La Cornisa, 7b

I spent the first few hours of the climbing day working my project for the time being, a problem called Esperanzer, a 6c stand problem with an 8b sit start. The stand took no time to do but unsurprisingly the sit put up a fight for every move. I had spent the previous day trying to work out a sequence that suited me, soon realising none of it did! But I’d somehow figured out a way to crawl my way up the barely existing holds that created this monster. 2 hours of effort later I found myself climbing up into the stand and heading over for the two slopers to make the top out, but alas I was too pumped. Having worked out the 6 or so moves that lead into the stand I was pumped out to death, I had two attempts where I found myself on those same two slopers screaming to find some friction, only to peel off backwards and come tumbling down to the pad. All that effort to fall off the 6c top out, gutted! Maybe another day, an 8b in two sessions would have been nice but was clearly too much to ask! I spent the rest of the day pottering round in the sun eating biscuits and saving my skin for another go in the morning. Kay managed to find herself a project for the next few days too coming unbearably close to a 6b called Seiscerraro, falling at the final hold before the top out.

Freshly showered and full of buffet style breakfast from our hotel stay we hit the area once again for day 3 of Esperanzer. Feeling slightly demoralised from yesterday’s falls I was fully psyched to get back to those top slopers with enough energy to finish it off and top out. Another baking hot day made the start moves feel even harder, it took me an hour of attempts to get to the 5th move, a blind snatch to a shallow 2/3 finger pocket. It slowly turned into a fight to make it into the stand and match yesterday’s performance never mind beat it and top the thing out! After that hour of flailing attempts I stuck the shallow pocket and it was on. A swift 30 seconds or so later and I found myself back on the top slopers looking for the right foothold to set me up for the top out; one blind guess at where it was and panic struck in, it wasn’t where I thought it was! A swift shout of ‘help!’ to Andy had him jump to the rescue in helping me locate the foothold, then left foot up and the mantel was done. First 8b of the trip and hopefully not the last!! 3 days of effort rolled into 60 seconds or so of climbing, topping out gave me a feeling of massive relief, I’m starting to believe my one previous 8b wasn’t such a fluke after all : )