The Summer Begins

I spent the last month waist deep in Psychology and Legal Studies revision notes getting ready for my summer exams. I nipped down to gravity for training whenever I could. Most of the time it was good studying weather, pissin' rain. For a few days the weather was lovely though and we headed to Glendalough. I should have wrote this up ages ago, as it was a few weeks back now, but I was so busy studying I hadn't got a chance. It was hot, too hot for Glendalough, but it was great to be outside in the sun, I climbed a few easy problems but mostly I went on a recon mission for next year, I checked out all the problems in Chris Rooney's Glendalough video and I got all excited thinking about climbing them next September and I sat atop the boulders with the soothing sun on my back and ate mango chutney and Dubliner cheese sambos. Jamie, Adam and Daragh scurried about and had a laugh, Adam had a great day, he fought his way up his first 6B, White Arrow, good work dude. The next day I brought Eoin down to Glendalough for his first visit, he was well impressed and got stuck in , it was a fun day out.

Adam on White Arrow 6B

Finally my exams ended, the sun came out and the summer began. Jamie and I hit the road immeadiately, Doolin bound, psyched to get up on some sweet, steep limestone lines. With the crash of the Atlantics waves as a backing track we got in a good headspace and moved over the good stone for two days, trying to adapt to the rock type, which is very fingery, sharp in places and generally providing problems of the upmost quality.  We are gonna do a lot of trips here this summer with hopes of climbing nearly all of the problems here, it's a majestic place !!

Jamie on The Ramp 6B+

On the first day we warmed up on Kostya's wall. A lovely long wall, slightly overhanging and full of fingery problems, some parts were sharp here and my tips got sore quite early on. Jamie was laughing at me, as it is usually him who gets the bum deal with shredded tips and flappers.  We noticed that the small river running from the wall was dried up making it's cave entrance explorable and we planned on heading back the next day with head torches to do some caving, but as we climbed a couple of old school cavers came around the corner in bright coloured jump suits and helmets. They are currently digging gravel out from the tunnel and hoping to make a new discovery. It's back breaking work and shows a dedication to their passion. They let us use the headtorches and we crawled over 70 meters under the ground through the tunnel. I told them the wall was known as Kostya's wall and they said that the tunnel has been known about for years and that it goes by the name Fraggle Rock in caving circles. They were really nice blokes :)

Legends

We tried a lovley steep line called The Ramp 6B+, Jamie topped out after a good battle, my skin got ripped up on it and I had to give up, its a great line even though it is uncomfortably sharp and it certainly wasn't the last time I would be on it, I tried it the next day and on Saturday and Sunday with no success. We also tried a beautiful line on a lonesome boulder perched high on the highball wall, Broken 6B is a quality slopers lip traverse, very pumpy and very sequency, I had been on it last April for a couple of days but couldn't do it, this time I worked out a sweet sequence and stuck it together, I was happy as Larry, Jamie tried for the two days too and couldn't get it done ... next time. It was a good little trip and we had a ball, we headed home as I had to be back for work, but we were heading back down with a gang on the weekend after a rest day.

Me on Broken 6B