Glen Croe

Thought I'd update this slowly deterriorating blog while I'm in a good mood. Went to Glen Croe with the team... Thanks to Stew's dad for the lift out! Hopefully the photos (thanks to Ben's flash new camera) show that we had an excellent time, this was my first Croe experience.

The boulders are on the backside of the Cobbler and don't get too much sun this time of year. What they do get is a lot of rain, and it wasn't too much of a surprise to find the whole area very boggy. Foolishly, I'd left my wellies in inverness. Wet socks - one of the worst experinces known to man... the thought of them now makes me cringe and wimper slightly.

Anyway, the boulders were (mostly) dry and we had a tarp to keep things from being soggy/lost into a bog. Ben cruised Precious and I came pretty close, falling off on the finishing jug... just have to go back and try again, I suppose.

Then we went to the cutting room boulder. It's pretty cool - we all made ascents of The Nose problem. I wanted to flash the Cutting Room which is 7B or something so got psyched, got some sort of beta and pulled on. Before I knew what was what I was back on the floor, having pulled off the starting side pull... oopsie, it's now quite hard to get off the ground. Eventually got up the problem but not before falling off the finishing jug!

I think Dumbarton is a bad place for training... mental training anyway - you forget what its like to actually do problems, so get lost and confused when you're done the hard climbing and all that's left to do is match that massive hold... and you fall. Something odd is going on, I have a terrible case of summit fever or something.

Next we did Swap Meet, kinda cool problem which seemed really hard for me until I worked out a good bit of beta and sent.

We did some stuff on Fernandez boulder and took a look at Turbinal Nose (yes, it was wet) and went home (to bed).