The punters guide to getting into climbing

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For whatever reason your reading this, I suppose part of the reason I am writing it is that I think I’ve done some pretty cool stuff. Not hard stuff mind you, in fact I consider myself almost comically bad at climbing considering how long I’ve been at it. But for the other punters out there who can barely make their way up a VS I’d like to hope this blog can maybe provide a bit of inspiration. 

“I didn’t immediately fall in love with climbing, it was a slow burn” (very paraphrased) Gwen Moffat in Space Below My Feet

It was very similar for me, though our introductions were worlds apart. I first tried (indoor) climbing at a school club when I was 16, and although I enjoyed it I never imagined it would become my main hobby. I had just quit competitive swimming but was still very involved with the school’s rugby, athletics, and fencing teams. And if that wasn’t enough I was also starting to play chess pretty seriously. Nevertheless, as 6th form went on I began to climb more and more, filling in the gaps when a training session was cancelled or a bored lunch time. 

I then stopped climbing completely during my first year of university (Bath has a chronic lack of climbing walls), instead occupying my time between athletics, fencing, and chess. Covid caught the tail end of my first year and everyone scrambled to find friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends in order to fill houses. So moving into my second year house with 4 other people - 2 of which I had met a handful of times, and 1 person who I had never met - we fortunately all had one thing in common: climbing! We would escape the house to fairy cave quarry to spend the day outside and not worry about Covid. I have fond memories of learning to second there. And at the end of the year we went on a trip to North Wales and ticked off some of the more classic scrambles (Tryfan north ridge, Snowdon Horseshoe, linking Idwal Staircase/Continuation with Cneifon arete, Snakes and Ladders) as well as getting out for some slate sport. 

Disappearing into the mist on the snowdon horseshoe 

Shortly after this I moved to Edinburgh for a placement year. I mainly focused on chess during this period, joining a local club and tournaments and was having dreams of becoming a FIDE master but life had other plans. I had been doing a lot of weekend hillwalking and had fallen in with Strathclyde University Mountaineering Club who helpfully taught me basic winter skills when winter arrived so I could keep going out. Come May I led my first pitch ever on Punsters Crack on The Cobbler, convincing a SUMC member I had some experience leading after watching JB Mountains Skill’s entire YouTube channel. Funnily enough this came after the winter where I had ended up soloing a bunch of grade II gullies. 


Me seconding the final pitch of Punsters Crack. 
C. Iain Sword

Going back to uni after this and climbing once again took a bit of a backseat to my studies but it remained my principal hobby. And, for the following summer, a trip to the Ecrin National Park was planned as an interesting way to fill in 3 weeks. On reflection this trip was the turning point in my life and when I truly started to identify as a climber. 

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