A day out with the Captains of Crush and some cave action

I managed to get some cover in work over the last 2 days to avoid mind numbing cabin fever and to try putting to use my recently aquired 'font skills'.

Sun 4th April

Strong Davey P arrived at the Ivory Towers around 10ish and we headed East through rain, sun and more showery rain but once at Hathersage it was looking promising.

We had a chill looking around the Outside Sale rails picking up a bargain Prana hoody and then set off to Burbage to hook up with Ed Robinson and their mutual friend John.

Me and Dave were a tad early and it was pretty wild up at the carpark with a lot of ominous cloud closing in around us but a promising wind drying things off. We decided to go warm up around the banana finger area only to be driven back about 100 metres down the path by gale force wind and horizontal rain daggers! We fought our way back to the car using the base pads as face protection and getting totally soaked from the waist down.

We started to drive off to go get a coffee in Hathersage only for the sun to break through and the sky turn blue all in a matter of 2 minutes. How surreal! Ed rang and we turned back to wait for them at the carpark.

Once John had arrived, we all decided to go Burbage West as it was out of the worst of it. We met some hero/madman who was attempting to ground up West Side using a small rucksack from the 80's, a bit of carpet and his pet hound to spot/run for help.

We tried not to watch and got on with the thorough warmup. I got psyched for The Nose, so Ed did a demo and it received the heavy beta flash. Strong Dave looked a bit sketchy but also claimed some kind of amnesia retro flash ascent as he may have done it before. I guess it gets harder to remember as the years go by! ;)

We moved over to West Side Story and made little headway until Ed had a breakthrough moment showing some sequence involving feet across to the right and gastons to get into the 2nd RH sidepull and the LH crimp. I managed it this way once but decided to stick to plan A which found me up at the same point and then catching the 3rd RH sidepull. I barndoored a bit but the LH stayed on the crimp. I tried picking the LF up to the obvious nubbin to dyno off and then everything pinged off.

A few more goes and everyone was a little concerned about taking off the left index finger tip, so we moved across to Breakfast.

Ed provided another demo and I sketched my way up another flash involving a nice grease off slap again move near the top. Dave had an epic and eventually got it done and John also fell off leaving his footlock in which could have been truly horrific but thankfully didn't cause any further drama.

We had a play on Famous Grouse but found it a wee bit greasy, Ed managed to shin himself and we went to Burbage Bridge.

We had a play on Rocket Man, shaving more and more skin off the Right hand until my current hero strong Dave P, put on his jetpack, polished his boots and floated serenely to the top, he even contemplated a 1 armer... than woke up and topped it out ;)

I struggled on Mermaid greasing down that RH plate hold. Dave did it first go with a double or triple (I lost count!) french blow. Dismayed, I turned to the liquid chalk and thankfully it held back the tide of grease just enough to get it done.

Ed had to rush off to a party with a nice fingertape bandage covering up a big palm flapper, so the rest of us went over to Banana Finger. Me and John got up the original first try, then I lanked up the direct and finished off with the Arete on the left which was lovely.

We finished off with a pint on the Little John and got back to Merseyside barely awake and aching all over.

Mon 5th April

I woke up feeling totally ruined and thankfully Mark and Chris agreed to a late start to go the cave instead of grit as my skin was still pulsating with blood at the surface!

We stopped off in Costa and got some revival juice which left me a bit too wired in the cave shaking like mad trying to warm up and struggling to apply liquid chalk at the start of In Hell.

To sum it up, I got a bit further every redpoint with the best attempt of the day being crossing over to the pinch before the finish slot with no energy and burning hands on the brink of blood letting. I also had a play on Clyde and managed to stick the cross under move for the first time (twice!), one go managing to switch the right hand back around to set up to throw out right into Trigger Cut holds only to be greasing out the big slot, raking more skin off.

Mark had a great session, bagging Parisella's Original and Lipstick righthand and Chris looked to be making headway on Left Wall traverse.

Other events of note were Mina making Broken Heart look like a path and Kook getting very close on The Wire, shut down only by the wet fingerjug grease off.

Sadly the week ahead is work everyday, as I was itching to get back on In Hell after a couple rest days to destroy. Sunday heralds a return trip to font, so I'll try to keep the chin up! ;)