With the heat building up to the levels of a blast furnace it was time to say goodbye to the grit for the summer months and start on a new journey - that of learning (maybe relearning) the intricacies of limestone. I have had a brief play on the white stuff this year but lime has always been a harsh master for me and has only got worse given my steady diet of grit bouldering for too long. Too long off from stuff involving a bit of string and some chunky quickdraws have left me with absolutely no crimp strength and even less endurance.
In an effort to rectify this I am forcing myself to love the lime and I am slowly getting there - spent Friday night bouldering at Rubicon for the first time with the Flipper. A really lovely setting to say the least and the long, long, long traverse gave me a very pumped set of forearms but thankfully not quite as pumped as those experienced on "Sock it to 'em" at Smalldale which took pumped to a whole new level. The traverse is notable for looking piss and being decidedly not piss - it is subtly steeper than you think it is, the hand holds are generally huge and the footholds are not. After an hour and a half I was pretty trashed and for my sins I had managed to work the first part (of four) to the big sidepull flake to a point where I was happy with the sequence. From there I then managed to link half way into the second part where it gets steeper and the ability to put the weight through your feet and hit the footholds both precisely and quickly starts to become more urgent. From this point is unknown but it is not going to get any easier for sure.
Saturday was on more familiar ground at Horseshoe with Broken Beagle. Decided that seconding and focussing on decent footwork was going to be of more use to me than getting scared on lead. Pale Rider (6a) went clean but placed far too much emphasis on pulling hard instead of using my feet, Schools Out (6a+) went better but got the sequence wrong towards the top, fought back to get into a position to try and make the move but lack of arms saw me off and finally Rotund Rooley (6b allegedly) beasted the living daylights out of me. No way is it 6b - for someone of my stature it's somewhere closer to 6b+ as far as I am concerned - the crux felt Font6b on it's own. Grade debating aside it was the best burn of the day - less over gripping and the footwork seemed OK up to that point so reasonably pleased.
Today is a rest day as the first storm of the summer arrived in a rather noisy fashion this morning.
In an effort to rectify this I am forcing myself to love the lime and I am slowly getting there - spent Friday night bouldering at Rubicon for the first time with the Flipper. A really lovely setting to say the least and the long, long, long traverse gave me a very pumped set of forearms but thankfully not quite as pumped as those experienced on "Sock it to 'em" at Smalldale which took pumped to a whole new level. The traverse is notable for looking piss and being decidedly not piss - it is subtly steeper than you think it is, the hand holds are generally huge and the footholds are not. After an hour and a half I was pretty trashed and for my sins I had managed to work the first part (of four) to the big sidepull flake to a point where I was happy with the sequence. From there I then managed to link half way into the second part where it gets steeper and the ability to put the weight through your feet and hit the footholds both precisely and quickly starts to become more urgent. From this point is unknown but it is not going to get any easier for sure.
Saturday was on more familiar ground at Horseshoe with Broken Beagle. Decided that seconding and focussing on decent footwork was going to be of more use to me than getting scared on lead. Pale Rider (6a) went clean but placed far too much emphasis on pulling hard instead of using my feet, Schools Out (6a+) went better but got the sequence wrong towards the top, fought back to get into a position to try and make the move but lack of arms saw me off and finally Rotund Rooley (6b allegedly) beasted the living daylights out of me. No way is it 6b - for someone of my stature it's somewhere closer to 6b+ as far as I am concerned - the crux felt Font6b on it's own. Grade debating aside it was the best burn of the day - less over gripping and the footwork seemed OK up to that point so reasonably pleased.
Today is a rest day as the first storm of the summer arrived in a rather noisy fashion this morning.
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