Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Climbing: Gullible's Travels - E1 5b


A critical moment on the route
I've not posted for a few months - sometimes doing stuff takes over completely from recording it. I did get a few weeks at home between trips in May and managed to get out climbing a couple of times.
The best route I climbed was called "Gullible's Travels", graded E1. It's a small climb, with protection which takes care to place, before a clearly defined and quite technical crux. Here's a 2 min. video of the crux moves:

As the clip starts I've managed to place a goodish small cam for protection and a rather iffy one to my left. I experiment for a short time trying to find my balance point with slightly rubbish handholds. Eventually I move my left foot closer and commit to standing up, at which point the iffy cam pops out and slides down the rope!
Standing in the break I can rest so I chalk up my fingers here, but here's one more hard-ish move to go before the good holds arrive. The flake of rock above is ok as long as I pull from the left side so I rearrange my centre of gravity so that I can layaway leftwards, step high with the right foot, cross my left hand above my right and - hey presto - stand up to get the good handhold.