A Different Game

With weather not great and feeling pretty psyched to train and climb I decided to head out on the tools today. I headed to my training cave at winspit, although not a 3 star area it does give a good training cave away from the sport climbing and any possible rival problems, id put up a route here last year called "Smackdown" so wanted to head back down and have a play. I warmed up and felt pretty strong, i looked at a possible link up of the warm up line into the original smackdown, after a couple of goes i was happy to link it and make the tick, I think the grade still gets around M7 but the climbing goes on for allot longer.
I finished up warming down and watching the weather batter the south coast, the walk back to the car was going to be wet. I decided to go and look at Rob Gibsons " A different Game". Graded at M10 and not having a second ascent yet i was keen to have a look. I had been on the route a few years back with Scott Swalling and to be honest it felt pretty desperate for both of us. but psyched and wanting to push it i wasn't going to let that stop me.
The line takes the roof of a cave in the south western quarry, its around 12 metres long and apart from the starting pillar is completely horizontal until the finish, with the roof not being that high its not possible to lead it, it needs to be climbed by putting a fixed line in place then using a lanyard for protection.
I had a good look at the route and its seems very loose and dirty, i spent around an hour on cleaning the first section and plan on heading down again and cleaning it up, once clean I'm pretty psyched to spend some time trying to work the route and get that tick.

I've been climbing at Winspit now for over 10 years and i was quite shocked to see the amount of rubbish lying around, so please if you do read this and love climbing and the area as much as I do then take your rubbish home. I may even consider taking some black bags down and personally cleaning the area up.

Stormy weather on the south Coast

Boing

North Wales Climbing

With some spare time and in much need of a break I headed to North wales for a weeks climbing with Phil, we both had a pretty big ticklist so we were hoping the weather would be on our side. we headed on up early sunday morning driving most of the way in heavy rain, we arrived at 1pm and eager to climb headed straight to the pass, we jumped straight on the cromlech boulders and ticked some of the easier problems upto V4, we had a little play on a tough V8 and also looked at the Famous Jerry's roof V9 problem. after sometime of battling out we decided to head up to Dinas mot and run up diagonal, we headed up and I took the lead on the frst pitch, I arrived at the belay and the heavens opened, Phil followed on up and due to rain continuing we decided to descend the route.
Things didn't improve much for the next few days so the rest of the week was spent climbing on the slate, this being my first time on the slate it was quite an experience, it wasn't long before I realised Handholds were small and feet were not existent but after some time and a few shin whacks I started to get the hang of things, despite the weather we managed to get allot of routes ticked.
With there being a big storm on one of the days we even took on the famous HVS snakes & Ladders, the guidebook time for this is around 4-5hrs, myself and Phil solo run the route and manged to complete in 2hrs flat, of all the mountains, routes and adventures Ive had this is defiantly up there with the best of them, basically its a adventure of climbing chains, ladders, travelling through tunnels and abseiling into unknown large holes, (I would recommend this to anyone wanting some fun, and if experienced makes it a whole lot more fun in the rain.

We also managed to visit paressellars cave and try out some of the toughest boulder problems around, this place is not for the weak and it certainly shows you how weak and helpless you are, even the V7 routes here are allot tougher than back home, Both myself and Phil walked away hurting and a crushed ego.

even though the weather wasn't the best we still managed a good week away, Come to realise that when teamed up with Phil we always seem to get things climbed, hopefully I can persuade him to come back to the alps and attempt some of them harder lines...

The Cave