Preparation

It's been a successful summer in terms of climbing. I had some superb trips to Sheigra, Gogarth, the Dolomites and Chamonix and a few trips to local cliffs as well. These days it seems like a single day trip just will not cut it because there is almost nothing left to climb anywhere near Edinburgh (excepting garbage routes and routes that are well beyond me, of which there are many). The most successful note being my success at on sighting an E5, a target which I set myself somewhat arbitrarily when I started climbing quite a few years ago. As with all successes however, it has a bitter-sweet taste because after a brief moment of euphoria I realise that climbing will lose it's meaning unless I can concoct another target, and it had better be one that will take a monumental effort too because getting to E5 was not easy!

So. The new target shall be to on sight an E7!

My reasoning is thus:

- There are quite a lot of climbers operating at this level these days and the bleeding edge is really on-sighting E8, so I will not need to be a leading climber (which isn't going to happen!), just a very good climber.

- I am not actually very strong and on the rare occasion I sport climb I seem to start failing at about f7a and fail more epicly from there on up. If I can on sight trad at my maximum sport grade then I only need to get strong enough to climb about f7c or so and E7 should be within my grasp.

- It's "only" 2 grades harder than E5. Haheha, that sounds hollow even to my ears!

I'm off to Australia (mount arapiles to be precise) for several months at least from the start of October so hopefully I can use my time over there to get strong enough to come back and on sight some E6s. That is the plan at any rate.