Ray and I were watching a tv show called “The Ultimate Rock Climb”, a BBC show where Tim Emmet takes a woman who has never climbed before in her life (but always wanted to) on three “dangerous” climbing route — Commando Ridge in Cornwall to start, then Crackstone Rib in Llanberis Pass and ending with a sea stack climb of Old Man of Stoer in Scotland.
As I’ve only done bouldering, watching them trad. climb was very exciting. Ray has done some top roping and some bouldering, and we were both amazed at this woman climbing a sea stack after just a few days of climbing.
So, did some research, and it’s rated between VS and E1on the UK rating system. Turns out, I can boulder V0 to V2 rated problems. Then, after looking up a translation from the V scale to the Yosemite Decimal Scale (YDS, used in trad and sport climbing in the US) and then translating that to the UK scale… the stuff I’m doing in bouldering works out to be as hard and/or harder than the Old Man!
Here’s a picture of the Old Man of Stoer:
Now, Ray and I are pumped to learn lead climbing and work on more roped climbing, so we can go climb this Old Man. It looks super exciting!