Friday night came and pessimistic Paul reared his ugly head. I went to the foundry. I found most people down there to be proclaiming the forecast incredible and they couldn't believe they had to visit their Gran/work/take the car in etc. I warmed up slowly and kept explaining my fruitless day on the grit earlier in the week. My cries of melt water and ice did nothing to dampen their impressions of the forecast and so in an unprecedented move I took off my boots, and headed home (without pulling hard at all).
The morning came and I wasted a tonne of texts finding out what was in condition. Nothing seemed perfect so I headed to Robin Hood's and Cratcliffe.
We warmed up on the chipped arete boulder. Jackpot! Conditions were incredible and I promptly phoned my mate James to gloat. After we were both warm (and I was bleeding from 3 knuckles after a moment of sheer stupidity) I remarked "I'll just go and do Jerry's Arete quickly before we venture on"...
*Tantrum*
Yes, despite my best efforts I couldn't claw my ass up it which was quite frankly dismaying given 3 years ago I nearly flashed it and then did it second go. I convinced myself I had the sequence wrong (I didn't) and wasted ages on it before it finally dawned on me; maybe conditions weren't very good down here in the trees. In fact, it turned out that conditions were fairly poo everywhere other than the first boulder we climbed on...Thank f*ck for that otherwise I'd be metaphorically hanging my boots up (that one's for Ben).
At Cratcliffe it was much the same. We did a few things but it all felt a little damp and I was very aware that climbing on wet grit is very bad practice so we called it a day. Not quickly enough as Nat managed to fall off and stamp my hand onto a nearby boulder. I ran around for a few minutes like you do exhaling loudly. The next day it was swollen and very sore!
Not quite as sore as James' ankle. The plonker fell of great white on his best go yet and dislocated his ankle on the mats. After picking him up from the Hallamshire Nat and I braved Meadowhell for Christmas purposes, it wasn't nice but it was needed.
His ankle is much better just a few days on. Being stubborn he's walking on it a lot and pretending it isn't hurting at all.
Right time to be off, Nat is arriving back at the station from her works Christmas do. It could be interesting...
3 comments:
More details of the tantrum please ;)
Climbing on grit (much like climbing on limestone come to think about it) is about good knowledge and picking the right crag. On the same day you had bad conditions at RHS Dan V did Superbloc, Ryan put up a new 7C at Stanage, Mike Adams ground upped Ulysees, Andy Jennings ground upped Silk and I'm sure lots of other people had equally good days. On a day like Sat the good conditions were clearly going to be at the end of the day.
If you start proceedings thinking 'is grit worth it?' you're pretty much garueteed to get the answer you expect.
Fair point, my knowledge of these crags is a lot worse than the Lime, hence why I hassle you every Sat morning to ask about conditions. On sat you did however confirm that our destination seemed sensible, and I can pretty much say that it wasn't worth the drive.
On that same day I bumped into Tim (strong guy?) who had come from the roaches etc. and found that all to be cr*p.
The previous day that was cr*p the only place in good condition was the tor and nobody else wanted to go, a full day off with a seemingly perfect weather forecast and f*ck all got done, thats my problem with grit.
The main issue for me is that i'm due to leave for Font in a weeks time for a fortnight. I want to be in decent shape and days wasted driving around all over the peak just seem to go against this. Especially when you add in the fact that every day I choose to go out climbing I effectively choose not to be productive work wise on that day. Theres only a certain number of days I can afford to do that and now I'm feeling like i've not really achieved anything on the grit and I've really pushed the chances of me being at the point where I need to be within my work for Xmas (my sims are taking literally 10x longer to run than expected).
I am trying very hard to be optimistic about the Grit and you'll have to now concede that I make more of an effort to try and go out when the easy option would be to bail to a board somewhere.
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