Faith

Today I completed a project of mine at Mount Edgcumbe Rocks that I have been working on for a few sessions. It is highball, technical, varied in style and in angle – in short what I wanted in a project (although less dusty rock would have been preferable!).

This line has gone from me not being able to get past the second move, to making a couple more move of progress, to abseiling down to assess and clean the top holds, before I put it all together today.

I have called it ‘Faith’ – very simply because the crux involved standing (and matching) your feet on a sandy sloping foothold before pulling up to a small pocket/pinch. It requires total faith that your feet will stay (mine peeled off on many other occasions), as well as maintaining ones centre of gravity in a very delicate position.

As for the grade – I went for font 7b in the end. Like almost every project I have tried the line looked reasonable, I got shut down and I thought it was really hard, before I sussed a new sequence, which made it feel much easier than I was anticipating. This might be on the softer side of 7b, but considering the height of the problem, and the difficulty of working out the moves (this would be an impressive flash – if there are any takers?!) I think the grade is fair. It felt similar in style and difficulty to the two ‘Porg’ problems at High Rocks (font 7b and 7b+) at least, which helped me to grade it.

So another project rapped up – plenty more to go! I feel spoilt for choice at the moment as the sun is drying everything up nicely – got to love summer on the sandstone!