Greasy Glendo



I picked Hari up in Tallaght early Saturday morning, we were trying to beat the heat of the day and climb on some chilled shaded granite, but there was no avoiding the swelter of the blistering sun ... proper hot for this time of the year. It was sooo bleedin' hot the cheese in me sambos melted !! ... and me chocolate bars turned to liquid and I had to put them in the cool river for ten minutes so they would solidify again. We got to the giant pebbles by around 9 o'clock and already it was roasting hot and humid, the type of relentless heat that saps the energy, in short the conditions were shit and the rock felt like it was lubricated with WD40. We climbed away all day anyways and generally got spanked by the majority of things we tried. We also did a lot of exploring on both sides of the scree and I saw a lot of sweet looking problems and projects I never knew existed, Glendo is gonna keep me busy and psyched for many years to come :)

Hari Climbing Random Things In The Scree

We warmed up at Big Jim and headed straight for The Cherry 7A, I was keen to get spanked and try and make some more measly progress but it was too hot to make any gains at all so we moved off to try F*ck All Left 7A. At first appearances this line looks brilliant, a nice groove with what appears to be decent holds, it's nails hard and we couldn't get our bums off the ground even when we cheated and started sitting on two folded over boulder mats for extra elevation, great looking problem though and I look foward to working on it in the future. We had a look around the Cracklands area and saw some good stuff and Hari showed me a hidden cave with a majestic looking crack line in it, it wasn't in the guide, turns out it was a Michael Duffy 8A+ called People Of The Sun, a steep wall split by a diagonal finger crack, looks deadly !! Next up was Black Art 6C, another awesome looking thing, lovely steep arete on nice edges and slopers, the blunt arete was as slippy as a bar of soap and we had no hope of sending it. We spotted Pokery 6C down the hill and in the shade so we headed over to it ...

Me on Pokery 6C

... we had some good fun on Pokery. It's a nice steep nose with a powerful opening throw to an arete and a pull through to jug followed by a o.k mantel/top out. I tried it before to no avail. This time we came up with a good sequence, I made some good progress on but it wouldn't go for me, I'll have to get back to it soon enough. Hari found some miniscule beta and by simply adjusting his thumb position on the starting hold the problem opened up for him and he fought his way up to the top and finally at least one of us climbed something :) Good fight dude !! Afterwards we stuffed our faces with pasta, homemade pizza, Weißbeer and cups of tea before Hari went and caught the bus to the big smoke.

Hari Crushin' Pokery 6C

Today I went to Glendo with J, it lashed rain all the way on the drive in and the walk in to the valley ''What the hell are we doing'' we thought, normally we would have just driven home but we kept the positivity and amazingly it stopped raining when we hit the soaked stone and every boulder dried in a half an hour flat. I was too tired to climb but Jamie had a good session warming up at he path, having a work session on Chillax 6C and a great siege on Barry's Problem 6c+, he figured out and did all the moves and he is psyched to get back and finish it a.s.a.p. A decent weekends climbing, exploring and getting out and about was had, but I can't wait for the belated Summer to bugger off and the more Autumnal weather and temps to arrive ... happy crushing folks :)