Juice part 1

Last Thursday I picked up Sean and Nico from Manchester. Friday I went to work and when I came home we got stuck into some sweet climbing. First up we went to Devils Gorge for some pre-dinner bouldering. Sean spotted a (not so obvious) challenge inspired by our recent viewing of Stone monkey – a 7 ft horizontal dyno to a jug and wild swing. This kept us busy for ages until it was eventually stuck (I’ll go back and film this one for the blog sometime – it’s nuts!). After dinner we packed the car to capacity and hit the road to Pembroke. Arriving at 2am we set up camp and got up at 8 for a full day on the rock. Warming up at St. Govans we swiftly dispatched half a dozen routes up to E4 between us and made our way to Huntsmans leap – the lads loved it! Straight in for the E6 onsights – damp holds saw the ladz slip off the cruxes of both Souls and Hunterkiller – lack of trad climbing resulted in me fluffing up the 6b crux slap on Minotaur!! Not too bad though as I was fairly happy with the move once I tried it again and it’s the sort of move you do mess up onsight – a reachey (for me!) blind slap to a hidden pocket. Ah well…. Caroline finished up with a E2 lead in fine form before we went to check out The Big Issue, E9 6c. AWESOME! It was really weird to be climbing with some strong lads on a visit – they had no reason to not jump on these hard routes because they’d never heard or read about their reputation – the outlook really rubbed off on me – everything looks doo-able and fresh…. Ripe! Anyway – Nico checked it for gear and then gave it a quick toprope – agreeing that it was 8a+ … he was psyched for the lead but the following morning it was chucking rain!! Noo!! Where now?