got into aughris head over the weekend, never really got into the zone, no spotter, one pad, seepage and a bit of spray in the air. didn't climb as much as i would've liked.

ucd'ed yesterday with lucia, put my harness on upside down and was corrected by the wall monitor.

peds brief video of the meet manages to catch dave not climbing, me eating biscuits, sparkle tour guiding and dec making a hard prob look piss, not bad for 2 minutes of footage.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yfsDTDTFXo

lough bray

after another aborted effort last night made it to lough bray direct from work today. when i started climbing found i still felt as stiff as i did at the coop yesterday. after a grand hotel warm up threw myself at rainbow for an hour. forearm shin bones very tired, quite weird. held the upper hold a few times but never comfortably. felt like shit, had lemsip on return home. will blame this shitness for shit climbing. maybe learned to just put left hand on best bit, dab with right then crank through.

meet

no night session due to rain and bed by 2am friday night, 13 people slept down. up to shitty enough weather but sun out by the time we got to boulders and stayed all day. opened with rails, couldn't do egg mantle, got egg ss using dec's humping beta, couldn't get superstars. up to pascals and watched chris get it for his first time. found that i could get to the break if i used chris/ tim method of left hand up into best part of undercut and right hand sidepulling above it before moving up. can move into it but at the moment finding left hand too open in the undercut crimp and quite painful. lot of work still to do. couldn't get blind stick, got black arts quickly. lot of real impressive features in and around crackland. up to chilax and couldn't top out the left. then up to fin, got ss second go. real clean top out was very pleasing after long day. decent crowd down, probably close to 40, though as usual very few stuck around for the night, lamos. bed by 3am.
sunday -up to electric mountain for damp wander in forest, an unwitting tourguide. by the time we'd done a lap holds were drying and spent the rest of the afternoon trying 4 moves 4 feet off the ground. built up a good technique only for the beta to change late in the day, all in the twist of a knee. hands match start on crimp, foot low right, rh onto low ramp, shift feet across left foot/knee pointing left, right foot hugging low out right. important to hang very low and plumbline, match on ramp then left up to good crimp on the lip, r dabs and goes for arete. top out looked intersting but low ramp out right important. worn out back to hut to fail miserably at hoiking a heavy weight over my head. good meet, good people.

3 rock

late start verging on a wasted day however the sudden mildness of the weather meant that conditions in any of the daytripping spots would have been pretty shitty so perhaps no great loss. Went up 3 rock and found it not so much of an issue but still noticeable. Bit spaced. pretty close on ss of centre line.

near misses

back to glendo at the rock at 5.10 with sunset at 6.31 ish and still climbing at 7 pm. started in ruins first time in an age. did wallop, remembered the right holds without which its nails. also the frustration slap which was lovely but the first real indication that friction wasn't perfect. up to egg ss and relearnt it. first right hand suddenly had sharp point to it i don't remember, now bunch fingers under it. leave room on ramp for right foot. throw left hand to higher on crimp. when reach hand ramp with right its best as an almost crimp, left hand goes in behind and left. building on yesterdays thoughts i decided tonight its like a stuck combination lock, you can get all the details right but in the end you still have to thug it. twice i got to the hand ramp and fucked up the thugging through, one time managing to open my belt and top button of my jeans in my desperate humping. walked away tired, tried bmx a couple of times but failed then over the river to andys to examine my crimp strength. crimp felt huge and i'd like to think only fading light and energy stopped me getting it. good session left tired. brought crossword found my most successful efforts came after crossword rests.

some dice

down to glendo for an early session with bike in back. started well getting rails and egg mantle. tried egg ss for first time in a while and managed to get into position to snatch for rib but not very convincingly, poor concentration generally. pascals went as badly as ever. watched dec repeatedly cruise the move through the undercut which he did going left up and moving right straight thru to break. rang tim for his beta which is to also go left up but then match and move thru. broke down the moves into variations and found each and every one too powerful for me sparking a thought process on how much weight i'd need to lose to be able to contemplate them. will still try it but need to see noticeable improvement on other problems before i can seriously expect to get it. up to chillax then and got the leftwards version comfortably enough, all about a solid heel. looked at project(?) behind chillax, very hard. up to fin suntrap, very comfortable with launch but hand was sliding down the hold. despite pascals felt generally good today, stronger than of late.

first evening daylight session

got up to three rock after work, interestingly i only get to the boulders at the same time as i would going to glendo, 5.20 ish. Lovely friction, walking down at 6.30 dark by the time i got to the car.

cooped for an hour yesterday.

bray

headed up for first lough bray lamp session a record attendance of 4. skin was always going to break me but stilll would have liked to do better on rainbow than i managed. could hold campus but its a shit way to do it. in future when matching high on arete need to keep low, arms straight and resettle right hand then go. maybe move heel closer to hands also. really frustrating. tried away from, crimp is very sore on sore skin, matching seems difficult but probably doable, move up to vertical break seems very long and hard.

hard scrit

headed to glendasan for a change and it turned into a good old school exploration of the masses of rock above the mining village. first tried problem lower down on slopes, from standing try and hold dirty sloper and move through to bottom of a crack, hard. sit start is all there but would be very hard. tried another one up amongst the crags which starts on great side pulls up to a frustratingly slopey break. sun shining directly on it made it very difficult but the rock was cleaner than lower. another lovely looking line involved a following a dwindling crack up a slab to a slopey highball top out, again the sun and fading tips meant i didn't risk the top properly. a few great looking slabs around but the rock type doesn't do them justice. an interesting lip traverse might be worth a revisit. finished on back in black a really brilliant line up a steep overhanging arete on textbook holds to a disturbingly difficult top out that i couldn't do.

on walk out had look at the problem to right of darkness but fingers were too burnt to give it a go, upper slopey section felt nails though.

tainted glove

after 2 nights in coop with beautiful clear skies outside i managed to cram in a lamp session on 3 rock after bodhran with bray. perfect night for bouldering, no wind, which would have killed us, cold feet an issue. did the usuals marvelled again at the mostly eliminate wonder of it all except principally for the last two on the tour. got my micro dyno pretty easily, 3rd time only methinks, the friction was frightening. threw toe up on central line once but wasn't overly pushed on it, pleased to hold swing on one go after foot came off, felt like a god. lovely venue for lamp session i reckon less than 2 hours round trip from the car when you're not with a world class route climber.