After the great start on day 1 my tail was up but unfortunately my fortunes quickly changed. Temperatures soared, the dreaded humidity came in and then in the evenings a damp sort of mist descended on the Wood. Rock became damp and holds started to turn black whenever you pulled on something as moisture oozed out of the rock.
Unperturbed i started to feel out some problems i wanted to try. Here at Magic there is less to go at compared to Font so i wanted to start to try and project some harder grades (8a and above really) and see how i went. I started off with Pura Vida an 8a+/b that traverses a barrel shaped boulder. The damp holds were particularly bad here but i managed to link it from the start into the ending sequence however at this point i got totally shut down. I tried a few different methods id seen but nothing seemed to click and meanwhile my skin was getting dangerously thin again.
I decided to move on...next up was Octopussy, a really nice looking 8a roof. I got up to it and a German guy was working it. I joined in but screwed the start up and was off. I struck up conversation with the German guy asking for any beta. He told me that for tall people you simply jumped leftwards for the obvious sloper and from there swung your feet over to the arete thing and you were done but that was for TALL people. The guy was 6'3ish and he said it would not work for him so being considerably shorter i ruled myself out of that beta and started trying some heinous hand heel match thing which after 30mins of failure i gave up on.
Days continued like this with very little change in the weather or my fortunes on the boulders. Riverbed seemed too techy for me and long, Electroboogie has some brutal shoulder action and seemed too slopey with currrent temps. Finally i took the walk up to No Liberty, an 8a i had heard was quite straightforward and easy if you liked backhand gaston sequences similar to Michel-Ange. You have to be careful where to start with this one..reach too far right and its 7c or 7c+ but still after working out what holds i could use i got to work. It seemed that if i could pull on ok at the start and make the throw to the gaston (see below pic) it was in the bag for me. 15mins later crimping hard on the starting hold i blew a tip and it was all over. So with 8 days gone since i arrived and sent Piranja i had climbed nothing else and was now staring down the barrel of 2-3 days of forced rest at least. How things had changed....
No comments:
Post a Comment