Friday 26th
Trip 1 was a strange Boxing Day morning out to Craig Y Longridge with The Mills and Donnelly, quite a strong crimping team to let loose on such a venue. As we approached the village we noticed the speed cameras had been wrapped up in christmas paper with a fancy bow on top, most quaint! We did a few laps of some random country roads until Matt had some sort of clarity of mind and remembered where to go!
On arrival, it was cold as anything, I decided to drink coffee whilst Matt and Tom started doing shuttle runs along the crag in a synchronised effort. This spurred me into action and I managed a lap there and back before being out of breath... strong start (I really will have to address this cardio issue next year)
The warmup was frantic and powerful, doing big moves between lots of juggy crimps and then moving on to the real action. It took about 6 goes to do the first hard warmup problem of the Gauntlet, a reet sandbag at V5. Big Marine got a quick crush using 2 different methods and then Fertile Delta got the flash treatment, nice. We contrived a sequence for the sitter and myself or Matt really should have finished it off when going for the 2nd to last move into the gaston but the sun was making everything a little greasy.
We finished shortly after failing to reach the first hold on some jump problem (we tried stacking 4 pads and still failed to make this Olympian reach!). Maybe some form of NBA 40inch standing jumps would have been of use?!
On the way back we were accosted by Longridge's finest local ladies dressed as Disney characters, with a charity bucket in 1 hand and a pint in the other, classy! We quickly slung a fake £1 coin into said bucket (that we had aquired from the Mersey Tunnel toll) and sped down the road just catching the sound of shocked cries behind us, of having been tricked by a car of strong scouse crushers.
Around the corner, there were many more of these charity collectors diving into the road trying to halt our escape to Merseyside and Matt pulled off some fine manouevers to aid us in getting the hell out of this strange place.
Sunday 28th
On Sunday, I returned to my nemesis venue of the plantation with Hitman and Mark the Builder. The goal was to achieve something of note and it didn't take long! There was another rapid warmup on the pebble ticking off some fine eliminates and then having a full on whitey on the far left arete next to the rampline, that gets 6b/+ but feels like certain death if you were to barn door off! We moved up to Green Traverse as I wanted practice in the dark arts of topping out. The Green slap got dispatched in 2 goes and then the direct mantle round the corner (where the Full Green starts from) took a much greater effort... 6b!?! My shoulders were pretty gammy after that one but I felt ready to tackle Twister once again.
First attempt it got cruised to the topout ledge and once again much failure to get that belly over! I slid down on to the pads to the disbelief of the Hitman and laughter from little Hoppo. I threw the toys out the proverbial pram, got psyched and then crushed it to pieces next try. A wave of relief was the result and we could move on to greater things.
Brass Monkeys was in great nick and first attempt saw me past the crux swing, heel on and hand hovering over the jug on the lip when everything popped and I felt way too tired to try again. Try I did... but no success with much bloodshed and 2 split tips!
We ran up the hill to check out Help The Young and the psyche was instantly back. it took a couple goes to make the first move to the edge but after that it was steady to the end, with ascents from myself, Hitman and Si. What a stunning line. It climbs as good as it looks and went straight into my top 5 favourite grit problems.
With light fading, we headed to Satin and Pressure Drop with about 12 pads. I said it looked piss, so had the honour of going first to show what not to do! Luckily I had found Si's right foot Gallileo (that he had lost on Tuesday) on the anvil as you leave the car park, which happened to make a perfect pair with my only current flat shoe. I did some weird sequence going left foot over the lip instead of right and boning so hard on those crimps that a minor slip would have resulted in much pain and skin loss. Thankfully everything stuck and I found myself grasping the break and shuffling off to the side almost feeling like a grit technician but knowing deep down that no delicate footwork was really involved!
Tuesday 30th
A large crowd of us headed to Cratcliffe yesterday morn to meet up with Mike from Rotherham and Kev from The Valleys (Not Pembroke! ;)). High on the agenda was either Jerrys Traverse or T crack - two problems that had evaded many attempts on my last few visits. After the warmup on the top boulders the arms felt ready for action, so I made the decision to get on that traverse and lay it to rest. First go, my hand was on the jug at the end and then a heavy foot dab brought things to a halt. There was blood everywhere on the rock, holds, my pants, chalk...etc but the psyche was on. After a quick heckle over at the egg, I returned and swiftly dispatched opting for the far left hand exit which felt fantastic... finally.
Down in the woods we had a quick team ascent of Brain Dead arete, a very aesthetic line with good holds and steady moves all the way.
The team moved on to Rowtor expecting a quiet scene and it was rammed with many fellow punters and what seemed to be some sort of dog owners collective. After a brief walk around, I got sucked into just trying Quine as it seemed perfectly suited with a large shoulder press and a drop knee, with a bit of a pop at the end to a good hold (provided you caught it perfectly). The first couple of goes were promising, almost managing to do it totally static to the lip but just falling short by an inch or 2. There were about 5 different ticks on the lip to make it a bit more confusing than it already was and after thinking I had it sussed I began trying about 3 or 4 different methods resulting in equal failure. It eventually got too dark to continue and the left shoulder had long since given up the press, so we headed back home to Merseyside, Rotherham and South Wales tired but hopefully grateful of another fine day of weather!
2008 Was a good year for myself in terms of getting outside and having a wonderful trip to Italy with such nice hospitable people like Lore, Val, Roberto, Geovanni and Sabrina looking after us! I think the turning point (in terms of my climbing) has to be returning from Italy destitute and getting a training program off the guru which helped to see me through a good month and a half of indoor climbing and work. The gains made were clear to see when I returned outdoors in October and ticked off many old nemesis problems amongst new ones and broke through more grade boundaries than in the previous 2 years.
I can't wait for 2009 and getting stuck into my hitlist of 10 problems before recommencing the Guru's fine programme when the weather inevitably craps out around January/February. I hope everyone out there is as eager as me to get off to a good start in the new year and make the most of current conditions!
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