Lord Rootes Fund: Rock climbing in Thailand
During the second year of my PhD I applied for a pot a money available from the Lords Rootes fund at Uni (Warwick) to go and climb in Thailand. The whole idea of the fund was to pursue something non-academic that you are interested in, and although I couldnt see projects from other years relating to sport or rock climbing I thought it was still worth a shot. After an extensive application form and interview in front of the biggest panel I had ever experienced I was given the funds!!!
I booked my flight and was off for 3 weeks, unfortunately my first flight was delayed by a day and so I missed my internal flights to Chiang Mai, so I headed straight to Krabi province instead.
I arrived at tonsai early in the morning and got myself straight on a boat to the DWS. This was my first experience of DWS -not a bad place to start!
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| I was a bit unsure where any of the routes went! |
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| I was suprised how high some of the routes went and on day 1 i was reluctant to fall off... |
The following days I met up with a Canadian partner for a day, and then Ian from Reading, and Mark from New Zealand who I spent the next 3 weeks climbing all over the tonsai/railey area with.
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| The team! |
The biggets adjustment to the climbing in Thailand was the heat and humidity, we were there during the hottest day of the year where temperatures reached 45 degrees. We spent most of our time focusing on single-pitch mileage during this trip rather than pushing the grades. It was great to spend time in the jungle and on sea cliffs.
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| Old snake 6b:We hired a kayak to get across the bay to Easle wall some isolated routes in the jungle, lots mosquitoes... |
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| A memorable tricky route at Wee's present wall, Monkey crying 6b+ |
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| Abseiling off a multipitch the beauty and the beat, a+ at Monkey world -what a view! |
Mark and I did a few multipitches together, the most memorable of which were orange chandeliers(6a+,6b, 6c) on Ao nang tower (a sea stack between Ao nang and Tonsai) and the 5-pitch route humanality up the huge cliff which overlooks tonsai beach.
Ao nang tower required a taxi boat to the sea stack which waited for us whilst we climbed. We then abseiled back down the route to the boat - with thunder and lighting and winds around us at the end of the route this made things a bit tricky.
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| Mark abseiling off Tonsai tower to the awaiting taxi boat |
The three weeks in Krabi was a great unforgettable experience to clock up the miles and develop my experience and confidence in sport climbing - and it was all about onsighting routes. It was nice to return to Krabi since I had stopped over two-years previously and I wanted to return strong so I could climb all the fantastic routes on offer. It was nice that I had achieved this sooner than I expected.
