Glen Coe Dry Tooling Masters

Kevin high on the men’s final route

It’s not often I say this, but today I went to a climbing competition. It was the final of the Scottish Dry Tooling Masters at the Ice Factor in Glen Coe. This morning I was not psyched. I had a strange dizzy spell after getting out of bed (no It wasn’t anything to do with alcohol, or an early start). Weird dizziness persisted and I wasn’t even sure if I’d be ok to drive to the Coe, but I got back my level head (sic) after several cups of tea and three breakfasts (two healthy, one not).

Go on... Go on... Go on....!

The leap, on the ‘leap of faith’ route in the ice room.

After feeling ok on the axes in the relaxed qualifiers, things got horribly formal with isolations, finals, and then a superfinal. I puffed my way to the belay of the final route, but the superfinal was a tad different. I lunged for a well sketchy hook and didn’t get it right. I reached for the rope to pull up slack and clip, and got as far as whispering the ‘watch…’ of ‘watch me incase I ping off making this clip’ and next thing I knew I was flying. A good place to end the night and head up the windy Loch Leven road with Nevis Radio’s ‘Take the Floor’ as the tunes of psyche.

Wobbling to a shaky win in the finals.