Break

I don't want my project to move into the realm of feeling like a chore. The drive, the walk-in, the top rope, the brushing, the working - it was all starting to feel a little too familiar and boring last visit so I decided to take a break and do some other climbing this weekend instead.

Visited scugdale today. The day started well as we did a bit of exploration of Stoney Wicks. It's essentially just the Eastern continuation of the scugdale crags. The guide just has a few climbs described up to Severe or something. Anyway, the rock was good there and sure enough there were some nice easy lines to warm up on. The best thing I found though was an undercut micro-butress. From low sit starts I cleaned up and did 2 good little problems up each arete. Not sure how hard they are - probably both in the font6b+/6c vicinity. Not sure if they've been done before, I'd guess not but they're probably just about worth incllusion on a scugdale low-ball circuit. Anyway, I videod them and a fair bit of other stuff from today too. Hopefully getting adobe premiere elements sorted tomorrow so I'll try and make progress with my video making quality (not difficult) and make a little edit from the day's footage. I'll embed it in this post once I've done it.

I'd been really looking forward to doing Grand Master Flash and New dimensions again today and filming it but unfortunately the crag was quite sandy and in pretty poor nick. The pockets on GMF were particularly sandy, dirty, damp and grim and I didn't really have the inclination (or rope) to clean it all up. The bottom of the wall was dry though so it occured to me to try a sit start for it. It wouldn't really add much to the problem/route but makes it a bit more complete rather than stepping in off a block. I'd like to do it anyway next time I'm there and it's cleaner.

Next I quested off westward and did some stuff I'd not done before including some really steep hand cracks (arch area) which were good and quite tough. Then repeated some stuff I'd done before but in better style (fairytale low, super skunk). All in all not a bad chilled day, shame the crag was so dirty/sandy though.

It was great to be able to boulder and actually pull a bit without searing elbow pain. I'm pretty sure the new rehab program is working. Right elbow still pretty bad but improving for sure. I might actually be able to train again some time this year at this rate.