I have just climbed, scrambled, jumped and swam my way up Sour Milk Gill (Go through Borrowdale, out to Seathwaite and park at the farm as though you were going to walk up Green Gable. See the big waterfall on your right?). Compared to the other ghyll I did, this one is easier (supposedly being a Grade 2 scramble) but the climbing is more sustained and instead of there being one large waterfall to climb, there are several, with interesting slabs of slippy rock in between. The kind of slippy rock that’d make a great slide, if it weren’t for the certain death at the bottom in the form of boulders and shallow pools.

The water level was pretty low, once again allowing that wonderous Teflon coating to grow on the rocks. The slippy rocks make you concentrate more, crap yourself and hold on even tighter as your feet begin to ever so slightly move by themselves.

In quite a lot of places are exceedingly smooth V-shaped grooves, corners and channels that the water pours down. The best way to climb these seems to be to wedge a foot in the crack and lean on a side, then hope for the best. If you feel off-balance and like you’re going to slip, move quicker so gravity doesn’t notice.

I found a small leach making its way up my left arm, so I sent it flying back into the water. The cut fingers happened sometime when I was attempting to defy gravity and my vicelike grip on a rock suddenly shot off. Fortunately, for the entire rest of the route those fingers went kind of numb so I kept using them and didn’t notice the neat little slices in their ends (which match up if I bend my fingers in a certain way) until I was back here hanging up my wet clothing.

You see, these ghylls are all written down in guidebooks, just like climbs are. And just like climbs, you read the guidebook at the beginning and then make it up as you go along. So when you come across a large waterfall cascading down flat rocks, you tend to be half way up before noticing your route isn’t supposed to go that way. That’s when a little grade 2 scramble turns into something approaching VS as you shuffle across the rocks to easier ground.

And it’s definitely easier and more fun if you accept you will get soaked. Don’t pansy around trying to avoid the flow of the water, get right in there and fist-jam the back of the waterfall, there’s all sorts of wonderful holds hiding away behind the water. Just don’t look upwards or you’ll drown! Wet climbers don’t get hypothermia, you generate too much heat for that to happen. It also helps to treat this kind of thing as a rock climb rather than a hill walk, that subtle shift in your head means you look for things that are climbable, rather than places that you can stand up without holding on. The best bit is that you can pick your route, making it insanely stupid and hard, or easy, depending on your frame of mind at that moment.

This must make you a better climber too. After all, if you can solo up a 50m waterfall that contains slimy rock, no gear placements and bugger-all to hold onto, you can climb rock routes in the rain. It also makes you a more aware hill walker too. We got to the top soaked to the skin, I wasn’t wearing a wetsuit - just the stuff I’d be wearing if it were winter and I was out for a walk and we sat around for ten minutes looking at the view before walking back down the path into the valley. Being sodden isn’t that fun, but if you wear the right clothing you also won’t get cold and succumb to the elements.

Clachaig Gully doesn’t sound as insane and nasty any more. Maybe one day…

Just had the second of this week’s Ghyll Scramble session. Eight kids, me and Will, another of the instructors went for a jump, slide and wander down the ghyll. The weather was nice and sunny, the water was surprisingly cold.

There’s a technique for running a good Ghyll session. The technique is to do it quickly with no faff so people don’t hang around getting cold and upset. If you’re slow and faff around at the top of the jumps it gives people time to think, and the last thing you want someone to do is think since the things they usually think of begin with “I can’t do that…”. So you stand someone at the top of a jump, the other instructor having just demonstrated it, and you “guide” them into it with a big push. Before the next one has time to go “erk! that looks nasty!” they’re stood at the edge and are being pushed into it. It sounds quite harsh and brutal throwing people into water off ledges, but the edges of ledges are often quite slippy and the last thing you want is someone to slide off the wrong way and hurt themselves.

My game has a level definition file. I’ve worked out how to draw the laser, so now I just have to make it work.

The Audioscrobbler uploading I have from Amarok seems to be broken. I hope Audioscrobbler’s not on Vodafone’s retarded content control list. Today, Vodafone’s random proxy server has decided my website is OK to visit. It used to work, and now it doesn’t and I’ve not changed anything so I think it’s someone else’s fault I’ve pushed 10,000 tracks into Audioscrobbler though, which is quite a lot of music!

I’d like to buy a radio scanner. Being in the great outdoors, there’s got to be loads of radio chatter sleeting through the air. I’ve seen the Mountain Rescue helicopter flying around, various jets and things plus the hills seem to be full of people with those personal walkie-talkies yammering rubbish at each other. Somehow I need to visit a Maplins…

It’s snowing

However the snow seems to be going either horizontally or upwards. Very little of it is hitting the ground.

Ooh the wind just switched 180 degrees. There’s all sorts of turbulence happening as the snow gets blown through the trees and meets air coming down the road.

The snowflakes are moving at just the right speed for me to see their movements. It’s as if the snowflakes are chasing each other and flocking together. And yet they don’t seem to hit each other.

This appeals greatly to the part of me that wants to write this in code

Oh well, bye bye summer, hello winter. Seems Autumn doesn’t apply round here. It’s raining again.

I’ve just worked out how to do that cool exploding-sprite thing you see in Robotron Apply the code to the X axis as well and the sprite explodes in a shower of pixels, it’s great. There’s a slight fudge in the game to make it work - I’ve yet to work out how the GBA stores the sprite graphics in its RAM, so I’ve had to create another bitmap containing the player’s sprites. The real sprite for the player is hidden, and the (now exploding) fake sprite from the bitmap is drawn where the player used to be. This makes the effect fairly ‘expensive’ in that I need all the sprite images twice in the game, and the GBA’s weirdo memory design makes pixel effects quite slow anyway.

Now to cook up a state machine to handle the player’s various states of being. In fact the whole code that handles the creation of the sprites is going to get attacked with the DEL key due to it being the most hideous mess ever.

I need a new sleeping bag! I broke through the fringes of hypothermia this morning at half six to discover the inside of my tent a cool 4 degrees-C and frost on the outside of it. Nobody should be cold when in a sleeping bag wearing a buffalo, hat, thermals, trousers and socks. I came to again at half nine to find my tent still acting like a fridge, this time a mere 10c, however once I unzipped the front and let the sun in everything warmed up nicely.

Tent did its job well. It went up with minimal fuss, didn’t fall down or blow away and weighs not a lot. In fact my whole bag weighed less than it used to which makes walking around much more fun. My knees nolonger buckle under the weight and due to cunning route choice I didn’t spend nine hours walking the hillside. My route was mostly flat, with small blobs of hill to go to the top of - it’s easy walking up a 600m mountain when you’re already at 400m The sun was out too, making things warm and pleasant.

Think I’ll use my two days off next week to wander in the dark. Navigation is easy when you can see where you’re going. Blundering about in the dark should be a good test, and will make doing the real thing on my ML Assessment that little less confusing. My plan is to remember the layout of the place we’re walking in so that it becomes a bit more familiar.

Scout Regatta this weekend. I think I’m doing safety cover for sailing.

Not sure why, but when I returned I found my mobile phone had locked itself and now wants the sacred PUK code :-/

My sleeping bag’s dried off at least. Unfortunately that seemed to have cost me a large amount of energy since I’m freezing cold. Bone dry but freezing cold. Outside is pretty much the same as it was earlier. Going for a walk in this would be less than fun. A hard day’s walking combined with an even harder day’s navigation sounds like a good way of appearing in the 6 O’Clock news. Fortunately everyone else agrees. We’re off to do some more navigation and then go back to the bus.

OK, arse. The tent has a leak. It sounds really nasty outside and I need a pee. I’m wet and there’s a dreaded drip plop! sound coming from the right of me.

… or a day of rain, pain and slippy rock.

The day started off nice as we drove to Largs. Since our SPA training we’d never been to The Quadrocks, the howling gale and rain put us off and the 15 minute walk up the hill didn’t inspire us either. Since the was three of us being assessed - me, Angus and Helen, there was a spare body while two of us climbed. This spare body got made to do various things like setting up stances or abseils.

I belayed Helen up some corner, then prepared myself to follow her. After yesterday I wasn’t sure how well this would go. Providing I lead with my right foot and didn’t ever pull on my left arm I’d be pain free and happy. Naturally this is impossible, so I winced my way up the crag, removing gear and knee skin as I slipped on the lichen-covered rocks. It wasn’t so bad though, I was nearly at the top, I could cope. Crawling across the grass at the top and then standing up caused nasty pain, and hobbling down the deathtrap wet grass in climbing boots didn’t help. But I’d climbed a severe with a body that should really be lying in a bed for a week (only lying down hurts, standing up is about the only position that doesn’t hurt!).

Now it was my turn to lead. My turn to subject myself to the possibility of The Leader Fall. Would I freak out and want to come down? Would I fall off? Would all my gear come out?

Nope… I just climbed and grimaced my way up a horrendous bugger of a climb, ensuring each piece of gear was well placed. I wrenched myself onto the top and set up a belay. It’d taken me about five or ten minutes to get up the climb, but no sooner had I shouted ’safe’ did I see the head of my assessor poking up at me from the climb, wearing walking boots, making the whole thing look very easy. Thinking about it, the crux wasn’t very difficult, just a bit balancy, requiring a long arm to grab a huge juggy hold. Anyway, I’d lead a severe, not fallen off and didn’t think much of it other than The Quadrocks are shite, Largs is boring and that the ferry drivers must get bored.

I was then the spare wheel and went off to set up a stance as though I’d just climbed to the top of a route. I took a handful of gear and began. I had three nice nut placements, but then ran out of screwgate krabs. Slight problem… time to improvise. A pair of snapgate krabs back-to-back is an acceptable substitute, and you can tie the ropes through your harness instead of clipping them in. So, with a huge bowline tied through my harness I was all set up and swinging around in my harness (which is also quite comfortable for my back).

After having my setup inspected I belayed Helen again. Stupidly I suggested she climb the route I’d lead. That’s right, evidently me leading the route and hating it wasn’t enough, I wanted to second it too. By now it was making a good attempt at being wet and windy with the rock turning into slime. Helen made a good lead up the route, and I fell off on the crux. Well, I didn’t fall off completely (being toproped it’s not like I’d go anywhere anyway) I grabbed my rope and pulled up it instead. The rules of climbing are flexible things that don’t apply when you’re about to come off or don’t like the route you’re climbing

For my final lead I tried to pick something easy. Chimneys and evil overhangs were out, slabby things were in. So off I went, with Angus, to one of the few slabby routes on the crag. It looked OK, I could see places for gear. Off I went.

Oh dear, the places for gear didn’t exist and the slab was slippy. After raking out some dead grass and mud I found a dodgy place for a nut, and with some imagination you could fool yourself into thinking I’d placed another nut well. It was jammed, but only half the nut was actually in the rock. Some sharp tugs seemed to indicate it might stay where it was. Onward, upward, less thinking about things below you, more thinking about things above you… like the lack of things to put your feet.

One dodgy pull later and I was stood on one tiny ledge with one foot, trying to find a hold for my hands. With a dodgy nut below me, not a size 10 hex. Err… However, I had long enough to tell Angus I wasn’t entirely happy any more and that down looked good so falling off wouldn’t happen (if you’ve got time to blabble about falling off you’re not going to, just like you’re not going to fall off if you’re scared). Just then I spotted a crack, the first one for about five metres, and it was at face height. In went a nut, on went an extender, on went the rope. Excellent, we have contact.

My hand went up to a big hold, the other found something to rest on, my feet went upwards onto a ledge. And now I had a new problem. A vertical section of rock with high hand holds to reach for. Reaching for them produced pain, tying to step up to a foothold I could see produced more pain. Nasty. I don’t want to play this game any more, I wanted off.

And off I had. Not in the dramatic way of yesterday, but in the controlled but speedy way of someone who’s being lowered off a single nut of questionable placement - i.e you watch it like a hawk, tensed in case it starts to move, urging your belayer to pay rope out quicker. I reached the ground safely, in one piece. It’s another route to add to my list of “things to try again”.

This was a convenient predicament to be in. I now had gear dangling from the route and since I’d not actually reached the top, no way for my second to get the gear for me. The other two had been told to set up an abseil as though they were going to retrieve stuck gear, and here was me with a load of stuck gear for real. I coiled the rope, checked I had a belay plate and prussik cord (Angus, the moron, forgot his prussik cord, not realising he’d actually have to abseil!) and clawed my way up a steep grassy gully to the top (looking down the gulley I was reminded of how easy it is to climb up something that you have no hope of ever getting down again). Looping the rope through a bolt let me abseil down my route, hammering out the gear with my nut key and the ever handy size 10 hex.

After the other two had finished their final routes, we went off to the climbing wall in Glasgow to run through things we’d do if we were taking people to the wall for the first time, then came back home.

I’m now dosed up on painkillers (that don’t seem to be working) and am going to bed. Tomorrow is the groupwork part of the assessment, so it shouldn’t require too much painful movements.

First I was frozen on top of a rock, then I was frozen in some water…

As part of our training, all the first years were taken up one of the climbing crags the Centre uses. Up there we were shown how to set up a climb and an abseil. You use a few slings, a handful of figure-8 knots of varying styles and an Italian hitch plus some rope. If set up correctly you have a fairly neat looking system of ropes and knots that’ll let you roam around the side of the rock without falling on your head. If set up in a slightly disorganised way you end up with something that’ll work, but is prone to jamming up and then releasing in worrying little jumps - having your abseil line jam then release in an unexpected jerk doesn’t do much for your confidence. It was also a howling gale up there, but for once it wasn’t raining.

In the afternoon we went kayaking again. This time I was shown how to paddle properly so for a short time, until the wind turned me around, I was going in a fairly straight line. The fact my boat was longer than I am and that I’d picked up a short paddle didn’t help my aim. Big boats don’t tip over as easily, but once they get it in them to turn around, around you go. You can also build up a good speed which you don’t realise until you try and stop

For some fun we did a seal-launch which involves you sitting in your kayak at the top of a sea wall (or some form of vertical drop into the water) and then being pushed off into the water. Do it properly and you stay upright and paddle away. Do it wrong and you look a bit of a tit for a while as you try to regain your balance. As my boat was bigger than most oil tankers I went in like a missile and popped up again, I don’t think it would have tipped over had I even tried.

Tipping over did happen though, we did an Eskimo rescue where should you capsize, someone else pushes the nose of their boat into your waiting (and frantically scrabbling) hands and you pull yourself upright. Boats shouldn’t go upside down, it’s just not right. Especially when you get cold water up your nose and in your ears. Still, you soon realise you can in fact hold your breath for a while and that you’re not stuck, but time does seem to run 100x slower when you’re upside down with your eyes shut in the freezing water. But I have now been upside down and know what it’s like which is good.

This diary uploader still crashes when uploading entries. I thought I’d fixed it too.

Today I visited civilisation (also known as Glasgow). I spent the day wandering round the city centre and then bought a new mobile phone. This one is on Vodafone so it works up here. I’ll cancel my Cellnet one sometime soon. The phone I bought is a Nokia 7650 with a camera, massive screen, and all sorts of gubbins. I’m about to see if this PC has realised I enabled its IR port and then I’ll try and make my PC talk to the phone.

I also have GPRS for faster internet access. Or at least that’s what I hope. I may have to get a modem plugged into my PC at home as it’s cheaper to phone a landline than an 0845 number.

I also went to the Glasgow Science Centre which was fun, and the SECC to visit some outdoor exhibition which was full of caravans and wasn’t that thrilling. I did however buy some neoprene boots and gloves. After yesterday’s walk up a river where my feet went totally numb and I managed to lose a shoe I think I bought the right things. Fortunately my feet were so numb I could walk over stones without noticing.