Immediately I slipped off the wall again and dropped another few feet before the rope caught me.  Hanging from the rope, I took stock.  I was hanging below the spikes.  Luckily, they are designed to prevent people going up, so I hadn’t been in much danger from that perspective during my first fall.  My second fall cut it a lot closer, since I was nearer to the wall and hence the spikes.

Crazy Steve’s overalls were still in place and I climbed through once, so I was pretty sure I could do it again.

As I tried to stop myself swinging about, the cause of my predicament became evident. Something dark and sticky was smeared over the bottom of my boot and it was making it difficult for me to gain any purchase on the wall.  It didn’t make sense to me that this substance was sticky enough to attach itself to me, but so slippery that I couldn’t gain any purchase from my left foot.

I didn’t think that I could complete the climb with only three active limbs.  Throwing my boot away was an option, but would make climbing tricky.  I also didn’t want to risk putting my foot into some more of whatever was attached to my boot.  As it was, I felt fortunate that I had put my boot into this sticky blob rather than my hand.  Perhaps my luck was on the turn.