Was having a bath this evening and was trying to clean my dirty knees. Thought they were dirty at least until I realised that they're just covered in bruises from climbing and knocking against the rock. So duly got the arnica cream out and applied P for Plenty in the hope that they'll at least go back to some normal colour.
The bruises don't hurt at all - it only hurts where my knee was damaged before from snowboarding anyway so it's no bother - just a little weird to have playground knees again. I've noticed that I've got a good few bumps and bruises elsewhere from climbing as well, there's not much room for error up on the crags and they seem to just nip away at you when you have the small falls and when you knock yourself against the rock on the way up and down.
Should get sponsorship from Elastoplast =)
It's all good though, I climbed at Servoz yesterday with Chris and Louise from MountainGirl who runs a climbing company here. After a few words of technical advice I found I was climbing an immense amount better - smoothly and strongly tackling harder pitches. Chris and I also did our first multi-pitch climb where we went up more than one section of the crag. One person climbs up to a safe anchor point on the crag, then the other climbs up and past them to the next safe point and so on and so forth. It means you can climb any size rock face and are not as limited by the length of the rope.
It's good because it means we can tackle more stuff now and can do longer climbs rather than the briefer single pitch climbs. Also we're climbing that much better now that we're gaining experience slowly and our technique is getting much better. Watching Chris climb is pretty amazing as he fluidly moves up the rock, and I'm pleased that we compliment each other as we tackle and overcome what often looks daunting and difficult.
