Colmcille Climbers

PJ and I were busy sorting a few knick-knacks for our new house so we didn't get down to Culdaff till late Saturday afternoon. George and Alan had been there since early morning, with George getting stuck into cleaning the popular HVS routes Shining Cossacks and Fluid Inclusions and losing some knuckle skin in the process.

There were 2 vehicles but no sign of the lads so we wandered about the head looking for the top of Black Perception and failing miserably in a warm spring shower. We eventually found them cleaning lines on Finbarr Wall and George had discovered a new line that looked like it might go at about HS. In a stroke of brilliant timing I borrowed Alan's rock shoes, squeezing my large plates into them to belay George on this 8m route.

George made very straight forward work of the jamming holds, called it Severe and named it Fuzzy Friends, possibly because of our similarly grizzled appearance. I couldn't disagree with the grade, though I made it look difficult, having not climbed a jot since last summer. It didn't help that George asked me to explain my Facebook wafflings on the Miller-Rabin probabilistic test for prime numbers using modular exponentiation, which distracted me a little.

Still it was an unexpected bonus to turn up so late and climb anything at all, never mind a new line! A quick pint in an empty McGrory's finished the day and we left Alan musing over how to cook a butternut squash while he watched the rugby.