Since it is also super warm out at the moment, I havent really been playing outside too much because I thought I would melt. Still, a couple of weekends ago I went up to the peak and hung around for the weekend to watch cliffhanger and go out climbing with Kyle in a few areas.
The first day up there, I made my first visit to Raven Tor for an afternoon of bouldering. It was blazing hot, but given all that I had heard of the area, I was a bit surprised not to see anyone else there all evening. I did a couple of moderate boulders and left before I could break down about not being able to do a 7a+ in the middle of the wall. (I'll go back and do that sometime for sure...)
Cliffhanger was fun - loads of people, sun and climbing stuff. It was once again absolutely sweltering so I spent most of my time lying down in the shade by the slackliners. Once it had cooled down a touch, we went to Anston so that Kyle could try his hand on Bullet, 7C again. Unfortunately, my shoulder was feeling quite sore after climbing the day before so I decided to sit it out and watch. This meant being molested by mosquitos for an entire evening while Kyle tried the boulder.
FWIW, Anston will soon be completely dry and is ideally located (in a wood with a stream) for cool afternoon temperatures during this heatwave.
On my final day up north, we went to Rubicon, where we hugged the shade and tried out some of the shiny bouldering. I watched a video a while back of a chap climbing there, and doing several of the hard bouldering problelms - Ever since then, I had wanted to visit and have a play on 'The Press' and its variations.
Since the eponymous press is off the left shoulder, I had to give it a miss on this trip and try some easier stuff.
I was particularly pleased with my onsight of Rubicon, 7a at the end of the day - though my second ascent (for another camera angle) required a rather more strenuous level of effort at the top!
I have made a short video from the trip that I will put up here at some point when I get round to uploading it.
Until then - here is something that accidentally happened last night while I was messing around on my uke.
As the few of you that are regulars here may have noticed - I have had a bit of a shake up in the blog design! I hope it is a bit cleaner, and provides some more functionality with regards finding my other interests and profiles on other sites - if there is anything that you would like to see, please mention it on fb or in the comments below.
In other news, I am setting tomorrow at Alton Highsports and I will be going to Thailand the day after! No idea how that came to pass, but I will no doubt be posting some pictures and whatnot when I am back and bronzed like a greek god!
