Colmcille Climbers |
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Yosemite Dreaming in the heart of Daniel's county![Dave Millar]. March, spring is in the air, time to escape the wall/sofa and embrace the rock for another season. First route of the season, where to go, who to climb with, why endure torturous levels of freezing pain when you could be stuck in a nicely heated council leisure complex.…I honestly don't know but then I was never really that good at answering more than two questions at a time. Al was free from the chains of his novel writing/editing, so both of us decided Lough Barra [Photo] would be as good a spot as any with blissful intentions of the granite slabs easing us nicely into a new season….ahhhh, instead it felt like an ear biting four rounds with big Mike T. 
As we departed the small lay by we jumped into our dingy, flung out the binocs. and paddled merrily for the nearest oasis of dry rock eventually arriving at the bottom of an inconspicuous deltoid face. It was feckin freezin and I had no intentions of really doing much at all, apart from winding Al up, but Al eyed up Gethsemane on the square cut gully side of the Deltoid face. So off we went with childishly good intentions, No.5 Camelots, strimmers and all through the charmingly nose high heather. Al very generously said he would climb the first and crux pitch, which has a couple of tricky 5c moves leaving the lower steep wall to get onto the main face. Fortunately for Al and unfortunately for me his hands turned a nice shade of corduroy blue half way up the first pitch. By this time the sky had broken and we were unexpectantly bathed in organ pipes of rusty winter rays. I took this as a good omen but then the shaft of light over me acrimoniously parped out when I set foot on the rock, like some Police Squad sketch. After lots of grunting, spitting and general annoyance I eventually made it to the third move! Al eventually hauled me up to the top of the first pitch before depositing me in a "sack of potatoes like manner" at the foot of the main Deltoid face. [Photo] I was a gibbering wreck by the time I got to this belay with the top of the first pitch in a serious need of some intensive farming. The motionless wave’s of flawless granite ahead coupled with the uncharacteristic crisp clear still blue sky and Al’s company created the perfect flashback of a similar situation we were in a few years earlier on a route in Yosemite. It was our first long big route in the valley and the grade was never too severe, but the positions and monolithic quality of the rock were out of this world. But all good things must come to an end and in this case it was discovering the manky, drenched state of the descent gully, thankfully Frankie had left a few pieces of rap tat in-situ. [Photo] The next two pitches felt quite
exposed and serious especially due to our lack of route fitness but then the
old ego is always right! [Photo] All in all a pleasant day out with a
fantastic introduction to an awesome piece of rock. Our intentions were
to come back the following week and do Larceny to the left of |
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