Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Rubicon 2 Butters 0

I dragged Broken Beagle down to Rubicon on Sunday after giving the idea of spending the afternoon belaying him on red point attempts of Lockless short shrift. Was a reasonably good session actually - felt OK on the traverse of doom though I have yet to complete it but it will go with some new shoes. The faithful and much loved Verde's are a fine pair of shoes for climbing on grit but when it comes to lime I have no doubt that a pair of Turkish slippers would probably offer better support.

Having said that I managed the rising traverse (given 6a+ in the guide) so well pleased with that - feel like I should probably have flashed it but got the final moves wrong and I was back on the mat. No repeat second time around - reach up, get the big sidepull\pocket and pull to glory.

From there it was back to a Miller's Tale - gave Broken Beagle the beta along with a caveat that it was possibly junk as it was "Butters specific beta" and showed him the rather improbable but ultimately awesome flag move and we were off. Me being me I decided that instead of concentrating on the stand up version and getting that in the bag I would take a quick look at the sit start which was being touted about as something like 6c reasoning that it was going to be too hard and therefore I could try it and then move on. Obviously that plan went to ruin pretty quickly as I found I could get off the ground and while the footwork wasn't obvious it was all there and so a new siege was engaged. Thankfully Broken Beagle wasn't making things look easy which the evil part of me was pleased about as it meant that time was on my side to have a good go at the sitter. Managed eventually to get one move from the standing start and that should fall into place with a bit of thought and then into the meat of the problem proper - I really am my own worst enemy at times.

Broken Beagle sent it from the sitter with one last gasp effort that I honestly thought he was going to drop on the last move after skipping a move going for the final hold. Not sure who was more amazed that he held on to be honest but he did and then we all retired for beer, Sheffield Tapas and talking rubbish - a good end to a good day.

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