Luckily for me, the strongest man in Merseyside was keen to hit the grit and with his generous van space, we could load in pads until we got bored!
Tuesday 9th March
After a brief word with the Honeymonster, we headed to Stanage and warmed up on the excellent hourglass block where I schooled him on a slab to take round 1 ;)
Over to Brad and luckily there was a bit of a breeze coming through on the right which kept things cool enough to not feel like we were squeezing blocks of butter. We both had a few goes limbering up the left leg a bit until the heel placement was easy. Dave made fast progress in catching the left hand over but struggled to get the heel to stay in place when trying to crank over it and balance.
I made no headway whatsoever trying to go left hand over and felt really bunched/off balance with this method.
40 mins later and Dave was consistently pissing the first 2 moves but getting no further with a bit of an ache in his right shoulder before the fatigue set in. I decided to change approach and managed to go right hand up really easily and hold this position a couple of times but struggled to match as I didn't leave much space for my left hand and my skin was getting a bit too thin...
Honeymonster showed up and pissed the first 2 moves just failing to match the ramp! Then it was downhill progress, so we went round the corner to try The Storm.
It felt like the living end to me as I kept wetting up the holds, so wrote off the day and let them get on with it. Steve got really close a couple of times but Dave suffered the butter skin too.
We moved once more uphill to find Help The Aged guarded by a snow trench, rigged up some interesting pad arrangement and then proceeded to punter until I realised it was easier to hang it and just campus as opposed to using a left toe on anything. Before I could get it in the bag my skin went even worse and I gave up after sledging downhill on the pad for a few metres taking out a few bags and downjackets en route!
It was time for Merseyside's strongest to put me back in my place and he monstered it. Honeymonster then caught the hold but decided to step on to the cornice behind and invalidate it, grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.
Wednesday 10th March
The weather was looking a bit iffy as we drove out of the grimy town of Huddersfield but as we turned towards Otley there were blue skies and sunshine was breaking through the clouds!
The warmup was good fun messing about on the slabs downhill from the Great Flake and I was chuffed to show Merseyside's strongest how to slab climb by doing the full traverse L->R (All this cave training and I still seem to be better on slabs than anything overhanging!).
We did the fantastic chickenhead problems and the scary wall to the left above the shit landing. I didn't fancy standing on tiny pebbles in my Mocc's so dynoed up to the fingerjam with Dave looking on in horror. He then repeated in fine style by actually using his feet!
Up the hill and into the shade, the rock felt so much better than my last trip up here with Matty D. We fully patiod the area with about 8 mats and Ben's Groove became a safe prospect.
A couple of warmup goes on the first move and I managed to hold the crossover, get the pocket out right, left foot up and then rocked into the high sidepull but my foot was too low and I slid down the vertical sidepull to the deck. Next go and I brought my left hand over to match near the pocket, got the left foot higher and this time had the height to utilise the sidepull. I fearfully sketched my way up to the top. What an amazing problem.
I mocked Dave's lucky Dragon charm off Steve... 'Rich 1, lucky dragon nil', then he fully crushed it next go to retain his crown. Steve kept pissing the first moves but didn't seem to fancy the top bit so we moved right to Secret Seventh.
The holds felt sharp on my super thin skin and we were not making much progress till suddenly I found the right body position, went static with the right hand to the pinch and then dragged my right toe across the wall to slow everything down, floated up the left toe on to the obvious nubbin and started rocking up. I was about to release the left hand off the grim slopey crimp when it decided to remove itself and I hit the mats hard with a numb left hand and lots of blood! I had torn the whole left little pinkie pad off and it was flowing.
It took a while to stem the flow then tape it up tightly. We were all suffering a bit from bad skin so moved over to Ju Ju Club. Dave and Steve managed to remember the top out and I got this ok on the 2nd attempt from matched on the good holds. It took a few minutes of us swinging out on to the pads before I found the sweet spot for the right foot to clamp under the roof and I could get out matched with ease. One casual attempt saw me lose all body tension and fail on the move up to the first sloper. I retaped the finger properly and then got it done with a bit of a scream on the final slap to make sure! Another class problem.
We decided to bail with aching arms and poor skin all round and had a brief chat to Dobbin as he warmed up near Fork Lightning Crack. He said he was on his way up to try link Zoo York, we wished him luck and then Crawled back to Merseyside in a long queue of traffic!
It was quite good to get out two days in a row on the grit and to climb 2 great problems. It almost felt like I was getting used to climbing on this devil's rock and could do with another session next week to get the skin roughed up and ready for font on the 20th!
