Bad route choices.

Following my successful southern soujorn, and some life-affirming Lakeland larks, I got my wires crossed and my climbing took an inevitable downturn (waxing and waning, ebbing and flowing). I found while I was doing well, I could do both of two things: Get on some pretty fucking weird and sketchy and dubious routes that were at my limit but which I had desired for and prepared for for a while. And get on some fairly challenging but essentially well known and obvious routes on the spur of the moment with little mental preparation or build-up. So far so good. Psyched out of my warped and twisted mind for some full-on horror, and able to cope with most minorly challenging trade routes. And then I got confused and thought that meant I'd be fine on spur of the moment minorly challenging sketchy horrors - wrong conclusion.

So I ended up on This Is Yesterday at Cam Crag getting pumped trying to work out totally blind moves above a cluster of fiddly micro shit, on Scram 79 at Dunkeld getting pumped on irreversible crimping above a wobbly RP shallow C3 and bendy peg, and Star Wars at Falcon Crag trying to pull over a blind crimpy roof above one good wire in a hollow glued on flake and two tiny offsets in crunch. None of these met with success. I rested, lowered off, escaped, sulked and huffed and complained about the grade and eventually realised what had gone wrong. None of these were desperate, but they were all dodgy and all too much with little psyching up - all of them I could have done with much prior meditating on the matter. Or if they'd been those reliable honeypot ticks I claim to disdain. Subtle differences but it's a fine line near your limit.