Making the most of a few dry hours

The weather has been awful and every crag soaking so there has been very little bouldering of late, but we did get a few hours climbing in on Friday. The crag was still wet and only a handful of problems were dry down at the Balkans but it was still to get out.

Gav made the trek down from Newcastle and looked strong. Despite the wet conditions Gav managed to send Diplomatic Solution (V4). A solid effort considering the humidity and strange sequence Gav uses.
Gav and I then moved onto Flubdub (V6), I have done this problem previously but was attempting to add a sitdown start (V7?). Gav went very close as did I but the humid conditions made the last hard move very desperate. The start hold on the sitdown was also damp so in the end I was happy to get so close - I have fallen off the last move about a dozen times now.













We moved back to the main wall and played around on Pockets of Resistance (v7). The holds on the roof where mostly dry but the slopers on the exit were damp so we knew the problem wouldn't go today but were hopeful of working out the moves in anticipation of some dry weather next week. We made good progress but it is hard to say how difficult turning the lip will be - it felt desperate on seeping slopers.













We were fast running out of light but had a just enough time to check out a problem niether of us had tried before Blame Us Scots (v6). The problem is nice little number with an undercling upto a Font like mantle. Once again we found a few crucial holds were wet (actually covered in green slime!). We tried to by pass all the wet holds and top out on only the damp slopers but to no avail. Seems we have another project for a dry day... if that ever comes.

In all a good day. We send some V4s a few other new problems and it was good to get back on the rock after weeks of rain. Once the weather improves there should be some good problems to complete - stay tuned.