So yeh, its been a while since the last blog update! We've both been pretty busy working hard, so not too much to report on the climbing front. I've been doing Rope Access work the last couple of months with work in Manchester, Isle of White and Reading and Ed's been busy on staff training days with his main sponsor Sherpa. We have managed to get out a bit on the weekends though.
A few weekends ago I did my first trad route in quite a while, with a flash of the awesomely steep Painted Rumour (E6 6a) at the Roaches. Its a route I've wanted to do for quite a while as its just a huge gritstone roof, with some scary yarding to an awkward hands off rest in a hole and then an exposed finale pulling onto the headwall. I used a slightly dodgy tactic of tieing down the sling on the flake which looked pretty stupid but thats what I was told everyone does to stop it falling off! Anyway, everything went smoothly.
Then a couple of weekends ago we were down at Rubicon where the conditions were incredible for this time of year! So with out wasting any time I got stuck into the classic peak route Zeke the Freak (8b). I had tried the route before on a couple of occassions but it had never felt do able. Anyway this time it was bone dry and cold! And so quite unexpectedly managed to send it pretty quickly. Classic Peak crimping!
Starting up the massive roof
Pulling over onto the headwall
Dodgy looking tied off rope on flake!
Waddage from last month
Milking the rest after chimes belay
Big ass move high up
Success! Happy times
(Cheers Michael Bate for the shots!)
