She's No Slouch III

Is there no stopping her? Tamsin is now a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE).

From this, to this, to this! What next? Transubstantiation?!

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From Wikipedia

From Wikipedia

 

Limb Isolation Trick

Quite often, I’ll achieve a great throwline throw over the perfect limb, only to lose it when trying to isolate it because the throwbag snags on the far side and jumps clear of the limb I want. This alternative approach occurred to me this morning:

This might be old news to seasoned climbers, but it only occurred to me today…

Nice Slender Pine

Climbed this in the sun this afternoon…

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On setting up I learned two things: 1) My big shot will just shoot a 14oz bag to the highest point my throwline will go over and still reach the ground. 2) My throwline is exactly the same length as my rope. Thus, my rig looked like this as I clipped in…..

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After that, though it was just a lovely ascent through the void… well, through the holly bush and creepers mucking up the bottom of the tree, and the many pine cones wanting to get into my t-shirt.

Surprisingly Tricky Beech

Too many limbs! And too many little pinch-point throwline-traps - one of which we found. Then just throwing turned out to be problematic as the bag kept bouncing into the TOO MANY limbs! Once up, just navigating a route is a challenge. But at the top - mmm-hmm - sunny views!

>35m Sprydon Sequoia

This is properly tricky as the first fifteen metres comprise only downward-sloping limbs… You can see Jos in the first picture having slid his anchor down the limb to the first fork during his ascent. The heavy rain in the morning and moss on the limbs made it ridiculously slippery. This needed some quite tricky re-jigging and it did feel a teeny bit precarious during that corrective operation.

Once that was done, though, the view - and the wind - was absolutely tremendous!

I climbed down to what I estimated was half-way and set a doubled-rope anchor with my 45m rope, which at the ground left me six inches spare….. I give it a conservative estimate of at least 35m high.