MegèveSki

Nailed it

I climbed with Linda and Nick last night and Linda and I finally nailed the 4b that had been giving us trouble. Well, I nailed it cleanly and, as I pointed out to Linda in the pub after, we'll see if she can do it without grabbing on to the edge of the board during the last move next week...

The last trick wasn't anything like what we had discussed in the post climbing pub session last week. I'd been getting confused between the move below the one we were having trouble with and I thought we had a foot hold to work with that we didn't. In the end the last move relies on a smear from your right foot and trust that it will hold whilst you hang on to two very small pinch grips with your fingers and push up and step away from the safety of the lower foot hold to the next one up. From there it's a simple case of having the balls to let go to the hand holds and go for the top of the board. I climbed it twice, just to prove it wasn't a fluke and it felt very good when I got to the top.

Nick's a better climber than Linda or I and it was interesting to watch him doing 5Bs and 5As though this time I declined to attempt a 5A, even though there was a little goading at times from Linda.

We found several more challenging 4Bs and 4Cs upstairs and, whilst warming up, I found several new and challenging 4C bouldering problems. Lots more to learn!

Given how tired and painful my hands and fingers are after a climbing session I decided to buy a couple of grip strengthening devices from Nevisport. I got a Gripmaster and a GripSaver Plus. So far I've only used the GripMaster but it seems to work well and I've noticed improvements in the short time that I've been using it. I leave it laying on the desk and then, when things are compiling, or I'm just staring into space, I use it for a few minutes. Hopefully this kind of workout will be good for preventing RSI too!