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TR: Lindfield aid climbing practice 23-Sep-2013 At 11:50:06 AM sbm

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The weekend rolled around, and I had an injured shoulder which put free climbing out, the ski touring trip had fallen through, I had a shiny new micro traxion, and a bag of aid gear that had mysteriously ended up in my car.

So time to try and learn a few new systems. I knew a few people were heading to Lindfield for the day, so I loaded a PDF of Chris Macnamara's big wall climbing book on my phone, and headed up to do some of that "practice" stuff, that everyone always says you should do before trying something on a big cliff for real.

Despite a late-ish start, I had the place to myself at first (the boulderers didn't arrive until noon!). I clipped the single dodgy carrot at the top of the She-Oak Wall and backed it up off of the tree, fixed the rope so I had two ends hanging down, and then took ages trying to get the coil of rope hanging perfectly just off the ground to tension the primary rope end. I then spent like another 15 minutes fiddling with my elastic shock cord chest harness, trying to tension the micro traxion just right. Just before I was about to blast off, I had a paralyzing moment of doubt, and unclipped everything and went and googled the Petzl manual, just to make sure the micro traxion was set up correctly. It was all good, and I did a free lap of the She Oak wall to test it all out and tie backup knots on the secondary rope end.

I'd heard you can just disengage the cam on a traxion, and leave it on the rope in pulley mode when you rap, but I wasn't able to do this as the cam kept catching on the rope and re-engaging. So I took it off the rope on every lap.

Anyway it was time to pull out the ladder-thingies! As suggested by Chris Mac I didn't use daisies or a fifi hook, so I could concentrate less on tangles and more on climbing the etriers and top-stepping. It turns out it's not quite as simple as climbing a ladder, but I had it figured out and made good progress, until I tried to make a creative endwise camming hex placement in a hole that was a bit too small. I stepped gently into the bottom step to bounc and POP! I was on the rope, and the hex and aider clipped to it were on the ground. D'oh.

I continued to make some pretty funky passive placements and aid all the cracks and seams on the wall. It was a bit worrying to learn that C3's can actually do the 'Vertical Limit' thing, where they make horrible grinding noises and slowly shift as they are weighted. In the end it did stick in the weird sideways flaring pocket so that's good though.

A few friends turned up and were either impressed or bemused, but that didn't matter, as I had discovered there were hooks in the bag of aid stuff! After initially trying to use a cam hook on an edge as a bat hook (whoops), I also figured it out (the hardest part is not looking at the hook when you test and weight it!) and was able to top step on a talon hook placement, which was not scary at all and I thought was the height of badass, until I remembered I was on top rope.

So after six or seven laps, I'd done everything obvious I could think of, and packed up and hung out with everyone bouldering. Mount Buffalo aid weekend, here I come.