Monday 16 June 2014

Long overdue - a couple of newbies

Do you want to overcome apathy, feel less busy, have successful relationships and achieve your sporting goals?

Simple! Just follow Dr. Smith's patented formula and give up on life's periphery activities like cleaning the house, washing the car and writing a blog. Instead, get stuck in with the hard graft of training properly!

Since visiting the RRG back last Autumn I've been busy to say the least, the low-lights being;
  • moving office from Chester to Manchester meaning an extra hour of commuting each day - this is crap
  • been to Germany twice with work - this is also crap
  • worked in our London office far too much - not sure which of these is the crappiest?
Despite the crap, I've built a home campus board, trained aero-cap with endless laps of the Stockport wall over the winter, and gotten some just rewards;
  • my first flash of a f8a sport route - El Capataz Incapaz in Chulilla at New year, 2013/14. A big dose of last day psyche and some lucky slaps got me up this.
  • my first Font 8A - Hatch Life/Left Wall High link in Parisella's cave. Kneepad trickery and heaps of stamina training got me up this!
  • a cool new f8a+ at Dinbren
  • a quick ascent (3 sessions) of Aspid, f8b/+ at Figols this Easter (locals seemed to take a strange out right, up & back left approach to the crux, but we went direct, and subsequently I've seen this as 8b+ on 8a.poo)

The Dinbren new route is called "No Kneed" and takes the roof direct below the lip traverse of "out of body experience". Gaining the obvious kneebar on the lip of the roof looked very unlikely before trying the moves, but turned out not to be the hardest section, though two snapping holds on the day of the FA did make it a bit harder than planned. The main difficulty is gaining enough height out the kneebar so that a good sidepull can be taken before gently extracting your knee from the slot. Dodgy beta video here.

The other newbie was completed last week and is a link-up of two of the existing traverse problems to create a crag long, reverse traverse at Devil's Gorge, Pantymwyn (opposite direction to the established "Pantymwyn Traverse"). I've called it "Innuendo Bingo" and hopefully this video is better than the first!
It's about french 8b, maybe Font 8A, but 40 odd moves aren't well described with boulder grades!

Ciao for now!