Cold Fusion Blog

Saturday 12th May. Partners for the weekend were at a premium with the regulars out of town or low on motivation. I was lucky to contact Emma Sutton and find she was up for a return visit to the Anvil. The weather into the weekend was looking poor making a final decision difficult. In the end we decided on a late start hoping for a clearer spell in the afternoon. After biking out we were disappointed to find most of the crag soaking and unclimbable. I was surprised that Emma was still keen to stay and try something after our efforts getting there. A true west coast climbing soldier in the making!

Redpoint X on the Anvil project (Hotaches Images).

We warmed up on the start of Shadowlands, a good bit of steep shelf wobbling. I got on the project again, amazing that it was completely dry. It seemed to be the right kind of rain, although there was drizzle in the air humidity was low with a clear view over to Carrick Castle. Again I couldn’t quite do the crux of the project, so did the top link and started redpointing. My second redpoint was good and I made the same highpoint as last week slapping the top crux. However, light was running out and subsequent attempts didn’t get close to doing the crux again. I’ll put this down to the usually excuses that I need to sort out.

Emma went on to try the rest of Shadowlands. I was impressed to see her do the crux moves first go! I think she even surprised herself, not bad for four grades above her limit. With a bit of work I think she’ll go far beyond her earlier expectations this year. It goes to show how our persistence can shape the level of our climbing.

After a long day we returned to the car only to remember we were nearly out of fuel and the nearest open petrol station was 30+ miles away. After a long stressful drive we just made it to the garage in Jamestown with some nifty navigation from Diff over the internet (cheers!). Must remember to train more, sleep more this week. And top up the car up with petrol.

Writing the past three weeks blog entires up I’ve been slipping into melancholy. I feel like I’m really hitting a plateau in terms of training for my project. Work seems to be taking over completely. It would have been great to have completed it 3 weeks ago, and moved onto other things. Time and time again I’m finding myself back in the same place with all the past projects I’ve failed on, such as Solitare, Snipe Shadow, Devestation, Hurley Burly, Magnetic Fields. Climbing at these high levels takes a lot of determination, persistence and hope. I feel I’ve got no shortage of these. Maybe the failure comes down to getting corrupted by distraction. I’ll keep those Yorkshire trips on hold a bit longer. I need to see this project through.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Sport, Motivation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.