Author Heather Dawe shares an excerpt from an upcoming book in which she reflects on her climbing adventures twenty years ago, as she slowly gets back into the sport...
Scrambling down closer to the sea, I looked for the beginning of the route. The water was calm, gently lapping against the cliff, in no way threatening (apart from the obvious fact that it would be there, underneath me, as I first traversed across and then climbed up the cliff-face). I saw a line of small chalked crimps and immediately decided they looked too hard to be the route, pulling the guide-book out from down the front of my jumper to check its description. OK, those holds did fit with both the topo and the words, they must be the start of the route I had come to climb.
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