Just been hitting some of the quality local lime sport crags, mainly getting spanked on stuff. It's great to be back climbing and trying hard, even enjoying the ego bashing process of falling off 7a/+ 's. Had a good session making beast tonight though and I feel like some capillaries have reluctantly started to open up returning some endurance, so shouldn't be falling off low sevens so much now hopefully! Onsighting seems hard at many of the crags around here though - many of the routes at my onsight grades tend to be vertical or at least not so steep often with tiny and easy to miss holds and/or tricky foot beta. Not really my preferred style for sport onsighting but as such, definitely good for me to improve and probably very useful as training for a UK trad campaign later in the year.
My 3rd day on was an afternoon spent back on Bamboula. It was a good session, still felt hard but nowhere near as hard as last time and just as good in terms of quality - can't wait to get back on it. Should go next session then keen to get on an area classic and the briliantly named 'Ariege Against the Machine' seen it given both 7c+ and 8a. Sure it'll be hard either way - Bedheilac grades are about the harshest I've ever come across! A fact I quite like really. I'm really keen to check out some of the local granite boulders too but don't think the elbows are quite ready for that yet. Nearly but not quite, should be good by feburary. So short term, I'll just stick to routes - bashing on with a project or two and trying to get consistent and competent at onsighting these vert and techy low 7's.
Today was good. Nice weather so decided to hike up onto the North ridge of the valley we're in (Saurat valley) to check out some bouldering potential I'd been tipped off about. Got up pretty high again, above the tree line and into plenty of snow. After about 3 hours of hiking we'd found plenty of rock and one or two decent looking easy problems but nothing really worthwhile. The rock was nice but too heavily featured and broken for good bouldering. Got some amazing views up there today though:
(One shot off Ian's camera. The volcano effort on the right down in the valley is calames - the steep limestone faces are on the far side from here.)
There may be better stuff further East along the ridge but it's not within realistic walking distance from tez's place so will leave it for another exploration day some time. There is a mind boggling amount of rock around generally though....
Chilled out for a bit once back from the hike then did a beastmaker sesh and some bench. Not really getting any lighter I don't think but getting stronger and most importantly I'm uninhibited elbow-wise, on routes at least.
Got some work coming up this and/or next week so not sure how much climbing will get done (plus it's freezing cold at the moment!) but sure it won't be too long. Until then...
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