1 lap as a warmup. Despite being trashed from yesterday's climbing and a gig in the city last night, the crux of this (after I'd warmed up) felt the best its ever felt... until I broke a hold off the top of the route and sliced apart my finger. After giving the route a liberal coating of blood we bailed for the day and went to watch the Fight at the pub.
3 more laps. Some beta breakthrough. Feeling stronger than ever. And a new highpoint on link (by 1 more move). Linked the top crux into the rest every time today, too! So cool, so hard. Circumcised my finger on the last lap.
2 more laps. Hard and tiring and very intimidating. Today was probably my first REAL day putting in proper effort to sort this route out with a view to Sendage. I can finally do the whole crux as a sequence (just barely!) but can only do it a few times in the day before my fingers are too tired to pull the demanding moves. About as arete-y as an arete can come during the crux sequence. The upper crux could still be a heatbreaker (though I linked it into the bottom section once!) I'd say the crux of this is probably at my bouldering limit in the style.
Awesome climbing, but bloody hard. I was throwing myself at the extremely bouldery (and scary!) aretecrux of this for about an hour. A bit more finger strength training is needed. The lower slab is pleasant, the prow is funky, the roof is outrageous, the aretecrux is gnarly, the steeparete moves are airy, and the very toughsteepface climbing finale on shallow pockets is desperate. Harder than I expected.
