often but, as I live in Oxfordshire and have to go to school on a Saturday, I find it hard to get out and go climbing anywhere. I have very recently finished building my own climbing wall at home which is at a 45 degree angle so it's hard on the arms and is really good training. Well that's about it for my introduction, I will try to update the blog as much as possible with photos and reports of my trips.