Wednesday 10 October 2012

Cheddar Climbing

Abit of a late post, but hey.

So after arranging to climb with Chris on the Sunday, we headed to Avon Gorge...only to find that the gorge was shut due to rock safety checks. So my Avon climbing experience will have to wait for another day. Instead we headed to Cheddar for some Autumn sport climbing.



With the intention of climbing at Avon, neither of us had a guide book for Cheddar. So I headed into Gorge sports to buy one. However, they had sold out. But the guy behind the till was kind enough to lend us his for the day. So with a borrowed guide book, different intentions and a lack of energy from the day before, we headed for Overshoot wall.

There's a 7a on this crag that I have redpointed before, so thought I'd give it another go. It's a short route, with a bouldery beginning section to the first bolt. The 7a move is clipping the bolt and following through onto the ledge: A crimp out left, followed by a crimp sidepull, a small 2 finger pocket then a long reach out right to gain the small ledge to pull up onto and clip the 2nd bolt and gain a good rest, ready for the underclings and side pulls over the overhang to the chains. This time, I managed to gain the ledge on the fourth attampt after falling trying to reach out for the ledge. I blame it on cold hands and a split tip. But from the ledge, I couldn't find the energy in me to fight through the overhangs and the split tip was bleeding a fair bit too, so backed off.

Instead then, chris did most of the leading for the day, and I just top roped what he had lead. Untill I fancied leading a 6b, which had a rather difficult set of moves to pull over a bulge and clip the chains. In my mind, harder than the 6b+ we had previously climbed! But with this route down, and the time for Chris to drive back to Scotland, we finished on a nice easy 5+ up the arete. Which I climbed in flip flops.

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