Anvil battling continues

More blood spilt at the Anvil yesterday in persuit of nails hard projects. Above is Dave Redpath's hand, ripped up after getting ever closer on the Heavy Metal project. My extremely irritating hole in my index finger only allowed me to warm up before splitting again. Al's super glue saved me from having to fully sit it out on a day of perfect conditions and sunshine. But with all the splitter inforced rest this week I have lost the edge (and a bit more!) off my endurance and didn't even regain my highpoint on the roof project. I always try to find something positive even if it's been a bad day, and I did get very close to the highpoint despite wobbling like a fool through the lower section which last week I could path. I also ran an experiment the night before to see if I could still drink a moderate amount of alcohol and still climb well the following day. Not possible! Two pints of beer, not even finished was enough to take a full grade off my ability.

Alan Cassidy dispatching Spitfire, which was seen off shortly afterwards by another man with big muscles; Robin Sutton. With 4 ascents now the route has finally seen its formal upgrade to 8a+.

Beautiful clear spring air looking across to Carrick Castle. The arete on the left is Anvilfire 7c+, already upgraded once because noone has managed to repeat it yet. Come on guys, get on that one next time and we can see if it's creeping towards 8a??

Back to reality

Return of the westerly winds of friction, but it didn't make any difference!

Spring is great when the fresh westerlies return - sunshine, clear air and nice ambience

Today was back to my normal climbing experience - getting slapped by the desperateness of my project. I got a little excited by getting over my mental block on the big dyno at the end. I did the move again and it felt ok. Now all I need to do is climb another 25 moves into it! The mental block came from 2 things - taking a bad fall, nearly breaking my nose and dislocating my pinky. And also because the harder I try to resist the wild swing the more I can feel my skin ripping on the tiny spike for my left. I was feeling stronger again after three days rest to recover split tips. But seems like my fears on the spike were justified as I split my tip once again on this hold and it was game over for another day (and the next two).

So, back to plasters and office work until the weekend, and worrying about loss of endurance for the Anvil project. Hopefully one handed fingerboarding until Saturday will restore some sense of not being a couch potato. I need to save the frustration to unleash on the Anvil roof on Sat...

Its down to the last one now!!!!

Chahala sit start, Font 8a. first ascent, Dumbarton Rock. (photos: Claire MacLeod)

Last week's project; Set in Motion, Font 7c+

Another couple of Dumbarton bouldering projects have gone down this week, so its just the 'big yin' left to go. Latest to go was the very steep arete SS to Chahala, a well known project that a good few of us had played on over the years. I never really tried it until last week, but it surprised me by being much easier than expected and went in a couple of days. So Dumby has another classic Font 8a which is sure to get a lot of attention. Much foot clamping, as with so many of the rock's hard problems is the order of the day. The other wee one was a SS to Tam's route. A wee font 7a slap off a small undercut.

My new lighter frame is now too weak to climb the finishing moves of my one remaining project, so a couple of sessions have yielded a gangly skinny malink sequence with less burly jumping across the roof and more inching and horizontal shuffling instead. It adds an extra 4 moves where I used to just jump in one, so god knows how it'll feel on the link??

A small hurdle in my way has occurred after I split my finger open climbing over a fence yesterday. It's unbelievable how a tiny cut in your fingertip can interfere so much with a full on climbing schedule. It's hanging in there just now and hopefully ready for the Anvil weekend raid. I'm off for some beauty sleep to grow a nice strip of new skin cells on my index finger tip that might just be the key to a new F8c????

Aberdeen

Finishing 'Kayla' on the Portlethen boulders (Photos by Stuart Stronach)

After yesterday's coaching in the north east, I had ten minutes at the end of the day to do a little bouldering before jumping on the train back home. We were at Portlethen and so I jumped on the hardest problem there; Kayla, a problem I'd heard much about in the climbing media and was keen to try. I wasn't exactly sure of the exact line on the headwall and if an underut on the left of a line of crimpers was 'in', so figured I better not use it. After a few minutes Stuart annouced it was time to leave and run for the train so I had to do the problem there and then or not at all! There's nothing like a deadline to galvanise your effort.

It turns out the undercut is allowed so I guess I did a slighty more direct variation just using the crimps at about Font 7c. The venue is quite small but it was good to see an active scene with lots of climbers dotting about with mats, and a crazy dog doing a sisyphyus impression by trying to push a barrel up the shore repeatedly.

Holmfirth talk - doh!

If you were planning to come along to my lecture in Holmfirth on thursday, sorry! The organisers had to cancel it. Bit of a bummer but unavoidble I'm afraid. If you already got a ticket then give the crag rats a call to get your cash back!

apologies...

Anvil day 4

The long morning walk and psyche up again

Downfall from the final move of the roof project

Iain Hutchinson on Amateur Hacker 6c, a rather balancy bit of climbing!

Chris Boutell on Way out West 6b

Iain on Hammertime 7b+

Iain about to complete Hammertime 7b+

Redpath's elbow turning slowly out above the crux of the Heavy Metal project

Resting arms but destroying my toes on my roof project

Rested and going for it! Well actually I was still pumped solid, but going for it anyway...

Closer still on the big roof line at the Anvil... touched the good hold on the end of a big dyno... but didn't hold it. The belay is one move further. Work will prevent any visits until next weekend. Until then!

If Redpath's shoulders get any wider they'll have to widen the forestry track down Loch Goil, but the training seems to be helping him stick the huge moves on his project with increasing regularity, with power screams that scare off the local sheep.

Iain seemed to enjoy the fingery Hammertime, but pointed out some sandbag grades for the other routes. Shadowlands is leaning towards 7c now. I wonder what he would have thought of Spitfire, the hardest 8a in the west?

Anvil project day 3

Today's highpoint on the Anvil roof... yes, above the last bolt. A good place to get to, but a bad place to know you have to return to many more times. Such is the routine of sport climbing. Tomorrow hopefully I'll be back staring at those last two hard moves at least three times...

Stunning today; sunshine perfect temps, sleeping in the sun between attempts. A huge contrast to yesterday's 14 hours in front of the screen working. need to go and get some more hours work done into the night to justify tomorrow's climbing...

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