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| Me and Jody..smiles all around |
Before I decided to finally put my heart and soul into professionally racing mountain bikes, I had a lot of hobbies. I was pretty good at all of them, but I certainly wasn't great at any of them. That was one of the reasons that I had such a hard time actually committing to racing bikes...the fear of failing at something when you actually try to be great at it. After a National Championship title, countless x-rays, cat scans, and MRIs, I decided that I had accomplished all that I wanted to racing 4x and I made the decision to retire from professional racing. As a result, I suddenly found myself with a lot of time to do all of the things that I used to do!
In the past 8 months, I have revisited my love of rock climbing! There is a great climbing facility here in
Glasgow, and the
Edinburgh International Climbing Arena (EICA), aka Ratho, is only about 45 minutes away. It's apparently the largest indoor climbing facility in the world. Anywho...there isn't a lot of sport climbing in the UK, as most people are die hard, it must not be bolted, trad climbing aficionados, but there are a few sport climbing crags here and there. Last weekend, I got the chance to go check one out that's about 1:45 from Boulder, just north of Dundee.
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Instruction for the newbies
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The place is called
Kirrie Hill, and it's just outside of the village of
Kirriemuir. It's a pretty new location having most of the 1st ascents logged within the last 5-6 years. It's not tall, nor is it huge, but there are about 75 climbs with many in my climbing range. My friend Jody has been climbing a lot since she moved here in January, so she showed me where to go by climbing first all day, but I was pretty pleased that I led 7 climbs just below the hardest grade I've ever led...oh so many years ago when I was climbing a lot at
Reimer's Fishing Ranch in Austin, TX! The sun came out several times, but it only rained for 30 seconds, so it was a 100% successful 1st day on Scottish rock!
