In reply to Callum12:
> Hi being doing a lot of scrambling and I now want to progress onto rock climbing outdoors, I am really unsure whether to go for a 2 day course or to go for an intensive 5 day course at somewhere like plas y brenin in snowdonia. Or is this even the right place to start?. Any advice as to where I start with this would be very much appreciated. Thanks
I went on the PyB Touching Stone course. It's designed for people who've been indoor climbing, possibly even leading indoor, to get onto outdoor crags.
Leading indoors can only get you so far. Even if you meet someone who is prepared to take you out onto real rock, for the first few times you will only end up seconding on single pitch routes. I don't know where you live but if like me you're London based, even getting up to Stanage is a real investment of journey time.
I can't really recommend PyB highly enough, it definitely gave me the confidence to go into multi pitch territory. Aside from learning the general system of multi pitch climbing, there are lots of subtle things that you need to learn if you want to lead that you might never have thought of- the sort of thing which might be so second nature to an experienced partner that they may neglect to point out. There's also things like abseiling and prusikking which you do correctly or not at all.
Caveats- it IS expensive, and you do take a risk with the weather of course. If it's raining all week when you're booked on there's not much they can do about it.
Also, I went on the course with my friend who had a similar level of experience, with the assumption that we would become regular climbing partners (we are!) I guess this allowed us to get a lot out of it as a pair.
Finally, I didn't climb outdoors again for a couple of months afterwards and I forgot an awful lot in between, I needed to refresh on a lot of stuff. Like everything else it becomes second nature when you go regularly.
At the end of the day it's your choice. I'm sure that going with an experienced partner will be completely safe while you're with them, but will you be confident in knowing what to do with someone at your own level? Multi pitch trad climbing is the best thing ever when you take the step up, but it's a big step up to take.