Time Off

Been loving having some time off with the bank holidays. Last week i was cursing the heat though. After spending the winter complaining about the cold and wet i should have been pleased to have some nice weather but i was greasing off so complained instead. Ridiculous for April! Been to the Mill a few times and even managed a 7a+ so things are looking up. Been doing some nice easier routes on the new crags and trying the projects. Making progress but i've finally hit big 8 land with a few of them so more effort is going to be needed. One of them is a big roof with a solitary hole in the middle of it. Every move is a burlfest, must be the burliest 8a-8b in wales. Definitely a cool style but i can't do all the moves yet. I met up with the Sellars clan who were over from Sheffield for Easter. I showed them Llanddulas and some nice routes were bagged. Nic was one of the UKs top sport climbers in the 90s so i picked his brain about fitness training. I tried my roof project and after some experimentation i thought i had cracked the hard start. That was until the hold fell off, doh! Nic did a good onsight of Mudjekeewis. He cocked up the crux first go but hung on in there and did it. I went back to the roof another day and glued the hold back on, hopefully it will stay put. I had a prolific day yesterday bagging 4 new routes! 3 were shorties that i bolted in winter but they were all fairly pleasant with nice rough rock. One was quite a peculiar route. Its 6a+ to the last move which is a english 6b/c move off quite a small crimp. Quite unbalanced but a bit different. Really hard to grade something like this though. 7a or 7a+ probably. I called it Off With Their Heads cos i don't believe in hereditary priviledge. Then i did a route i bolted up on Monday. It was a right effort bolting and cleaning it as its 17 metres and the crag is very loose in its natural state. It turned out to be another cracker. The first bulge is the crux but its still tricky until you reach a really good rest before some more fairly tenuous moves above. Its either 7b+ or 7c and the name is Big Kohoona Burger. I wish i'd bolted it better, its fine for a redpoint but a bit shit for the onsight, oops. Development on this crag is almost complete and i think people will enjoy it as its a good length and nice routes. I asked Norm the other day why he didn't develop LPT earlier back in the day. He said everytime he went there the tide was in so for years he didn't realise it actually went out. Thought that was pretty classic!