The Misty Boulders

I was about to go to the wall when I received a text from Richie Betts. All of a sudden the wall was no longer an option and we were heading out through some fog to duntelchaig. We agreed to go check out Richie's new problem the Dagger. The weather was marginal but the psyche levels were sufficently high that we made the walk through some boggy heather. We had a quick warm up, then Rich ran me through the beta of the Dagger. Could it be a historic flashed second ascent?

The flash attempt

I made it through the intail moves really quickly thanks to the top notch beta. Then looked up to the sloper on the lip. It looked a long way off. Nonetheless, I gave it some welly and was lucky enough to stick the move. Woo!! Rich and I had a think about the grade, reckon its maybe slightly easier - maybe V5 but probably V6 for the short.

We were midway through cleaning up another line (the arete you can see in the above photo) when it started to rain. Packing up seemed like the sensible option but we thought we'd check out the overhanging wall further along. ("Hey Mike - this wall looks dry" - "I think we should get rock shoes back on as soon as possible, Rich!")

The fog was very thick which made conditions not too ideal for sending but the midges had a great time. Not only that, my pinky finger started to bleed from too much cracking. But we got a few sends - the finest being this here crack:

Knife Wound - V7

Name inspired by the awesome line of the Dagger and the fact that my pinky was bleeding quite badly at the time. I think its about V7 - the hold my left hand is on is really hard to catch, then you have to match it! Probably a sandbag for the short again...

We thought it had never been visited before but I've been speaking to Andrew - sounded like he'd been up there so maybe its been climbed a bit but seems unlikely... In the car on the way back we agreed we need a couple more seshions to tidy the place up etc then a topo will be made! Watch this space!