Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Dartmoor First Ascents: The Great White Slope

Last year I removed a moss carpet from a boulder in Lustleigh to reveal a massive sloper.  The feature alone made this rather short boulder suddenly very appealing and I added it straight on my to-do list.  The sloper ended up being worse than it looked and I needed to wait for cold temps but to be honest I wasn't expecting this problem to be that hard.  It ended up putting up a serious fight and is full on from beginning to end.  In fact, just getting establish proved difficult and I had one whole session where I was never even able to attempt the first slap.  I even put a rope on to try the upper moves and I can honestly say this is the shortest boulder I have ever done that for.

It took three more sessions and so much skin to crack this one and in the end I barely scraped up it.  I'd be curious to hear how it goes for other folks as maybe this one just played to my weaknesses.  But better get after it soon as I'm not how much longer we'll have favorable conditions.....

Here's a little video that only captures a small part of the struggle.  Enjoy.

1 comment:

Dain said...

The hat! Long live the hat!