Today was a...

(a) Epic
(b) Boondoggle
(c) Gong show

I'm going to have to go with (c). It wasn't a major epic and it wasn't a total boondoggle, but it fit pretty squarely in the gong show category -- mostly because of the sheer numbers of people involved.

I went to Birchen Edge, in the Peak District, with CUMC today. We met at the bus, which was really a fullscale big bus, at 6:45am in the pitch dark. I paid my L20 grudgingly, and found Allen, a guy I knew from Harvard who is doing a masters here at Cambridge for the year. So the bus was 41 freshers plus one current guy from CUMC. The rest of the CUMC "old members" were all up there already. The bus ride took about 3 hours and was pretty uneventful, except for the driver occasionally stalling at traffic lights. The light would turn green, he would stall, he would spend the light trying to get the bus going again, the light would go red, and he'd finally move. Whoopsies.

So we got to the parking lot around 10, and they tried vainly to split us up into 4 groups of equal size and equal ability. I put myself in the best group. So then we trudged up to Birchen, which takes longer to walk into then one might have thought. They again try to split up the groups, since they've mingled back together again during the approach. There are 4 stations, and 4 groups, and each group is supposed to spend an hour at each station. Our first station is "leading," which really means seconding. So after a discussion about whether "leading" is supposed to involve 2 old members and 2 freshers or just 1 old member and 1 fresher per group, they decide on groups of 4. So I grab Allen as my other fresher and we stand around watching the general faff until we find 2 old members to take us.

One of the old members is Jane-from-America, who is nice, despite being the driver involved with the Mile End London bed boondoggle. The other one is Gregor, who's from Scotland and who I saw on an E4 in the Peak District last weekend. So Jane is convinced that I should lead everything immediately, and Gregor is still kind of drunk from the night before. (Both OUMC and CUMC strategize their freshers' meets so that they climb themselves in the Peak District on Saturday, drink a lot on Saturday night, and hang around faffing-with-freshers on Sunday.) But so Gregor is taking the Zeb-approach to getting over it by deciding the best thing to do is to just move very quickly and efficiently. So he shows me a VS and starts handing me gear and giving me instructions.

I'm a little nervous to immediately start out on a VS, since I thought the one that I did at Stanage last weekend was a little tricky. But this one actually goes fine. Gregor starts off giving me lots of advice, but then sort of just lets me do it. A little bit of extra faff when I get to the top and the GriGri doesn't really do to belay Allen up with, since I had to do it on double ropes. So but more or less, that was actually fine.

Gregor then leads a pretty easy E1 to the left of it that Allen, Jane, and I all second. (Apparently some guidebooks only call it an HVS.) That's fine. Goldie, who was the other character in the bed boondoggle, gives me ibu to take up to Gregor at the top.

Uh oh, then it's time to switch stations! Jane and Gregor are sent off to the "toprope station" while Allen and I are sent off to the "bouldering and abseiling station." Unfortunately, the bouldering is sort of on top of the cliff, rather than below it, which means that it's very windy and cold. Allen goes off to practice rappelling and I decide to do the bouldering. The bouldering is pretty boring, since most of the freshers are doing it in their sneakers. One of the ringleaders, Frank (who strikes me as CUMC's Keller), is in charge, and taking the opportunity to do some showoff dynos, etc.

Eventually, they decide to have us switch stations. This time I'm sent to the toprope station, but I really don't feel like toproping their topropes. So instead I convince Goldie, who really is very nice and friendly, to lend me his rack and do my only other lead of the day -- another VS 4c that is pretty straightforward with a lowdown crux. I think I worry some people right at the start because it's extremely awkward and I end up scrunched under a roof, facing outward, and looking gumbyish, but as soon as I fix myself and get myself facing the right direction things go smoother.

The belay at the top of that one was absolutely frigid, though, because it was getting really extreme gusts of wind the whole time. So while I belayed Allen up I sat there wondering about symptoms of hypothermia. I think I turned out to be fine, though.

By the time that is done, it's time to switch to the final station, which in theory is the "gear station." Except that our group is supposed to be the group that already knows about gear. So things have sort of broken down from the highly regimented system that they set out at the beginning of the day, but it's too late to do another lead, according to President Phoebe. So my two options are to (1) toprope the hole-in-the-rock "chimney" climb or (b) go down to the pub. I've already been pre-warned about this crawl-through-the-hole climb, and just this day a fresher has already shown me the tshirt he put holes in trying to do it. So I try to politely decline. One fresher tells me "oh I'm sure you could do it!" and Jane says "ohh, are you claustrophobic then?" And I try to explain that I don't care whether I could do it or not, I'm not claustrophobic, but I just don't want to do it. I think they decide that I'm probably scared of it. Fine.

So by that point a critical mass has gathered to hike down to the pub that's in the parking lot for Birchen. So I join them, and we spend about 20 minutes there (half of which I spend doing hand-washing antics), and then the bus arrives. It takes a while to be fully ready to leave, especially since now we have 42 freshers on the bus and can't figure out who the stowaway is. They eventually give up and let us leave with all 42 of us on the bus. Trip back to Cambridge is uneventful and takes about 3 hours, getting us there about 10 minutes before 8pm.

Overall it was a decent day, even though it was cold, short, and faffy. By doing those two more VS's I've technically tripled the number of VS's I've led in England (I really should probably start to catch my trad up with me ... I feel like there are definitely E-things that I could probably do without being too scared over here). Sounds like OUMC had a nice freshers' trip at Stanage, too.