sawyl | A lovely afternoon of leading

A fun if not terribly hard-driven evening of leading, with decent chunks of it spent catching up with G, who was on floor-walking duty. One of the new routes we tried was a particularly tough 6a+ which G reckoned was probably under-graded.

R made the first attempt and found it pretty touch going. With not much in the way of helpful suggestions from the ground, she worked her way through the first half before calling it a day. I made a slightly better attempt eventually making it all the way to the anchor, but I fluffed one section so badly that I just couldn't get the clip right and ended up taking a controlled fall. Repeating the section, it was clear I should have clipped early rather than waiting for what I thought was going to be a nice positive hold but which actually gave me relatively little at a point in the climb when I willing to trust to strength and push through it. Still it was a nice route and I think we both enjoyed the chance to stretch ourselves out a little.

Also, as a bonus, I finally got to see R's pictures of her pea costume from her week in Portugal. Very impressive, even if the quality of the photos did start to slight towards the end of the evening...