Another day, another set of projects...
Aug. 19th, 2016 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylAfter a morning pottering away on an interesting idea in the office, I caught up on my laundry — which had accumulated to apocalyptic levels — and decided that I could probably fit in one more session of route climbing before the weekend.
Suitably warmed up, I started work on the first item on my project list. The first few moves were very burly with a big pull on a couple of sloper and some serious smearing, thanks to the complete absence of footholds, with slap out left for an open-handed pinch followed by compression move to get the feet up to the first positive hold. Even with that done the rest of the route was far from simple, thanks to a combination of tricky balance moves, long reaches, and the need to crank up on one sloper after another.
Much to my surprise, I sent it on the second attempt. And when I came down, someone who'd seen me do it came over and said, "That was very impressive. I can't even work out how to get started. What's the first move?" Their look of disappointment when I said that there really weren't any footholds was priceless!
I nominated another hard sloper route to replace it, made pretty good progress with the beta, only to discover that by the time I'd got the first part down, I was too tired to make a serious attempt on the overhang section.
I switched back to the second route I'd picked yesterday as a potential project and started working the first few moves. I made it to something like the fifth move, which involved a dyno/throw up to a very bad sloper, at which point I consistently fell off. I thought about changing my beta to add an inside flag to me a bit more reach, but by that point I'd stopped making any serious progress and the friction climbing had started to wear through the skin on my hands.
I was a bit disillusioned having ended on a note of failure, but I picked up on the way home when I reflected on how much progress I'd actually made.
Suitably warmed up, I started work on the first item on my project list. The first few moves were very burly with a big pull on a couple of sloper and some serious smearing, thanks to the complete absence of footholds, with slap out left for an open-handed pinch followed by compression move to get the feet up to the first positive hold. Even with that done the rest of the route was far from simple, thanks to a combination of tricky balance moves, long reaches, and the need to crank up on one sloper after another.
Much to my surprise, I sent it on the second attempt. And when I came down, someone who'd seen me do it came over and said, "That was very impressive. I can't even work out how to get started. What's the first move?" Their look of disappointment when I said that there really weren't any footholds was priceless!
I nominated another hard sloper route to replace it, made pretty good progress with the beta, only to discover that by the time I'd got the first part down, I was too tired to make a serious attempt on the overhang section.
I switched back to the second route I'd picked yesterday as a potential project and started working the first few moves. I made it to something like the fifth move, which involved a dyno/throw up to a very bad sloper, at which point I consistently fell off. I thought about changing my beta to add an inside flag to me a bit more reach, but by that point I'd stopped making any serious progress and the friction climbing had started to wear through the skin on my hands.
I was a bit disillusioned having ended on a note of failure, but I picked up on the way home when I reflected on how much progress I'd actually made.
