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Sunday, 4 December 2011

Drink Driving 3rd Ascent

We have a new beast living on the coast. Dan Knight has moved over from Yorkshire and he's already made the 3rd ascent of Drink Driving confirming mine and Ed Hamer's assessment of bottom end 8a+. A few beasts have been snooty about the grade of this problem over the years without even trying it. Tommy told me Mick Adams downgraded it with his eyes which isn't a bad effort. I guess it doesn't look that hard and the moves are ok on their own but that's not the problem is it. He played around on Jack the Drunk too which he reckoned was higher up the grade. Dan thought it was really good and comparable to 8a+s he'd encountered on his travels. I haven't had chance to get on rock as i've been engaging in the strange practice of work. It's a bit of a shock really. It's too dark to go out after work and it rains all weekend so you're a bit stuffed really. I popped into Tremeirchion the other day to play on Danny's low start to 36 Chambers. I'm surprised this hasn't really seen much attention by the people who've done the stand. In my mind its one of the best hard problems in these parts. The limestone is really good, it starts on a massive blob tufa, is sustained and has great moves and is a good length, about 13 moves. I think maybe the low is slightly unobvious as there are only a couple of holds and they're quite spaced. Apparently some folk thought the sitter went from the left which wouldn't be anything special. Anyway i still felt ok on the stand if a little heavier (8 pounds to be precise!). I figured out a sequence on the low moves but didn't quite manage them. It is a pretty hard link for 7c+, it could potentially be 8a, time will tell. It must be 7b+ or so just to get into the stand up and then that would be a real battle. Awesome! Training's been going better than i expected, i've got up to top form on the board in 6/7 sessions despite being a fat cunt. I don't mind one bit being heavy, there's no point being a stick insect all year. So much of my top end climbing relies on that weight loss impact and the bigger the impact the better next June! If i can get den 7b+ like this i should be crusing.
The board:

2 comments:

petejh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
petejh said...

Your shadow appears to be doing a different move than you, sort it out.