Winter Sessions Part 2

This fantastic winter weather continues but today is an enforced rest day - I have no skin and have to wrap up some Christmas presents!

Yesterday though was amazing!!! Richie, Ben and I headed out to Rieff in the Woods with a car stuffed full of boulder pads! On the way the psyche built up with talk of repeating of the Main Issue, font 7b, a Richie Betts classic...

We arrived and it was freezing... Many of the boulders had frost covered top out so we brushed it off and did a wee warm up circuit. There's some really funky problems here!

A forsty morning (pics from Betts)

Still quite cold but even more psyched we went to try the Main Issue. There's a bit of stigma around such a great line - It was unrepeated (as far as we knew), it's high and scary, we all know Richie is the king of the dyno and it took him a few trips to stick the jump! But the friction was excellent... It took a few goes to be able to fully commit to the dyno because there's a tree and a boulder to land on. Soon, I stuck the move but had a bit of an Ethan Pringle moment topping out - my excuse was the small sloper you use to pull over was covered in ice!! I think the frost had melted a wee bit when we brushed it off then turned to ice... Luckily, I had my hold brushing bitch (sorry Rich!) on hand to clean the hold and topped out rather shaken. Ben did it soon after, topping out in a far more manly fashion!

Dunno if that works so here's a link: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5707079817429080123

We then tried a new problem by Lawrence just left of the Main Issue which seemed pretty tough! After working out the top part I came so close to sending it falling off holding the last jug! doh!

We moved round to try a V6 arete called Clach mheallian where I fell off the last move again and was thinking this just wasn't my day for topping out! Worst of all I started bleeding from my finger tip which made me sooo upset, but gave it another shot and sent it to hell!!!

I decided to give up for the rest of today and take photos. We went across to see the Crack, font 7a+. Rich managed it and I got psyched to flash it and with that and good beta and encouragement, I topped out first try.

Betts sending the Crack

The way home was eventful - we heard Murdoch had an accident winter climbing (Get better soon dude!), saw a guy crash his car and it was on fire, and decided a night time boulder sesh at Scatwell was a good idea!!

It was very dark and spooky, especially when Richie told us there may or may not have been a massacre here...

The friction was mint. Ben and I were psyched to repeat 2 unrepeated Betts classic in a day and set to work on The Road to Domestos.

The camera flash makes it look like day time here...

I found it pretty tough (all worries of sore skin were gone - we were psychedd!!!! haha) but Ben did it quickly and set to work on the Catch. He made the crux look easy but struggled to find a short person sequence for the top...

Ben on the Catch

Click here for a vid http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8615597734113067337

We did Scatwell Massacre which is something of a superb problem! Then I decided it was time I took my tampon out and at last managed The Road to Domestos! We then tried Flytip Lip, a good problem but we couldn't really see what we were doing so called it a night!

That's probably all blog updates for a while, so to all blog fans - have a good Christmas!

Mike