Saturday 20 November 2010

The Roaches

Were banging.

Johnny on his second trad lead ever, me belaying. Check the z clip out, that boy has skills. Johnny is the one that'd be pulled off by a boot in the face if the guy above him falls off.

I lead some easy corner crack, into which I put all my rack, I figured if I was carrying it I might as well place it.

Then stuck a top rope on Chalkstorm, checked where the holds were and did it first try. It had some wicked moves, I especially liked using a pinky mono to cross the overlap. Could solo it but not sure if I will.

Next day, shunted Obsession Fatale. It lures you in, easy moves to the break, easy moves over the break, a slightly tricky mantle onto a ledge, then you can almost reach the top, stand up on the next smear then I fall. Only onto the shunt, not the 10m to the ground and two broken legs fortunately. Couldn't do the last couple of moves, but I think on a top rope it'd be easier than with a shunt which was pulling me slightly off balance. Tempting to go back and try this again.

Then tried a cool jamming roof crack boulder problem on the upper tier, was really nice.


The London year so far

Been pretty busy thus far, got out every weekend though so it's all good.

Brief summary:

1st week - Stanage - bouldered around on stuff. Eyed Big Air, a cool dyno route, and the aretes (Archangel and White wand). Played on brad pitt to see what v10 felt like. Hard. Be well cool to come up against something like that on a route.

2nd week - Stanage - tried to learn to jam, fell off the start of fern crack, the rest of it was pretty steady. Went to lawrencefield - top roped with the freshers on various stuff, quite liked the style, less rounded than natural grit. Thought about trying a new route to the right of Pool wall, up a cool looking crack, with a tree positioned nicely to bridge on/impale me. Then found out it might have been done before and then wasn't fancying it.

3rd week - Wales - got rained on, went to parisellas cave, was the most fun I've ever had bouldering, all the moves were pretty consistent, no one stopper move. Almost did some traverse. Then went dry tooling on some choss the next day.




4th week - Stanage - Boulderer about, tried tower face direct, did some twin jamming/offwidth crack route, jamming is getting better, Duncan lost one of my cams but gave me one of his in replacement. Got trapped on top of the deliverence boulder after climbing up in the dark and not being able to see the holds to get back down, had to ab off, using Duncan as a convienient anchor on the other side of the boulder.


A bit stanage centric, but life is great.