Getting to grips with Twinkle
During a lull in the onset of the wet and windy weather here in South Wales, I snatched an outing to Little Tor on the Gower peninsula for further personal climbing to put towards the SPA.
Lead climbing, as I have mentioned before, is to a large extent about the mind, and I my head was full of irrelevant thoughts, which made it hard to concentrate: ongoing personal circumstances, the choice of venue, the state of the tides, the weather forecast, to name a few. However, perhaps the biggest burden was being responsible for another. I was out with Josh, who has had previous experience, but somehow the burden of responsibility was on my shoulders, and I just did not feel relaxed. Suffice to say that all of these factors affected my climbing.
That is not to make excuses, as I know that I was in a rush to tick off the routes, rather than use the opportunity to its fullest to focus on gear placements and movement, for example. One important area for improvement for me is to focus mentally on mapping out moves at crucial points in the climb, and not get ahead of myself or unnecessarily far above gear in an attempt to get to the top quickly. I think I struggled on both my leads because of this, thinking that because they were Severes, I did not need to concentrate.
Anyway, looking back at the photos, it was a good outing for training and development purposes, as I highlighted areas for further work. And on that note, we found a DMM Wallnut No. 4 (gold) at the top of Little Star Wall. I really do not need it, so if it belongs to you, feel free to get in contact for its return.
The routes we did were:
Twinkle, Scout Crack, Central Flake and Right Corner
Sunset over the Gower