Thursday 1 April 2010

The Future and The Now

Today i abbed down LPT to check out the unclimbed line. AT the top of the crag i was feeling disorientated but i soon found the right place to go down. I was excited, the sun was out and the tide was in. It always feels a bit weird abbing on one line when you do rope access for a living, bit spooky. I spent hours on the wall. As anyone who has bolted steep rock will know, it is desperate to get the purchase needed to drill properly when your hanging off an overhanging cliff. I ended up boning down on the poor holds on the route to keep myself in when drilling. I almost went through a tip on one of them. The plan was to wack some shitty expansion bolts in just so i could come back at a later date and stick the resin bolts in. After the first, every hole took a lot of effort and time to drill. Bloody knackering. As i went down i also spent a long time pondering how it would climb and feeling up the few holds that existed. It was blatantly a classic just like its neighbours. The hardest looking bit was in the black rock at the first part of steepness. It looked very hard indeed that section. There were holds though and that was main thing. I soon ran out of battery power, could have done with putting one more bolt in but there is a break so a few cams should suffice when i return. There was also one jug flake that i think i'll reinforce a la Liquid, just to make sure it doesn't come off as its very crucial. Neil chose Big Bang, Jerry chose Liquid, Ben chose Sea of Tranquility. I'm not sure anyones had a close look at this one before but its just about all there. What isn't there however is my abilty to climb this hard but it will be nice to have a long term project in my home area especially one this cool. As for the grade it looked at least as hard as Liquid (hard 8c maybe 8c+ in real money). In my limited experience of such things i would say its not 8b+ and not 9a+, somewhere in between! Hopefully i'll get the chance to bolt it up before i go away. Also need to think about the top, unfortunately it seemed to me that climbing straight up the scooped headwall would make it slightly artificial as left is the Liquid Ambar top groove which i think you will be able to pull into at the top opposite the LA belay, tricky to know what to do, as there is rock and holds above. I guess i'll just have another look and make a judgement on it. When i got back up to the road i felt knackered but i still climbed in the Cave getting to the shothole on my project (i was boxed though). Getting there felt like all the winters effort was worth it. Hopefully it'll go down soon.
One of the better holds on the proj:

Looking down:

An old ab station:

4 comments:

  1. Doylo - your blog is like a psyche radiator! Thank you! And good luck on the proj - looks and sounds nails.

    I am now getting itchy about my projects for the summer, yes, spring is here at last!

    Jack

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  2. Ta Jack, glad that godforesaken winter is almost behind us. I just need to do a Pete Robins now and go up four grades!!!!

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  3. Psyched for you man! I've thought about that line too but way too far away from home for me. Fantastic that there is a line there after all. I think too many people dismiss stuff without putting the effort in to get a rope down.

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  4. They either dismiss it or they're too lazy. there are lines to do everywhere!

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