Gritxit.

It came and it went, the natural grit season is over apart from maybe a few lucky days and a few north-facing crags. Given I moved down during the previous heatwave, getting a good few weeks of good conditions before the Easter meltdown was quite a bonus. Even more so, I'd only intended to do easy mileage due to my elbows and near total lack of strength and fitness, but as previously mentioned the only skills needed for grit are dry skin, luck, and a massive reach. So while I'll never have the latter, I managed to outwit the former mostly by sunbathing through afternoons out and climbing at dusk. And the luck, I guess I made a bit for myself by climbing routes that really inspired me.

A few samples:

Something at Hen Cloud in the baking heat. Mostly done for the photo which worked well. No gear and scrittly slopers. Alas too hot for any HC classics.

Foord's Folly at Ramshaw. This mess was all from the easy top crack, which I did in the "only bold E1 to solo" style, which was quite terrifying compared to the phenomenally easy lead option of spending 5 seconds slamming in the bloody obvious red camalot from the post crux jug and romping to the top. Instead I ground my hands into the crack to avoid the ground impacting with my body, and was hyperventilating so much my chest was aching for over an hour. This may have been something to do with finally getting through the crux start after dozens of attempts, this """6a""" being by far the hardest sequence I've ever done on anything with a route grade. Solid V5 6b. Good experience though. Unfortunately I left my bouldering brush beneath Old Fogey while recceing and scrubbing the neglected start....

The Egg at Bamford, one of my main inspirations this season in typical "Fiend gets unduly excited about a one star route lurking on the fringes of normality" vein. I went once with Ogs to recce the crag and we both got very psyched by this beautiful scoop, but neither of us was roped climbing. I went back with The Discoverer Of Planets and got spooked backing off a bad E3 warm-up and then got inspired again by the Egg just as the sun was going down which curtailed my plan of spending ages fiddling in the promised RPs in the seam, and finally back with Cragrat Rich when once again I had to wait for dusk but left enough time to discover that contrary to the guide there is only one hidden RP and the rest is sliders, flared cams, and hidden good cams out right, and the moves and overall experience are bloody great.

The end of the grit season. Mint connies at Ramshaw in a raking Easterly, but guaranteed bollox almost everywhere else. Old Fogey had only vaguely been in my sights, but I had to go back and retrieve my brush, so kinda had to do the route at the same time. Ogs advice: "You should leave your brush beneath more routes then". OF definitely deserves it's classic status, a finely sculpted buttress and a fine route with excellent "resting indefinitely while getting continually more scared" potential on the foothold just below me, and [spoiler] pushing a cam into the break before grappling with it's unnerving slopiness is highly recommended [/spoiler].

So that's that. I scrabbled around over Easter, maximising traffic jams, minimising good conditions, and mostly avoiding any good climbing, and I'm ready for some actual training before the main away game trad season.