First time climbing outside for what seems like (and is in fact) ages.
After a somewhat fabulous evening meal of Honeyed Lamb, (which featured rather a lot of Cayenne), we headed out over to Windgather rocks to meet some friends.
It was an easy evening, just getting back into the swing of things, and the hardest thing that was lead was a Severe. I ended up doing 6 routes, but there were a couple of interesting things.
The first was my choice of clothing- I was wearing a Helly Ice top- the one with Merino wool, a cheap craghoppers fleece and my Montane H2O velo top. And I was Toasty.
It was great because as you can imagine from the name, Windgather rocks does indeed somewhat gather the wind, making it a pretty chilly place to stand around waiting for either the leader to get the damn thing led, and a belay sorted, or for you second to get his shoes on/ fiddle with getting gear out.
The combination of climbing in the fleece, and then having a totally windproof top dangling off the back of the harness just to throw on over the top was brilliant. If it rained, it would have provided a modicum of waterproofing, but given the situation, we would have just wandered back to the car.
So that combination on a chilly evening is a winner. I believe that this is the kind of combo that vapourize and the Mountain Equipment lightweight something or other jacket (I need to look that up) have in mind. However, they don't have the option of removing the fleece. Its there, laminated to the outer windproof fabric.
So, until I manage to get hold of a Vaporise top, the fleece and Montane windproof will do just fine! It also means that I can take one or the other layer off - which you can't do with the Rab... maybe you don't need to.
Any thoughts anyone?
No comments:
Post a Comment