Preopsterous Tales

If I took you blow by blow through the last few weeks this would be a very long post indeed and to be honest I can't be bothered and I'm fairly sure anyone reading this can't be bothered either so I'll be brief and stick to the highlights.

Firstly, I can't believe its taken me this long to remember another aspect of climbing that is so enjoyable. Furthermore I can't believe that I've been climbing for this long without being dragged in some way shape or form towards the bottom end of wales.

Before leaving the forecast looked, lets just say; British. A quick check of other euro-destinations showed the South of France to look incredible. Somehow I held my nerve and decided we'd go to Pembroke.

Basically, we worked our way through our tick list (courtesy of UKB regulars) and rarely strayed from the Rockfax top 50. The tone was set early buy ensuring Riders on't storm was the first route we got on and the second was Bloody Sunday. The leap is fantastic and I can't see myself from running out of challenges down there anytime soon!

I was absolutely shocked when I abbed in down the Monster Face (it looked wet, it wasn't) to find Keith and Mule underneath Minotaur. We both respectively set off on different minor epics. When I got a little lost I asked Nat where the belay was. She promptly picked up the guide, read a different route description and sent me off on what turned out to be an interesting linkup of most routes within the central section.

We made it to Mowing Word and all the way up to St. Davids, which whilst a nice setting, seemed a litte boring compared to the more imposing routes at Pembroke south.

I've been trying fairly hard to work through the grades and try and build myself a somewhat solid trad head/foundation with which to build on and its going fine. Nat seems able to follow happily up to about E3 as long as the route isn't too steep but on our next visit the going WILL get tougher. I've got a few routes in North Wales I'd really like to get on this season and hopefully a few more in Pembroke and one on High Tor. If these all get ticked then I'll be happy and my short term goal will be ticked/realised/sent.

All-in-all my head seemed pretty solid up until the last day. A few too many in the St. Govans left me with the hangover from hell and the smell of fear (or maybe beer?) escaping from me at every possible point. Abbing into a calm, almost serene Mother Careys I inexplicably became intimidated by my chosen routes and tried to find every excuse under the sun to avoid them. That was until a little voice clicked and after bitching at Natalie for what was clearly my head issues we got sorted and had a whale of a time on the almight Zeppelin. The territory is outrageous (a bit like Rock Idol on steroids) and the climbing fantastic. It would have been a little better if there hadn't been a communication error that left me off belay for a moment on a less than solid finish.

The weather was generally kind to us but as the tides starting playing up a shower had us packing up and heading North for what turned out to be a lot of driving for a day trip to Tremadog. Twas a successful trip however. Nat did her first lead, the first pitch of Christmas Curry shortly followed by her second, the final pitch of vector (namely one step in the clouds).

Sorry if this is all a bit vague, there's a lot to cover.

Other highlights include over filling my coleman stove, pressurising it and priming it which then led to it heating up and forcing petrol out of the filler cap. This then took light and a self perpetuating petrol fire ensued.

I had a mission trying to get on Mother night. The stake seems to have disappeared thus making the rockfax high tide access descriptions no longer valid. I still tried. Raining blocks down on myself, lowering in and then top roping out of 'Just Klingon' to pull into the final groove, a bit pissed off and quite pumped to be chucked up at/on by a Fulmar. Two washes later and my trousers still have the tell tale oily stain.

My old cams ceased due to the sea air, an obvious sign that they needed some TLC.

...and naturally we went for 'Preposterous Tales' only to find someone had taken a shit down the exiting chimney. Nice. This would make for a good DWS for the first two pitches should anyone fancy it. After that you could easily reverse it and finish up high life.

As Nat has taken a new job she finishes in Wakefield on Tues leaving her another 12 days off before she starts in Leeds. Currently its destination unknown but its not as if Pembroke isn't a strong contender after this trip.

Nightmare of Brown Donkeys

The irony continues this week as once again my good lady is further North than usual and I am armed with four wheels and yet unable to use them with an impending deadline this Thurs.

The weekend wasn't looking too great further afield and over the phone I crumbled and agreed to her family popping in for dinner (a long way from Watford, non?) one evening either Fri or Sat. They plumped for Sat and on waking in the morning after sampling some local ales at the Riverside, it was plain to see that the flat wasn't going to be in an acceptable state to have guests if we went climbing. Reluctantly we both sorted the mess out and vowed to be more organised next time, with me silently cursing my moment of weakness.
The evening itself went off fairly well, her mother deposited some matching cushions (I shit you not) for the van made out of scraps from the upholstering. Leaving it too late again we scrounged a table at Zeugma 2 for what turned out to be a frustratingly average meal and one of the first her family have let us pick up the tab for.
Sunday came and I'd like to say we jumped out of bed and got going bright and early. The reality of it is Natalie woke early and I slept like the student that I am. After midday I surfaced, ate and plotted a course to Matlock.
Ever since abbing in to High Tor the first time I've eyed up the lines that break out of the Castellan cave, they breach some impressive territory and I can remember thinking on more than one occasion that it was unlikely I'd ever have the balls to do any of them.
After consulting the guide it turned out that many not so desperate routes forge their way through this steep ground. Circumnavigating the steepness with devious lines. Nightmare of Brown Donkeys (sadly I've not been dreaming about an ethnic neurotic version of the wonder mule, or is it the paragliding mule? You never know these days) was the route of choice. Mainly picked for line but backed up by stars and a recommendation from Mr. Littlefair. What I should have learnt by now (but sadly I haven't), is that Natalie is very happy to follow me up anything I should choose (that puts a sensible cap on it anyway!). However, if there is any form of sideways component to the route, she instantly becomes unhappy, and 'touchy', not to mention her movement slowing to a glacial pace.
The ab went fine although some fat b*gger has removed the spiky foothold I use to get past the first bit. All that remains is a brown hole where it once was. Abbing the line I pulled in on various bits of tat to ensure I had a fighting chance of ending up in the Castellan cave and thus avoiding the first pitch of loose VS crap that is skylight. Success was had and I was glad to be in the cave as Natalie rained down a block or two whilst abbing in. Good skills.
The first pitch is pretty fun leading you out of the cave on the RHS along the lower break to a stance below the groove.
Following this is one or two tricky (slightly bold) pulls into a dirty crack after which you climb up until you see a large peg, down climb a bit and then try and fathom whereabouts you actually turn the corner to the obvious ledge on Laurin. This took a while as there wasn't any chalk, and more to the point, there wasn't much for your feet. Especially if you've been an idiot and are now suffering the consequences of breaking in new boots in the most undesirable manner. After what was likely an age I found the traverse line and scrabbled my way across to the ledge via a piece of tat that looked bomber. Looking rightwards my error was clear; tat may look good on the outside but sure enough the bit inside the rock is probably not that confidence inspiring (exposed core and not much of it). A breather was had before eyeing up the various bits of tat, snapped bolts and wooden blocks and opting to belay under the big roof (not advised in the guide). Once again this had so much rotten tat that it was hard to pass my sling through the fair sized pocket in the back of the birds nest.
At this point my earlier identified issue came into play. Nat struggled with the initial pull into the groove, fought her way up to the peg then rat crimped her way over to the ledge looking non to happy. At the belay I gave her the option of backing off (I'd managed to lean out and grab the ab line on the aforementioned ledge and trailed it with (I really thought she'd want off at this point). My offer was met with a resounding "NO!" so once again the ab line was freed to hang in space.
The next, and final pitch has to be one of the finest positions I've climbed in thus far in the UK. Traversing on undercuts and poor feet underneath a roof to its edge and then making some fantastic moves around it and into a groove above. Sadly this is where my delight ended. Rock quality from hereon was poor to say the least and each path I attempted to leave the groove left me on holds that seemed more inclined to part company with the rock than I care for! Lower turned out to be the way, with an old peg marking the path that some fool must have picked out many moons ago.
At the top, boots off, life returning to my toes ever so gradually, Natalie began what was to be an entertaining pitch. Having placed two runners fairly early on the traverse, the first easily visible, the second somewhat buried, I made sure to explain that if needs be she should clip into the first bit, lean across to strip the second and then unclip from the first, remove it and continue. This almost registered but not in its entirety. From what I gather, she did indeed clip into the first, and then succeed to remove the second. However, she failed to remember to unclip from the first and thus began a process of moving the nut and then re-weighting it in exhaustion. This process was repeated until the inevitable happened; she'd moved it enough that it wasn't good enough to sit on. A little shriek later (enough to stop walkers down by the road), a lot of cursing, and a quick top rope of a dirty (harder) route and she was into the joyful world of loose rock for which I was blamed.
On summiting a quick glance at my mobile showed that it'd taken us a whopping 5 hours. I still can't quite fathom where the time went but considering you can get a meaningful value in mm per minute and that people climb El Cap in less time it was seriously slow.

(I really wish I had a compact to carry on routes like this)

Wet and Dry

As Nat is away this week and next the aim was to get out as much as possible and do very little work. However, next week I have a rather large progress meeting and this simply isn't possible. I'm starting to get very disillusioned with my studies as a lot of the time I feel I'm scratching around in the dust looking for something of novel interest. Add to this that I struggle to justify the increasing complexities of my models; they don't give better results (in fact they're arguably worse) and computationally they take much longer. Currently I have around 18 all queued up on various university accounts. Each one takes 160 hours on the grid computing system I have access to. Thats a lot, althought not as bad as an earlier one which took nigh on 28 days of iterations, night and day.
Due to this, I didn't leave the office until after 8 today and made it to the Foundry by about half past. A brief hello on the way in made me a few minutes later and by the time I'd finished re-filling chalk and lacing on my new pair of boots it wasn't that far off 9.
I hate time-pressured sessions in or out. There's so much risk that you either won't warm up enough, or you'll warm up too quickly and ruin what little time you have etc. Thankfully tonight I did none of these things and the session felt very like a good (dare I say it?) School session. The wave is a great wall, even to this day I've never come across a wall thats as good at introducing steep footwork and power in a realistic manner, granted the feet are always going to be a bit bigger than when out but its not bad is it?
Anyhow, I climbed well and with little rest. I felt powerful but more importantly I seemed to be moving well (which is a good feeling). I think there's something to this getting out lark?

Unfortunately something tonight really boiled my piss. Talking to someone whose name I really ought to know by now (I don't), the conversation drifted to Kilnsey and I made mention of the recent changes in condition seemingly overnight to which he laughed. He then made a fly-away comment about how 'his mate' had been bragging that he was going to post a false 'wet' conditions report. Now if this is the case I think its fairly off. People base their (treasured) weekends/evenings/days-off on the information supplied by freinds and the good people of UKB trusting them to be accurate with maybe a little pinch of salt thrown in for the needlessly pessimsitic (*cough*). To undermine this system in such a manner seems to me needlessly selfish, maybe it secured a quiet crag, maybe it was just for fun but personally I don't find it very funny.

Thats all a bit heavy so feel free to click on the recent Flickr uploads link for a laugh. If anyone is interested (which I'm sure they're not) I'm keen to get a piccie of someone on powerband using rim lights etc. Recently I flicked onto the Beastyboys channel and saw some of Mark S's recent off-camera flash and thought I'd stop neglecting mine and aim to use them in a climbing context. Which as until now (apart from an indoor shot:

at the works), I've failed to do. I wasn't really happy with that one either, can't put my finger on exactly why. Maybe 'cos its shit.

Unleashing the dank physique

The cornice certainly won today...

The clean routes were unaffected by this recent spell of poor weather. The less clean stuff wasn't and was hanging onto moisture to the bitter end.
After nearly punching myself in the face a few times on undercuts and then becoming airborne in a blink of an eye. My best boots split with a giant smile rendering them useless.
After this performance I'd run out of excuses why not to get on something tricky. Monumental was clearly going to be too much and a little damp, K3 and RNP appealed but something a bit more left field, featuring the word 'technical' appealed the most. Unleashing the wild physique seems to follow a fantastic line (or it looks too from the ground), the climbing is thin and technical with some finishing spice. Its at a bit more of an ameanable grade than the other routes on my list (although in my estimation it sits fairly high in this boundary).
Anyway I had a brief crack, which rapidly turned to bolt to bolting (wearing a ruined pair of dragons). To be brutally honest I found it quite hard. The bottom is easy, the top is ok but very fluff-able, the middle is thin and very fluff-able. My sequence doesn't seem perfect but a quick chat with Carl suggested I make a few adjustments that retrospectively make sense.
Typing this, my middle finger aches. I'm a little worried, with little over a week before the big hol I don't really want to re-injure my finger. It might be worth backing off just ever so slightly until afterwards.
Cordless Madness looked good from above and has been added to 'the list'.

Tor'd

Another of the 'excuse routes' went down the other day and just as I was about to get on the last remaining one it was snatched from beneath my gaze by an eager clipstick. To be fair, I was knackered from the previous evening and having done an awful lot of mileage in the last week, I wanted a rest day.
Saturdays weather didn't offer an easy choice of weekend destination so we stayed in the Peak. We didn't get going quickly either. Some time in the afternoon we plumped for High Tor and drove through on and off sunshine and rain all the way to Matlock. At the top it was windy so we sat (and bickered) wasting time. If we were both honest, neither of us were feeling the psych.
The clouds parted and after pointing a nearby walker in what I now know was completely the wrong direction (oops, thankfully not off the cliff), we bit the bullet and abbed in. Darius was what I wanted having thought I'd followed it a good few years ago with a Mr. Bell (namedrop alert). That day we didn't have a guide just a local climber who obviously didn't know what on earth he pointed us at. The route I did on Saturday was not the same and considerably easier. I remember starting up a hanging groove which had a large bit of tat hanging from a peg with a ring (which was split) and then belaying off on the right somewhere on a very large (4" diameter) round 'peg' which was folded behind a flake, does anyone know what this might have been? I'm pretty sure we finished on the final pitch of Debauchery.
Anyway, this time we did have a guide, and to be fair, the line is bleeding obvious. Its good too. We split the pitch for a few reasons and I have to say it took me a good long time to find a decent stance between the miriad of shit pegs on perseus. My nutkey, some digging and threading came good and I was happy. (For all of the purists out there I made sure I went back down onto the original line as not to miss out any of the hard climbing.
Higher up on the crux move, (certainly the nicest move?), I managed to f*ck up my ropes. This was clearly going to lead to a lot of drag and a pain in my ass so I had great fun reversing the cross hands manouevre back to the bolt (another question, why is there a bolt right next to a bomber thread?). After this the climbing is piss but the territory steepens a little. Nat didn't like this, especially when removing her knuckles to retrieve a wire.
Sunday was spent at high tor again, this time Perseus featuring on the agenda and some serious scoping of the routes right of Flaky wall (this looks fantastic by the way).
This week and the next she's up in Newcastle, leaving me to live the climbing bachelor lifestyle (wifebeater vest; check), complete with van. The problem is I've got a massive progress meeting a week on Thurs and a few unexpected twists and turns has left me a little pushed for time. I can do the work easily enough IF it'll converge in time. It seems a waste not to make the most of this time but sadly its looking like I might have to scrounge what little climbing I can between bouts of hard work.
This evening was spent on the wave (what a wall!). I was expecting to get absolutely spanked but gladly I felt fairly strong and even better I seemed to be moving and twisting in all the right ways.

Two weeks to holiday time. Just made a ticklist and it amounts to 60 routes in North Wales alone.

Seriously Sloe

I thought I'd finally collared a belayer for the spider later last week but he escaped at the last minute leaving me as another tag along to the Cornice. I've never really trained stamina and never really felt the need to as it seems to come quite quickly at the start of the sport climbing season proper after a few frustrating sessions of flailing.
Having now learnt how to climb at the Cornice a little better and having the numbers on almost anything that could be classed as a warmup I've been well poised to get a bit fitter by ticking routes I've never been on and getting them wired so when it does become the time to get stuck in I'll be ready.
That time is vastly approaching. Tues I spent at the Cornice, twice. I'd agreed to go out in the evening with somebody and then a better offer came a long for an early start to mid afternoon. I took both which resulted in doing 10 laps up and down. Some of those were doubles but not all and led me to believe I was getting a little fitter.

Random old photo of Nemesis to break up this mass of jibber jabber. Taken Sept '05!!!.

August is rapidly approaching and I'm aware that another good weekend of weather (although the forecast wasn't that way) was lost to sorting the last bits and bobs on the van. Apart from one 'maybe' task, its done and I have to say a big thanks to everyone thats lent a hand and for abuse of Nats' parents hospitality and tool'age. Worryingly enough it seems like far too long since I required my nuts, I'd rather have my head in the right place before our two weeks begin rather than feeling I lose a few days getting into the groove. We have 16 days, I wonder how much climbing we'll get in? (My mind has been thinking of viable backup alternatives should the UK ressist with a wet fortnight).
Yesterday was meant to be the cornice again but an achey belayer bailed on me. It was probably a good thing too as tonight I went and felt a little creaky. Maybe I'm not 'quite' as fit as I was hoping. Nat joined me tonight after work and got stuck into War Memorial (after a few cams were placed for the ending spice). She frustrated me greatly by putting in a valiant effort, flailing at the bulge and then walking up to the belay and then, not getting back on? Much bickering ensued, mostly from my side. Although, she has developed a new style of belaying. I like to refer to it as emotional belaying. I won't go into detail, but its not ideal.
I did a few routes but annoyingly couldn't seem to get on the ONE route I was hoping for. There was a serious man in-situ, not very talkitive and who broke out his protein post redpoint. Laughably another less serious man chose to break out the Sloe Gin. As ever my wishlist is expanding at an unstoppable rate. This can only be a good thing right? It is an indicator of psych. The main issue will be when I have to pick something meaty (oh look at that, pick on vegans Friday already?). I've got a few more excuses (this is the river and the other line into it) for staying away from the burl or the tech but they won't last long, a couple of sessions at best (worst?). Then I'm lost:

Unleashing looks fantastic.
K3 - tempting but every man and his dog seems to be on this one route, queing isn't fun
RnP - supposedly better?
and the big one...
Monumental - it looks fantastic

Other things on the list are:
Spider
Lockless - hopefully a quick affair?
HFC - this should be done and is grating away at me

I wouldn't mind swinging around the main roof at Kilnsey either, if only for an onsight blast as I'm sure the frigging will get tiring in more than a few ways. The chances of me getting on, let alone completing all of these routes is slim to none. The spider can wait until later in the season and HFC will be avoided until I know for certain it'll get done instantly, another day spent on that and I will lose the will to live. BUT, the Cornice needs full appreciation while its in condition.

Being a complete amateur, my boots are now well and truly ruined. I've got one pair of ok ish dragons, a new pair and an ill fitting pair of verde's. This needs rectifying in some way between now and holiday.

Right better go, funnily enough I'm at the Cornice tomorrow.

Van Conv.

Can't be bothered to insert all of the tags for the recent conversion pics. If you're interested they're here:

http://bit.ly/bN48l4

Got offered a years secondmant today in Stuttgart. Anyone know of the climbing situation Jura/Pfalz both two hours away?