Thursday 19 April 2007

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????



2 comments:

  1. Good shot Dave ! I'm from South Africa (Port Elizabeth)and regularly checking up on your blog for more impressive news . Keep sending !

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  2. Nice pics Claire, anyone would think you've studied photography ;-)

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