The week had started off well and i hoped that might propel me onto greater things. It turned out to be a bit mixed with a lull mid-week before decent days Friday and yesterday. The primary reason for the lull was some rain, we hadn't seen a drop for almost 3 weeks so i guess it was due.
It cleared out Friday afternoon, so i headed out to the De Pakhuis boulders. I'd been up to these blocs for a reccy previously and had some idea of what i wanted to do. There's a really cool cave up there with two clear lines climbing out from it. Dirty lies is the easier of the two (7b) and takes a straight line from back to front, via a cool hueco 3/4 of the way out, before an easy lip turn onto the exit slab. There was an Austrian guy there playing rap on loud speakers, which in a big cave sounded pretty good to be fair, so i asked if i could join in.
Armed with the guys beta, i flashed dirty lies and quickly dispatched the extension start that climbs in from the left. With these done, i turned my attention to the 2nd line in the cave, this is No Late Tenders, an 8a from Klems Loskott. It starts at Dirty Lies but heads right with some big moves on sidepulls/undercuts before you get a decent pocket just before the lip and the difficulties ease from there. I made some good links on this one, the climbing is superb, burly but technical too with some toes and heels in there. I'm going to be back for more on this.
Finished off the day climbing Maniac, a 7b/+ over-hanging wall, that requires you to make big moves between slopey breaks, before a final leap for a jug off a lovely RH pinch. I won't say much more on this other than if you ever come to Rocklands, this is a must do - simply superb. There are a lot of hidden gems here at Rocklands, like this one, that you need to do some digging to find. The more i do find, the more that label of the World's best climbing area seems to make a little more sense to me.
Saturday headed back to the Roadside area for session 3 on Caroline. Got through the crux again, but fell after that like last sess. Irritating, but i'll come back for more on this as its quality, basically i need to build up fitness on this one it seems. After that we headed up the hill from Roadside to the Ceder Rouge area. There's a big cave there with the famous lines of Black Spider and Green Mamba. Had a look but the landings are bad, so sacked it off for a bigger team day.
On the way up i'd spied Fred Nicole's ultra hard (8c i think) Black Eagle SS, there was no chalk on it and it looked a bit lichened to be honest. Thought it was a bit sad that one of the world's hardest seems to have been forgotten about, similarly down the hill Monkey Wedding (another 8c) and Olifant's Dawn (8b), that we saw earlier in the trip, have had little or no attention for a while that i can see. These things of Fred's are super hard but seem to climb pretty good lines, its not like Gaskin's stuff that is just plain nasty, so i'm surprised with the lack of attention. Perhaps there is just too much rock here and not enough of the top level climbers to go around, the general standard is high though i think. What we need is a prolific hitter, like Tyler, to get out here and put some of these down.
Anyway i'm waffling again.... back down at Roadside i finished off the day sending Sunset Arete (7c) in a few goes. With the sun going down at the time the rock glows golden orange and it does look pretty magical. The sit down to the line is Nutsa (8a+) which for that grade seems do-able, i managed all the moves last thing yesterday, so i might look to link this one. I do think, like Caroline, its going to come down to fitness as each move is pretty sustained, i wish i had better stamina as i think it would really help out here.
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