Rosdale Crimpin'

Here's some footage from my solo mission to Rosedale and Farndale yesterday:

Rosedale Crimpin' from Ram Man on Vimeo.

full report to follow!

....4/5 hrs later.....

Well, about that report... As the vid suggests, I visited the Rosedale Head Boulders again yesterday. Ended up there mainly as I couldn't find anyone keen to come top-roping with me. Anyway, it was a bit warm but I enjoyed it and realised my main objectives. I'd done the moves on the low start to Lion Arete last visit but for some reason I never linked it into the upper arete which, once you're there, is a formality. Good set of moves. A shower passed through. Then, with better skin and a stronger will to succeed, did White Room within a few goes this visit. Satisfying how hard you get to pull on that little crimp.

Onto the nasty link of Lion Arete Low into White Room. I knew I'd never do it this visit as it was too hot and I'm still using up that shit Wild Country chalk. And it's hard for me. However, it was good to revise the sequence. I remain unsure whether this problem's crap or not. It's certainly quite hard and intense. Main beef is that you're in a world of left foot dab fear moving across the iron seam and a couple of the holds are not pleasant. I thought disaster (or salvation?) had struck when I ripped one of the holds off, out of the iron seam. Fortunately or unfortunately, it just makes the problem that bit harder and all the holds are completely stable now so it's still there for the taking. Need it to be quite cold though I think - the crimps on it seem more prone to greasing than the majority of moors sandstone for some reason....

Hit the Rosedale Monolith next for the first time. Repeated Lee's monologue problem which was great. Uses a nice stacked mono, I thought it was pretty hard at 6B. Did the easy but quite nice aretes either side and then, as a bonus for the day, made a bit of an attempt at the rippled front face of the monolith. Straight Talking as I called it has a decent couple of moves. And again, you get to pull quite hard on a crimp or two.

Busted over into farndale next for some shunting at Round Crag. Had a spin on a relatively recent route (well, it was done this millenium) opened by Nick Dixon - Scut di Scun Ai. First impressions were good, nice rock, decent moves. Things started to go a bit haywire for me at the top though. As a protectionless E6 6b I thought I wouldn't struggle with the moves and, in the back of my mind, I was hoping to get a quick day headpoint out of the deal. Not true. Circa 20mins trying and failing on the last couple of moves, prospects were looking bleak. And then I pulled a hold off. I managed the moves via different method after that and I reckon you could get gear in a thin crack to the right for the top moves too. Not too keen for this one though - Good to have done the moves but not really interested in investing much else. Pippi Longstocking is much better in my opinion, with better and harder moves - very keen to get that one done next visit.

Grade Talk.... up there failing for a while on Scut di Scun Ai reminded me how ridiculous some moors gradings are. 8m up, above a fairly unthinkable landing, pulling hard,tenuous and dynamic 6b with poor feet and having done plenty of 6a/b to get there, is this for real? Take well established routes of the same grade and similar style. ie. Linden, Nosferatu, Shock Horror and the like. Granted, they may be soft E6 6b (on both scores) but there's considerably more than a grade between the likes of them and Scut di Scun, so something's gone wrong along the way. Ah Well, such is the way of these things.

Next I headed to a top secret location and shunted my new top secret project. Did all the moves and it's pretty good I reckon. So that's towards the top of the priorities list, hopefully more news soon.

And in other news, I went to Kilnsey a couple of weeks ago. Sure enough, not climbing that much and exclusively bouldering with the odd bouldery headpoint leaves you pretty useless for sport climbing at Kilnsey. My general conditioning is pretty low as I can't do any volume on my gay elbows so I was spent pretty quickly. However, I did manage to flash Nerve Ending which I thought was a good route. It was interesting too in that, I reckon the sequence I'd done on Collateral a couple of days previous was better and harder, so that's good to know. I dogged up The Bulge a couple of times too. Enjoyed it and all the moves felt pretty easy but I was distinctly lacking in fitness and suffered elbow beef, so won't be rushing back this year unfortunately.

Upshot is, focussed on bouldering (with bouldery headpoints for kicks) for now probably until spring 2011. Can't complain.