The elblog

It's been a long time but I've actually got some climbing related activity to talk about. Yesterday saw a family day out to farndale to see the daffodils and enjoy a walk. The weather and scenery was amazing though the two million other people making the same annual pilgrimage detracted a little - one for a weekday visit next time I reckon.... Anyway, whilst in the area I was keen to check out a couple of crags I'd not seen or been to before. Top of the list was Round Crag and Rosedale Head. Unfortunately I wasn't in my own car (it's still off the road, hmmm) and so time constraints meant we only had time to check out Round. I was impressed with it. Having read in the guide about a few 5/6m, 2 and 3 star E5's and 6's I had it down as a good potential 'ground up with pads' type venue. Not so! The main event of the crag is huge detached block which sits on a sort of slanting plinth yielding generally grim to horrific landings. Definitely looks to be more of an ab,brush, inspect then flash or headpoint venue. Pretty dirty too. Good rock though and I'm sure the routes are quality, look forward to trying some of them at some stage soon hopefully.

Anyway, since I've actually been able to fingerboard without elbow problems and even climb a little again too over the past couple of weeks, I had my stuff with me and got stuck into a couple of decent problems on a nice boulder below the main bit of the crag. Just taking it very easy but it was nice to be moving on rock without pain. I did two problems:
a slabby (and spicy!) arete:



And a cool steep arete from a sit:




The photos are just video frame grabs so shocking quality. Both problems are fairly easy but high quality, presumably climbed before.... The other (non-slabby!) side of the slabby arete problem is probably the line of the boulder and is good and pretty hard I reckon. Also a hard problem up the middle (with even harder sit start) of the same downhill face. Would guess those two are unclimbed. Didn't try either but felt the holds and cleaned the arete up a bit in case of a return with elbows. For boulderers not averse to a high leg-work to problem ratio, I'd say this boulder combined with a Rosedale Head hit (same parking) would make for a good day out - you're looking at double figures of problems for about 80 mins on shanks' pony....

Anyway, no blog post here is complete without an optimistic report of elbow recovery or disaster so, here we go. Still problematic, but have made really good progress in these last few weeks. The best development is that I can now make beast without causing them distress. So I've been fingerboarding more or less every other day ready for when I can climb properly again. I've been enjoying a honeymoon period of rapid progression thanks mainly to being totally useless initially, not to mention very heavy. Anyway, today I managed my first full sets of repeaters on mid2 and front2 on the small pockets. Going to consolidate at this sort of level, ie get very solid on 2 finger hangs on small stuff, perhaps adding weight as I lose it before experimenting with some more maximal stuff and trying to break some new ground such as mono repeaters. Also been doing rehab sessions at the wall - ARCing essentially. Feel weak and heavy but it's good to be moving again without the elbows of doom complaining. Definitely back on it for now, hopefully the elbows will continue their recovery curve back to one armer glory. Pumping iron and forcing myself to run a fair bit too. So, generally just trying to continue these trends - elbow improvement, stronger fingers, lighter and fitter. I'd like to think I'll be climbing properly again and in good shape by May but my elbows don't seem to work to deadlines...

Oh, and just moved away from that oppressive black. Inspired to lighten the look if things up with this latest wave of optimism. Much better I reckon.