Good Bouldering :)

Tuesday, the weather was crap so me and Daf had a walk around Burbage North and Froggatt in search of dry rock, and to have a better look at some routes at Froggatt as i've never been there!! There is so much to do there and can't wait for a proper trip. Unfortunately we couldn't find much dry so we bailed to the ever-dry Stoney Middleton (again, new for me) which has been the home of hard eliminate bouldering since the 70s! Meaning it's rediculously polished - an advantage today as it meant i could try hard and keep what little skin i had left on my tips! We started by making up some of our own problems for a warm up and then looked at the guide for some of the classic eliminates. We did the Easy Dynos (ungraded in guide, about Font5+) and Lucian's Undercut Font7a, and flashed the unnamed Font 6c+ variation on it. Then I did another variation Zippy's Sidepull Font7b+ (A NEW PERSONAL BEST!! :D) which only took about 20 minutes! I really like this place! By now it was getting dark, so we got the headtorch out and continued playing :) Daf did The Double Double Font6c, a classic double dyno problem.

Wednesday, someone fixed the weather! :) We headed to Curbar where we warmed up on a few easy problems on the trackside boulder, then i managed Trackside Font7a, the classic of the boulder involving slapping up an arete and rocking onto a high heel in the bottom of a crack 2nd go! :) Daf had to try it the tall person method which looked harder and not as nice a sequence.
Then we moved over to Gorilla Warfare Font7a, another great problem, which only took about 3 tries :) There is a variation on the finish of Gorilla Warfare, Early Doors Font7a+. As it's a sort of traverse, I could try the different finish moves in isolation and did them 1st go, but even after about 4 tries i failed to link it from the start - just missing the top crimp by a few centimetres each time! Then I did the striking highball arete unnamed Font6b onsight.
Then we went to do some routes on the main edge, i was really wanting revenge on the classic L'Horla E1 5b which when i tried it ages ago spat me off due to frozen hands (1st trad fall??). This time it was much more fun! Then we both onsight soloed Pretty Face E1 5b, and Daf lead Grey Face VS 5a. Then i tried to onsight solo Plaything which had the crux at the top and gave me a very scary couple of minutes as I couldn't continue up or down! In the end i managed to escape into the wide chimney on the other side of the arete... SHIT!! I decided to boost my confidence again by soloing the much easier (and much better) Bel Ami VS 4b, which gives nice laybacking up to a midheight stance and an exposed climb up the tower, to give a proper summit top out. Half way up the layback (a little green) both my feet slid down unexpectedly, almost spitting me off. Another scare! On a 4b?! I think thats enough for today... I belayed Daf up the (apparently) superb Peapod HVS 5b but it was almost dark and i still didn't feel up to climbing, so he abbed back down to stip the gear.
Wont be soloing again for a while i think! Will stick to bouldering and sport climbing, with some safe trad.

My fingers are very pink!! I've got two rest days to look forward to :) No excuses for doing no revision, i was only supposed to have 1 week off!

Matt