Dreaming

I'm constantly dreaming up new adventures and working out the feasibility of them.

These range from big expeditions costing 1000's of £'s to random multiday expeds in North Wales, Scotland or the Lakes.

I believe that dreams don't merely have to be dreams. If you set yourself aims, plans and targets, break things down into small chunks, believe in yourself and help others to believe in you, and most of all put alot of time and effort into what you want to do... I think that dreams can become a reality.

I know most of my friends think i'm crazy; in a good way I think, and my parents are never really suprised about the things I come up with, places I would like to visit and things I'd like to do.

Risks worth taking?

I've fallen on a VD multipitch getting away with a bruised waist and a temporarily busted ankle... http://www.happykat86.blogspot.com/. Plenty people climb that route without a rope...if I hadn't had a rope on that day I would have been very seriously injured or have died....

I've taken swims on Alpine grade 4 rivers and thought...."wooow i'm lucky I got myself to the bank before that strainer", had a little too much down time for my liking where I've wondered if I can breathe under water, or thought I was going to break my legs whist swimming. I've decked out from the 2nd clip on a route, hitting the ground before the rope caught. I've fallen on blue ice on a glacier and watched my ice axe chink off the surface as I try to stop; kicked my crampon through my gaiters and trousers (but luckily not my leg) and caught my fall with a crampon that luckily didn't catapult me rapidly down hill.

I've fallen down a cliff in Turkey onto rocks and bruises and gashed pretty much every part of my body except my head, eventually wrapped in bandages like a mummy. I've come round a corner and slid in my car on ice towards a wall and stopped within inches of it... had my breaks fail whilst down hill mountain biking, had a total blow out on the road, broken down on the motorway going 70 - 10 mph very rapidly and of course in my uni days been so drunk I don't know how I ever recovered consciousness.

But I have been lucky (touch wood).

I pick my outdoor friends carefully and trust them with my life....

It feels like for every activity I do I sign on the dotted line to say I understand my hobbies carry the risk of serious injury or death......but I don't think I have ever fully comprehended this.

On Saturday some friends I was climbing with last week witnessed a horrific incident involving a climber at Stannage who couldn't get another piece of gear in, backed off the route but fell pulling out her runner, landed on her head and died at the base of the crag, age 32.

It's the fact that every lead climber has done similar. Every lead climber has at some point down climbed, everyone has had that hairy moment where it doesn't quite go to plan...and at some point, everyone falls. Such an outcome makes me feel very mortal, but also, so far, very lucky. No one expects such a serious incident to happen at the crag; yeh, we all know falling is possible, but when I think that I sign on that dotted line; it's incidents like this that make me question my love for something I do for pleasure, that can have such serious consequences.

My brain is hurting as I try to comprehend how that lady went out to climb in the same way that I do with friends, to climb, to feel alive....but unlike everyone else there, she didn't make it home...
(Condolences to her climbing buddy, friends, family, witnesses, mrt and all who dealt with his young lady).