Jims new shoes.

This week one of my friends asked me if I could take him out climbing, he'd seen all the pics I've been posting over the years and finally decided to give it ago.

The first evening we went up to wind gather rocks above kettleshulme in Derbyshire. We started off with a good warm up then went down the right hand end quarry to look at Kim's footwork. 

 

 I gave Jim a pair of climbing shoes which He found straight away to be so much more responsive and a lot more grip on the rock, we went through a few simple rules of footwork, as footwork is the key and vital to progressing in climbing and you need to start how you mean to go on. Once we had done some exercises on footwork and centre of gravity we moved onto some climbing techniques.

The next evening we headed up to stanage to try out jims new toolbox of skills. We started with flying buttress hvd ****. I led up it and Jim seconded. He got slowed down at the top of the first slab entering the upper slab through the bookcase corner. I just had to remind a few key points of what we had learnt the previous evening and he was soon up and enjoying the view from the top of flying buttress and revelling in his first four star climb. 

 Our next rout was holly bush crack vdiff ****, once Jim started climbing you could see he was feeling a lot more comfortable on the rock, this climb was solid climbing all the way to the top and Jim really enjoyed this route and thought it was the better of the two routes.

On the way home we stopped of at the old hall pub in hope for a pint and to have a chat about the climbs and what Jim enjoyed and wants to take a closer look at next session.