Posts

Showing posts from September, 2011

Wiltonia

So after work I had to go over to Yorkshire to pick up a lathe but I wanted to see the new problems that gcw had done up at Wilton 1. I only had twenty minutes or so by the time I got there. These new problems are on the block opposite the main wall, ( Grey Wall?) a quite innocuous wall that you would normally walk past. I recognised it from all the broken holds, so I knew this was where G had been!! First I got on the right hand wall, (font 5) which involves an enjoyable move out right and then up although I avoided the top out through getting mangled by the remnants of last years burnt heather. Then I climbed left arĂȘte (font 5), topping out this time, a nice set of moves really. I then had a look at the dyno (6a) and after a few goes latched it, not very stylishly admittedly, legs flailing leftwards. This feels harder than it is as it's slightly slabby, making you feel like your legs are going to clatter against the wall... Lastly I had a go at the 6b undercut problem but I did

Crushboard finished... sort of.

Image
Well, I've finally finished the board - I finished it some time ago, but haven't got round to getting a post done. The top board was difficult. I had to mount it on my own , which meant rigging a hoist from the ceiling and man-handling the board so it aligned with the board below. I cut out the spaces for the rafters to maximise the length of the board and prayed that they fit properly. If they hadn't, I would have been back to square one! So in the end I managed to get it to fit, although on the far end no matter what I did, the board just wouldn't sit flush with the diagonal beams - so, currently it's sitting just under a cm off the beams. I used the over-engineering principle and set to screwing as many screws as I possibly could to ensure that it doesn't actually go anywhere, so in spite of this minor fault, the board is now complete. I took the photo below about 3 weeks ago - since then I've been adding holds as quick as I can carve them, using off-cuts

Widdop

Yorkshire gritstone again. Two weeks ago I managed to get over to Widdop. John fancied getting out and all things considered I wanted to make an effort, given that his availability is severely restricted. I turned up to pick up JB and found that Chris had put in an appearance, and we were to pick up JB's mate who I can't remember the name of cos it was two weeks ago. Anyway, short and tail of it was we ended up getting over to Widdop by about 9.30, and made our way up to the crag. The original intention had been to go tradding, but it appears that JB had chosen the most damp, humid and generally sweaty day possible to visit the crag. It had also been raining almost continuously for the past week, so the moss on the main crag was looking as luminous as ever. With an overwhelming sense of enthusiasm we went up to the crag and shuffled about making non-commital noises and generally pro-crastinating. We decided to head over to look at the boulders to give the main crag a chance to