Monday 5 March 2012

Rematch With The Roaches

After a weekend mostly spent cooking and eating outrageously lardy things (cheesy beef hash, jerk chicken pie and a black cherry crumble cheesecake, mmmm), the forecast for Monday was much too good to let the lack of a partner stop me from getting out. So I returned to the Roaches for a rematch after last Monday's rainy debacle.

As hoped the boulders were out of the chill wind and the sun was out, but the temperature was a fair bit warmer than I was expecting, so the conditions weren't totally optimal for maximum crushage, but they were very pleasant indeed.



Bearing in mind my general tendency to get a nosebleed when more than 6" off the ground when bouldering on my own, I mostly stuck to easy problems. Luckily there are loads of those at the Roaches, and I racked up about 30 V0/V1s without finding any of them too unduly taxing. I also bumped into a few friendly folks who offered me beta and spotting on Three Pocket Slab (which I more or less flashed after an initial look-see at the eponymous pockets), and Joe's Arete (which I got on the 3rd go, after realising that I couldn't reach the top without letting go with both hands and totally committing to the dyno). I was pretty pleased with getting those two without having to resort to a protracted siege, as they've both been on my unwritten ticklist of classic Peak V3/font 6as for a while.

Less pleasing was the lovely cut visited upon my right middle finger by Don's Crack (probably from a singularly vicious crystal placed there by the man himself) which caused me to bleed a slightly distressing amount, and forced me to tape my fingers into near-uselessness. I also shinned myself rather cripplingly on the glossy start of Flakes And Chips. But other than those debilitating injuries, and a couple of inglorious failures on what ought to have been easy moves (I'm blaming the warm weather) it was a pretty ace day. It feels a bit more like the rock climbing year is getting going at last. It also feels like I should start falling off more V4s and V5s. Best get my skillz hat on...


Somebody fetch me a surgeon...

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