To both of our surprise, we ticked our projects today. The morning basically followed exactly the same format as last Thursday. I put the draws in for Tash on 'Bindelef', then put the draws in my route. I actually said to Tash "I'll be amazed if I do it today", because it felt so humid and sweaty. But after Tash succesfully top-roped her route, I redpointed mine. This time there was no messing about on the crux but I almost blew if afterwards on the top wall when my foot popped, then forgot what I was doing and got pumped working the sequence out!
Tash then surprised herself and on her first redpoint go she did her route. Her second 7a+! Watch out Matt, that 7b doesn't look too far away! ;-)
As for the grade of 'De aqui a la luna y volver', well it gets 8a+ in the guide so I'll take that for now. No-one seems to have done it in the usual places (UKC or 8a.nu) and I've never seen anyone on it in all the years I've been in Siurana. Plus when I first tried it there was no chalk on it at all beyond the lower crux, despite the wall never getting wet to clean it off, so maybe it hasn't had a repeat? Who knows. The first time I got on it I could barely do any of the upper crux moves, and linking them felt so far away. The individual moves certainly felt infinitely harder than anything on 'Zona O', which gets 8b (concensus is that it's soft at this though). So maybe 'De aqui a la luna...' is more 8b than 8a+? Especially if you avoid copping out rightwards into the 7c to avoid the hard bit just before the crux. Anyway, despite the band of slightly suspect rock at the bottom of the wall the route is incredible, taking a line up the most blank and unlikely section of wall between the two obvious crack lines. Hopefully more people will get on it now...
No comments:
Post a Comment