Verdes Adventure Therapy: Base Brown via Taylor Gill Force, Lakes, 22 May 2009

As part of Rich's consolidation period for his ML in October, we decided to pay a visit to the Lakes to practice decision making, navigation and route finding.

Of course, playing my part as 'paying punter', I also expected to be entertained during the walk and to have rock types and geology, weather systems, flora and fauna and wildlife all explained to me at the same time.

It's great fun being a punter!

We arrived at the start of our route, which Rich told me was within our capabilities. Not a route for the faint hearted, it was definitely a Verdes spectacular and after a rather 'hairy' traverse that saw John Dicko lose a few pounds on our last outing, he informed me we would be heading up the scramble to the summit.

The grade 3 scramble. Not the quiet, laid back precursor to some retail therapy in Keswick that I had been expecting, but a sphincter puckering, 'smell the fear' session that I would be lucky to escape.

But I knew I was in good hands... my ML aspirant sherpa hasn't fallen ....yet.

We set off up the initial scrambles and to be fair, other than some wet rocks and mossy holds, progress was straightforward. There was a fair bit of exposure though and if you DID fall it was a good 600ft until you came to rest.

I tried to keep this in mind as hold after hold came away in my hands.

The final frontier arrived after a while and I could sense that this was the defining moment; the moment where you check that the will is up to date, your insurance premiums are paid and that you are indeed wearing clean underwear.

Before us was a 6m wall that was overgrown, wet, mossy, scary and various other superlatives. My trusty ML sherpa disappeared up the wall like a rat up a knicker leg, leaving me to contemplate both the task ahead and the colossal drop behind me.

Fall on this one and you are toast.

I made a start and quickly realised that sherpa boy was struggling too on a route bereft of holds and with moss aplenty. Breaking with the Verdes motto, I stupidly looked both back and down and my fears were confirmed; retreat was simply not an option.

Taking stock of my predicament, I tried to find the positives: my right foot was smearing on some heather, but not on any hold. My left was in a similar position. My left hand couldn't find anything whatsoever that gave GRIP never mind a HOLD. But on the positive side, the piece of heather my right hand was clinging to seemed to be holding my 17 stone quivering frame nicely.

That was good enough for me!

I gave it a good hard pull and used the momentum to reach up with my left hand, finding a decent hold for a one armed pull up; an easy feat of strength when you have 700 feet on SFA behind your arse.

A couple of scrabbly moves and I was perched beside sherpa boy, grinning like a maniac.

We still had some scrambling to do, but nothing like this last set of moves and the summit was gained after a fine lunch and some resection drills on the side of Base Brown.