Trad Climbing

This was cool.

I’ve been pretty into climbing for 5 or so years, mostly bouldering, but a bit of roped climbing from time to time. About a year ago, a friend of mine told me a work colleague of his could teach us to lead trad and I was keen to give this a go. Trad is spooky, but maybe my favourite style of outdoor climbing even though I’ve not done much of it.

We went up to Stanage in the Peak District for a couple days. The first day was mostly just learning good gear placements and some top rope assisted leading. On the second day, we got doing some proper leading and I got up a few pretty good climbs including April Crack (HS 4b) - my hardest trad climb to date. To be honest, I had a bit of a meltdown on this climb, but immediately afterwards I said something along the lines of “that was great, let’s go again” - some real type 2 fun kind of thing.

I’ve been back to Stanage a couple times with the same friend since then and tried a few more things. He’s since climbed some severe routes and I’ve followed him up, I’m keen to get back and try lead these now I know how they climbs.

More Trad climbing to come!