Friday 14 March 2008

Underestimation

It’s amazing just how wrong you can be. After spending 2 days bolting and cleaning the route, I figured I had a good Idea of how hard it would be as most of the holds seemed good and it didn’t seem so steep. 8a/+ (5.13b/c) was the armchair guess but when the time came to finally give it a go, I just about managed to haul my self to the anchors going bolt to bolt.

It felt really tough and there were two sections I couldn’t climb (one due to wet holds, the other was just damn hard). I think I could climb the bottom section (to the good rest) with a little work, but the top section, with its unclimbed crux, into a massive four point off dyno, into the unclimbed wet section, to some pumpy jugs and final boulder problem seems a little beyond me at this moment in time. Reaching the anchors, I felt defeated and couldn’t see myself climbing the route with my limited time left. I decided to strip the draws but was convinced by my friends to leave them in and try another day.

I hope that I was just tired from bolting etc and that it will seem much more amenable when I next get back on it. I just need to hope for some good weather to dry out the wet streaks, fingers crossed…

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