by dav2930 » Tue Jul 09, 2019 6:59 pm
Credit for your honesty. Well done for completing the route, albeit with some guidance from another party. It is, after all, a grade 3 scramble (also a 'Moderate' grade rock climb), so perhaps some easier scrambles in preparation for this might have been helpful, given the long gap since you were previously active in the hills.
Interesting that you mention practising on an indoor climbing wall. It just goes to show, doesn't it, that climbing on an artificial wall does little to prepare you for something like CR? It's really a completely different skill set. What you need on CR is not super-strong fingers and the flexibility to heel-hook, but the ability to route-find and 'read' the rock, to use its frictional properties and gain a 'feel' for where it takes you, to keep going quickly and fluently for over 200 metres, and to cope with big exposure without bolts to clip every 4 ft. Climbing walls are fine for keeping the muscles going over the winter, but getting back on rock in the spring is always a humbling experience.