6th time lucky...

Mungasdale. Thelonious. Typical North West gneiss 15° overhanging thuggery, albeit on a much underused crag. A slightly off-piste inspiration, but that's nothing new for me I guess.

Visit 1, Spring 2012 - First visit, neat little crag, not strong enough nor accustomed enough to Scottish thuggery. Didn't even do Walking On Water.

Visit 2, Spring 2013 - Starting to climb quite well, did do Walking On Water, but too tired / too warm to try Thelo.

Visit 3, Spring 2014 - Far too muggy and midgey. Didn't climb at all, unless backing off Monkey Tribe counts.

Visit 4, Summer 2014 - Far too boiling hot. Tried to get morning shade under the illusion that the "south-west" facing was accurate. SSSW more like so no shade and no chance. Walked straight out.

Visit 5, Autumn 2014 - Perfect cool fresh conditions and the main wall was entirely seeping on every route. Did Monkey Tribe and then sacked it off yet again.

Visit 6, Autumn 2014 - Scarcely a week later and brief Indian Autumn and crisp fresh Easterlies gave a bone dry crag and perfect Gneiss conditions. 5 layers on to belay and one power vest on to climb, and finally...

A ridiculous amount of effort and dedication to a 2 star, split grade, 15m route that no-one's climbed, hardly anyone has heard of, at a crag few people have visited?? Yes. But a ridiculous amount of satisfaction unlocking the desperate boulder problem start and a ridiculous amount of pleasure pushing past the pump and yarding up steep jugs all the way to the top.

This was one of the highlights of what is probably the final reliable jaunt to the North West holy grail for this year - although I am still hoping for some technical trad suntrap action on the pseudo-grit of Ardmair and Diabeg if conditions allow - and once again the area was stunning in the autumn sun:

Unbeatable :)

Edit: Eagle-eyed readers might notice these photos are over-saturated. This is because Google / Blogger has a shitty "Auto-Enhance" feature specifically implemented to give you less control over what you upload and fuck up your photos. After a bit of searching, it's not possible to disable this without joining googleplus and thus no doubt opening up another world of bullshit and social media herding. In short, Google can suck my fucking balls until they choke and I'm sorry on their behalf the photos don't look quite right.