10m too much bloody rope!

Heard this a lot over a great weekend climbing with Fiend in Wales. Apparently having 60m half ropes is a crime though I don't think it rates quite as highly as cycling, running or hill walking on the list of things punishable by death but I could be wrong.

Anyway other than having the length of my rope complained about it was a bloody good weekend for a whole host of reasons. It was my first time doing trad in 13 months and it showed the first time I racked up and struggled to remember which side of my harness I rack my cams on. Once that minor issue had been sorted though I got Yellow Route in the bag and a fine route it is too - well worth doing whatever grade you climb. Well worth checking out Creagh Dhu Wall as well if you are in the Tremadog area - two fantastic pitches on great rock. I also managed to second two E1s and an E2 clean as well which I was quite happy about as I am a fat weak boulderer.

After two days of trad I was shot (figuratively anyway) but not to the point where bouldering in the Pass seemed like a good idea once I had gotten over the excruciating tightness of my shoes. With my feet now only rating as painful I tried Browns Crack which proceeded to eat the backs of my hands a fair bit thereby moving the pain about at least. Twice I got past the hand eating crack (which I got sorted relatively quickly) only to be repelled by the crux at the top due to not being able to figure out where to place my feet and after the second time I gave it the honour of being my first nemesis in the Pass. From here we went onto the Roadside boulder - flashed the rising traverse in good style and then made a complete hash of the start of the direct from the same place!! Got it on the second attempt which added to the disappointment but didn't detract from what is a great problem. From there we went across to the slabs on the opposite side of the Pass and after taking into consideration the lack of skin I decided to attempt the classic V3 slab problem over the equally good looking V2. The only problem with the V3 is that it has a vicious move off a mono for the right hand and by the time I had worked out the feet positions I was running out of time and after experimenting with some very random taping it saw me off to leave me with another nemesis.

Other than some great climbing pROJECT mAYHEM got us there and back without a problem apart from a very annoying rattle but at least I know the location of the rattle now so the mission to get that resolved sometime over the next few days. Also having slept in the van for three nights it gave me a much better insight into how the layout will work and just proved that it was the right thing to do when I bought it.

Death by Midges

Sloper's sport climbing ambitions had been cruelly thwarted so it was up to me to take him off to Apparent North for some easy bouldering as some sort of consolation. We decided to warm up on the left hand side where it became obvious that it was not going to be much a pleasant day out in the sunshine - no breeze, greasy holds and lots of midges was the order of the day. We stuck this out for all of about three or four problems before seeking some respite further to the right and we ended up at yet another one of my many, many Peak nemeses "Crimpy Roof Problem". On the one time that I have knowingly tried this before I failed to get as far as the lip of the roof but my recent run of discovering some sort of working sequence seems to be continuing and I now have a method of getting both hands on the lip courtesy of a toe\heel lock. Sure there is still some footwork stuff to do to get the next break but I feel that another very small breakthrough has been made. Awesome!

Anyway back to work tomorrow and then it is off to Wales for three days with Fiend (soon to be McFiend proper) for some trad and boulder action which I am rather excited about to say the least.

Greasy as a weasel...

...liberally coated in butter, engine oil and lard and then deep fried - if you had used said culinary masterpiece to brush the sidepulls on Strawberries at Curbar today then it wouldn't have felt any harder. However I digress slightly so I shall backtrack a few hours and start at the beginning.

Today I woke up and felt confident about doing Strawberries - quite why I don't know but that was the case so after a couple of coffees I set off to Curbar in a rad and syked mood to send. Did the usual warm up problems - the traverse and back on the other side of the Trackside boulder, the mantle\undercut problem, the three pocket problem and the one on the big holds to the right of that. All was going strangely well - the footwork was good and the friction while not exactly great was feeling OK. Still feeling rad and syked I cleaned off the holds for Strawberries, rolled up a quick tab, sat in the sunshine and pulled on my shoes,. Having done that I worked out the sequence again just to make sure it was right in my head, gave the holds a last brush and tried it out.

It felt awful - truly, truly awful - I could get to the higher sidepull with my left about half the time but from there it was time to forget it - you could just feel it sliding off and there was no way you could get the necessary leverage on it for the move up to the jug. Still it will be there another time and I still went home happy - I have finally managed to get a decent sequence to the three pocket problem which means I can semi-static to the third pocket in control now instead of it being an all out slap and I got introduced to a problem that I think is called "The Eyes" (to the left of the problem Trackside). Now this feels like a really nice problem and it will be good to have that to project alongside Strawberries but will require better conditions to get the bottom section wired and the top doesn't look too much of a gimme either. Also starting to get ideas re: Trackside itself and I still have The Ultimate Gritstone Experience to do - bring on the cooler temps - the rad and syke seems to be back!

Cornwall

Cornwall was not bad really considering the weather was as inconsiderate to me as it always is. I had originally planned to stay down for at least a week maybe nine days but a lack of money and indifferent weather conditions resulted in me bailing early. Arrived circa 11AM on the Tuesday and after meeting up with my brother and his girlfriend who I was staying with I decided to head down to Little Fistral for a quick check on how weak I am which it turned out was bordering on very.

Little Fistral is never going to going to be considered a premier venue for bouldering and would struggle to get into the second or even the third division if we are honest. It consists of an overhanging wall with two maybe three traverses on it all about 10 metres long max. There are also a few up problems of debatable quality but it is a venue I know and I wanted to get the middle traverse done if possible. The hardest part of the problem is getting to the main line of the traverse itself which consists of about 7 moves with the crux being bumping the left hand across with the right on a decentish sized flat hold. In essence a 5+ which requires a bit of thought regarding footwork and body position and after that it is piss. Anyway I worked out the sequence to get into position to get the flatty and from there it was one move and pretty much over. Did I do it? No in a word - if I had been on my own I probably would have done but my brother and his girlfriend had decided to accompany me and conditions were less than hospitable with a stiff onshore breeze carrying with it large amounts of salt spray and the like so I decided to bail out for a beer and cordial relations.

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much rained out and nothing got done apart from travelling about and eating and drinking too much but Friday was a better day so I went up to Helman Tor for some easier bouldering and general exploration. Getting there was interesting due to turning left about 200 yards too soon which resulted in driving down some very narrow "roads" with grass growing down the middle of them - seriously out back of beyond! After a bit of guesswork I eventually arrived and once I had figured out that the topo was not exactly accurate in relation to distance and where things were located it turned out to be a nice place to be albeit a rather windy one. There was some sort of bird of prey flying over the valley below, some really rough granite to deal with and some nice views just to make it really pleasant. As it was I got a few problems done and backed off a few more mainly due to the remoteness issue but also the wind howling across the top which made things seem that little bit more tenuous. Still it is a worthwhile venue if you have a couple of hours to kill.

View from the walk in.

The mat marks the centre of the three problems on this block - the left hand problem (no arête) is one I backed off more than once as the top out is a very rough but slopey horror show, the centre problem I couldn't work out the start and the right hand one is easy as.

There is a seriously good looking problem up the centre of this wall at about 6b - one to go back and try for sure.

Not a difficult problem up the flakes (I did it sans mat) but nice all the same.


Didn't even bother with this - slab to a big roof with a decent prang potential if you got it wrong!


Another three lines up here - I looked briefly at the left and centre problems but didn't have a serious go as there is a deepening gully from the left hand side that you can't see. The right hand problem is not one to fall off at all as warned in the topo - I couldn't see anyway that you would walk away from it if you did. There are a couple more problems and a project around the corner of the right arête including a really nice looking line up a ramp but they all start from a ledge about a metre wide with a fair sized drop off behind that. The project is a blunt arete that looked simply nails. There is also a couple from the cave to the left of this - one really hard problem on small holds and an easier one that I could figure out the start of but the finish (and the point of it) was lost on me.

Run to the dark my pretties!!

After getting very drunk last night it was with throbbing head and a degree of trepidation that I went to fit the new head unit in pROJECT mAYHEM today and surprisingly it went pretty smoothly. Think that the worst bit was getting the head unit to seat properly because of all the cables running behind it getting jammed and then getting the surround to fit - all in all a virtually crisis free day.

The white smudge at the top of the picture is a USB flash drive which is connected to the head unit which is a seriously neat way of doing things. Just load it up with MP3's and once it has read the contents it will play them back - awesome! Now that I know it works I have ordered a 16GB USB flash drive and when that arrives it is going to get loaded up with a serious amount of choons - by my rough estimation I can get about 130 albums on it - result!

Drunken post ahoy!!

Tomorrow is bound to be a bad day - I am going to fit a new head unit to pROJECT mAYHEM! The full works with two amps, 6" x 9" rears and the 10" sub will have to wait but driving down to Cornwall with a standard VW tape playing head unit has been considered as not acceptable. In an effort to combat this I am going to be installing one of these which according to the VW forum should be a plug and play project but this is a Butters project so anything could happen...

Tune back in tomorrow for tales of mashed fingers, frustration and the like.

Other news...

I spent last night at Chee Dale trying to redpoint Subterfuge after it had been recommended to me by Duncan Disorderly. I am now sitting here aching badly and realising that I am weak, I have no stamina and I need to do more work on limestone to try and rectify this. To say that it was was somewhat of a shock to realise just how far off the game I am on steep stuff is to understate things slightly - OK I wasn't expecting to get it in the bag there and then but given I have onsighted 6a+ on slabs and vertical walls before now it was still a body blow to find oneself being crushed by the crag with such ease. Ideally I would have liked to have got the bottom section worked to the point of getting to the second bolt (pretty much the crux as far as I can tell) but my usual blindness to sequences (and subsequent refusal to try different sequences) cost me dear. The end result is it is I have got two moves worked and that is it!

I also need to work the river crossing some more as well I think.