Glorious Day

What a beautiful day. It was lovely and warm. Me, brothling, Kev and the whippersnappers headed back to Glendalough. The sun was splitting the stones. Climbing in  t-shirt for the first time this year, what a sweet mini heat wave we are having !! Heatwave by March's standards anyways. The conditions were not very good, twas a wee bit greasy, but we couldn't give a shit and everybody got stuck in.



We strolled down at the little trail by the lake and warmed up the ruins boulders. The lads had great craic on Original Route 5, we all tried Original Route Right but it was in the blazing sun and felt mega greasey so we moved onto Wallop 6B which was in the cool shade.  It's a one move wonder problem, you take an undercling and try to bring your feet high on shit footholds and go for the top. Nobody was making any progress, everybody gave up, Jamie said ''I'll have one more go'' and he surprised us all by doing it, nice.

We headed up the path so Daragh could try his project Base Camp Traverse 6A, he beasted it on his second go,  it was his first 6A, he was well chuffed, he fought hard and deserved it. It was one of those times when somebody is fightiong so hard that everybody can't help bursting into laughter and screaming encouragement.  A few more easy probs were climbed to stay warmed up and then we headed across the river to Big Jim.  We all threw ourselves at the technical problems on the river side of the boulder.  Tricky yokes !! Kev got the technical 6B up the middle, everybody else flailed hard on it. 

The conditions were poor and I couldn't do Duffy's Slap 6b+ which I had gotten easily last week, so I felt like I had no chance of getting my proj Barry's Problem 6c+ when I sat down in front of it.  I still had scabs on the backs of my fingers from last week on the finger lock start move, so I taped them up.  I found it harder with the fingers taped to get the jam to work, but eventually I started hitting the first big move to the crimp over an over again. Kev suggested I use the arete and I found a lovely sequence to slap up it to get the jug without cutting loose, I matched on the jug and held the swing easily with two hands firmly in place on it, I topped out with a big smile on me face, feeling ready for Albarracin now, bring it on :)

Adam worked real hard on the lovely 6B overhanging arete only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at the top out, he'll deffo get it next time I'd say.  When it was getting dark the whippersnappers wrapped Jamie up in two boulder mats and rolled him off the top of Big Jim(he was shittin' himself), he thundered down the steep slope, it was hilarious looking. Another great day out and about. I am resting now for the trip no climbing until friday in Spain, gonna make the most of the good weather by doing some mountain biking for the next few days. Enjoy the weather folks, happy climbing !!