Quiddity

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I like climbing things. Pretty much any climbing is better than none, but preferably this new fangled overhanging orange Euro stuff they have now, with the trippy tufas and stalactites. I do hold onto the belief that one day I will dust off the rack and get back into trad climbing, but mostly these days I seem to enjoy the nu-skool joys of plastic, bolts and training, and am largely content to dangle on a rope, painstakingly assembling sequences one move at a time over weeks/months/years.

Location
London

Best Climbing Experience
It's all about the moments of flow.

Kaly 2012 and feeling like a kid with a year's saved pocket money and the best sweet shop in the world to blow it in.

The sneaking feeling on the last day of a brilliant trip of one last thing left to do... setting the alarm for before dawn, walking up to the crag and warming up in the dark. Trying my hardest flash and spending nearly two hours up and downclimbing between rests on 40m of amazing overhanging limestone, while the sun comes up. The feeling of freedom of having nothing to lose. Clipping the chains with an unspeakable weariness but utterly blissed out. Running down to scoff breakfast, take the tent down and fly home.

Redpointing the route on the last go of the day, while the limestone is glowing orange and still warm from the sun. Eating the best strawberries I've ever tasted while still buzzing.

Bouldering in the snow in the Peak, sunshine and show showers, numb fingers and ridiculously grippy grit. Magical.

Exploring the labyrinth of tunnels, rusting machinery and overgrown inclines in the Dinorwig slate quarries, slate huts full of satanic looking billy-goats, perched up on things, having some sort of conference.

Lying in a field in Nant Peris staring up at a sky full of stars.

The feeling you get when you look up and realise that all you have left is easy ground to the belay.

Boulder hopping to the start of the route whilst dodging enormous Atlantic breakers. Looking down after pitch one and realising that retreat is now quite problematic. It starts raining on pitch 2. Narrowly avoiding being attacked by infuriated seagulls at the second stance. Being petrified scrambling off the summit in torrential rain.

Building a big stack of mats under Crescent Arete in perfect November weather. Topping out and going back round for another go.

Favourite Climbing-Related Discussion Topic
complicated systems of ropes and pulleys
elaborate training strategies
'black hat' sport climbing tactics

Recent Postings

• No posts in last 30 days

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Interests Outside Climbing
fixed gear bikes
making things from tofu
brains

Photo Gallery

Click to view Quiddity's gallery. (21 photos)
Chosen as the Featured Gallery on 10-Dec-10.
Click to search for photos of climbers called Quiddity.

Click to list photo comments written by me. (21 comments)
I've voted for 446 photos, average vote 3.7.
(33% superb - 28% good - 16% average - 14% poor - 6% rubbish)

Anything Else We Should Know
the real problem isn't polish but shoddy footwork.
sport climbing involves clipping bolts but bolt clipping is not necessarily sport climbing.
weak and feeble lentil muncher. now a student for the second time around.

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