Dan Knight returned to his favourite Welsh crag yesterday and left with 3 FAs. By his own admission the Gop suits Dan's climbing down to a tee. On his first visit he did both the 8a's in not very many goes and he also did the FA of a hard project which became Paper Birds 8a+ after half a dozen sessions. Yesterday he started off by climbing Mule's old project, the sit start to the crag classic Push The Button. Push The Button is a soft 8a and Dan reckoned although the low start added 3 or 4 moves it didn't warrant an extra grade and was likely hard 8a. Mule reckoned it would be 8a+ but he had a harder sequence on PTB (as per usual). He was feeling good so he moved onto the low start to Smoke a Bloke. Smoke a Bloke is a wicked, nails one move 7b+ (or more likely 7c!!). Danny used to try the direct low start and it looked nails. Dan managed it from the Blokesmoker Low start (just to the right) much to his surprise, he had pencilled it in as a long term project. Then he capped his day by doing the direct low start! Trying to get a grade estimation out of him was like trying to get blood out of a stone, he meekly replied 8a to me. Top British boulderer Ned Feehally visited the Gop last week and tried the Blokesmoker start. He reckoned it was pretty tough, maybe even 8b so it seems unlikely that it's 8a. Ned also tried Paper Birds but couldn't do the nails first move. Dan admitted that he felt he had reached the next level and he has climbed 8b before so its likely that these problems are pretty damn tricky! Nice one la
Lankmaster Barrows returned to the Orme this weekend. Check out the footage of him resting his way up Directors from last time:
Watching him in the Cave makes me feel 50% sickened and 50% impressed. It's a shame to see such historical hardcore pieces of climbing devalued in a way but on the other hand the technical knees are definitely pretty cool. I'm just glad the vast majority will never be able to get them. He did The Wire this weekend, shaking out where i'm in bulk. I normally get slagged off for lanking stuff but this guy gives me short mans syndrome! I can get through the hard Broken Heart moves most goes but power out on the hard moves before the jugs. If your left leg fits you can shake off your right knee and then stick the left in and move to the jugs. Oh well, i'll just need to get a bit fitter. Today he managed Drink Driving - on the two crux moves he could keep his feet really low on good holds rather than having to put them in the break like everyone else. Unsurprisingly he thought it was 8a like this (it is bottom end anyway). It seems we have two options, either downgrade nearly every 8a and 8a+ on the Orme for giants with good knee skills or we can just write a separate guide for Barrows. I'd go for the latter.
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