According to my one constant reader I can not live on syke alone but must combine it with lots of rad to live a healthy balanced life. Given this sage advice I have been trying to do more rad which is proving easier now that the van is insured again though the levels will drop when the credit card bill falls through my letter box.
But that is an aside - got out to Burbage North with the Flipper last night. Warmed up on the first main wall or to be slightly more honest got scared doing 4a moves above a mat that seemed to be the size of a postage stamp and then down-climbed again. Made lots of excuses that this was antagonistic training etc. and wandered down the crag to the Three Bears.
I have blogged about the Three Bears before - 9 problems which are slightly scrittly but nice enough climbing between breaks. It is one of those crags where the short and\or those not having much confidence in their footwork will suffer but I just about got away with it and sent all of the problems except the easiest which we deemed rubbish yarding between huge holds and therefore beneath us.
From there we went onto the Cube block situated about 50 yards back up the valley. I had tried the left hand problem before given a grade of Doodle Bug 1 (5b) and thought at the time it was way out but put it down to thin skin or some such thing. Revisiting it last night proved that it is almost certainly undergraded - it is tough, balancy, steep and the footholds are almost non-existent above the low break. As Flipper put it - either we are climbing really badly or it isn't 5b. Regardless of that it is a striking problem and one that I am going to keep revisiting as I made a bit of progress on it last night and managed to get to the second break static once. The break isn't good but it could be worse and I was able to hang it and match it but it all went a bit wrong after that as my feet popped and I hung in there in a style not dissimilar to that of Wile E. Coyote - feet thrashing away desperately trying to get something to stick before dropping off. Therein lies the other issue with this problem - the landing slopes away and falling off from higher up is going to result in a slide down the valley (hopefully with the bouldering mat) that Johnny Dawes would be proud of. Knowing this isn't helped by having looked at it from the side - the third break isn't any better than the second and the top is a gritstone horror show of slopeyness. Going to need a lot of rad and syke to get it topped out for sure.
But that is an aside - got out to Burbage North with the Flipper last night. Warmed up on the first main wall or to be slightly more honest got scared doing 4a moves above a mat that seemed to be the size of a postage stamp and then down-climbed again. Made lots of excuses that this was antagonistic training etc. and wandered down the crag to the Three Bears.
I have blogged about the Three Bears before - 9 problems which are slightly scrittly but nice enough climbing between breaks. It is one of those crags where the short and\or those not having much confidence in their footwork will suffer but I just about got away with it and sent all of the problems except the easiest which we deemed rubbish yarding between huge holds and therefore beneath us.
From there we went onto the Cube block situated about 50 yards back up the valley. I had tried the left hand problem before given a grade of Doodle Bug 1 (5b) and thought at the time it was way out but put it down to thin skin or some such thing. Revisiting it last night proved that it is almost certainly undergraded - it is tough, balancy, steep and the footholds are almost non-existent above the low break. As Flipper put it - either we are climbing really badly or it isn't 5b. Regardless of that it is a striking problem and one that I am going to keep revisiting as I made a bit of progress on it last night and managed to get to the second break static once. The break isn't good but it could be worse and I was able to hang it and match it but it all went a bit wrong after that as my feet popped and I hung in there in a style not dissimilar to that of Wile E. Coyote - feet thrashing away desperately trying to get something to stick before dropping off. Therein lies the other issue with this problem - the landing slopes away and falling off from higher up is going to result in a slide down the valley (hopefully with the bouldering mat) that Johnny Dawes would be proud of. Knowing this isn't helped by having looked at it from the side - the third break isn't any better than the second and the top is a gritstone horror show of slopeyness. Going to need a lot of rad and syke to get it topped out for sure.
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