Wankers Wrist.

...or maybe not enough wanking?? I have somehow picked up a tendinopathy on the inside of my wrist on the little finger side. This "appeared" without any obvious cause sometime during the latter stages of the easy-ish green circuit at TCA. I'd warmed up well with a hobbling micro-run, felt fine on the circuit, and somehow during the last few problems my wrist started hurting, especially on any occasions where I was moving it relative to my hand. I stopped after a couple more problems, went home and iced it, but found I couldn't even slide a wok around whilst cooking a stir-fry. The next day it was hurting more so I went to the New Victoria MIU in case it was broken. Swift service there and some prodding, pressing and pulling gave a diagnosis of tendonitis. Wrist injuries are outside my "comfort zone" of A2 pulley tweaks, golfer's elbow and shoulder impingements, so I booked a physio appointment too - well justified as it is still hurting today in quite a few minor movements, rotation especially. The more indepth physio diagnosis was the same, some form of tendonitis / tendinopathy, as was the treatment: Rest, ice, anti-inflammatories (which I'm not supposed to take being on Warfarin, i.e. I'll sure as hell take them and hope it all calms down before my next INR reading), reduced mobility, massaging forearm muscles, then gently stretching the wrist. Once every day stir-frying / general motions are pain-free, ease back into climbing with shorter sessions, and combine this with general wrist exercises. Continue with CV / any exercise that doesn't aggravate it in the meantime.

Bollox.

Funnily enough I am syked for:

1. Gritstone slabs.

2. Training hard and training lots to get my strength up for the spring season.

...and not at all syked for:

1. Resting, icing, stretching, massaging, and not fucking climbing.

On the plus side, the weather is shit, the forecast is shit, so whilst I'm missing out on training at least I'm not missing out on any prime conditions. And I can still do plenty of CV exercise, especially the fucking lower limb shit I loathe and am too crippled to do effectively anyway. However, I did go swimming and that went okay so if I can put up with the soul-destroying tedium of that then maybe it is a good time to get a bit leaner and fitter. I shall see how it goes.

In the meantime, this soundtrack accurately sums up my vibe:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJyq8hgs7hQ

Pedriza photo dump.

Too many from my shitty phone, sorry. No captions. Add your own.

 

 

 

 

Pedriza Post-Padding Analysis.

So a rare return match for me - but to a fascinating (and frustrating!) area that definitely warrants it, and will warrant more in future... My goal had been to climb in better conditions, and hopefully climb some routes around F6c (most likely) or F7a (my usual comfortable onsight limit). I sort of did that, it was a close thing.

The final score of pure slabs: climbed / failed after proper attempt:

F6b: 3 / 2*
F6b+: 2** / -
F6c: 1 / 2
F6c+: 3 / 3***
F7a: - / 2****

* - one failed route actually F7a
** - one success actually F6c+
*** - one fail partly due to heat, one fail partly due to scrittle
**** - one fail due to missing good hold
(the rest cos they were fucking nails and I wasn't good enough....no excuses)

Not a great success rate but not a bad one either. Being foiled by some circumstances - heat on day 1, icy cold on day 5 - and a few avoidable mistakes - gives me a bit of reassurance that I was starting to do okay. More importantly I was finding it even more interesting than before. So yeah, I plan to go back, quick hit style, not least because one's fingertips only last a maximum of 4 days!!. Later or earlier in winter, last minute flights on a good forecast, camping cabin....who is up for it??

Further to my previous flailings, I have learnt a few more tricks of the trade this time:

1. Be prepared for mind-numbing levels of difficulty. Even around the F6c mark where routes start to be one grade undergraded rather than several, the continuously thin desperation is a real shock to the system. What might form 3-4m of crux climbing between breaks in a gritstone E4 is extended to 20m with no respite on a Pedriza F6b+. Be warned!

2. Conditions are crucial, in particular a light breeze is essential. Given La Pedriza is the foot-mountains of a 2000m range rising above the Madrid plateau, this is usefully likely.

3. Marking footholds is useful in a sea of obtusely homogenous granite crystals, but more importantly marking a wide variety of footholds to give a choice of moves once committed.

4. Feeling around for handholds is essential. One never knows when a useful 1/5 pad ripple might be hiding behind those same dastardly crystals.

5. Tight shoes with a bit of an edge seem to be marginally more useful than soft smearing shoes. The former can work better on the pure friction sections than the latter can work on the tiny crystal / gratton sections.

6. Chalking and drying one's thumbs can be very useful, both for tiny thumb crystals (essentially pinching a blank slab!), and thumb press mantles.

7. A slick rope and an alert belay are really useful. Although most slabs are well bolted, the constant insecurity can make pulling up rope to clip scarier than actual trad climbing!

8. Never relax until the chain is clipped. Even the easier sections are only "less hard" rather than easy, and still entirely fluffable.

9. Physical training for high steps / single leg presses, and flexibilty are the most important. Calf / leg press training seemed less useful - generally my calves didn't get tired although my feet did.

10. Slab training should ideally include very small crystals / grattons (as common a difficulty as the smears), and also side-stepping on slabs as well as high-stepping, as many routes weave a bit to find the least awful non-holds.

Hopefully I can get down to the grit soon and put some of this into practise...

Days 4/5/6: The Final Battle

All mashed in to one because not a lot happened:

Day 4:
Patones limestone of no real consequence although I did do a really nice route with a proper deep mono crux and a big undercling span finish. I spent most of the day feeling sick because I'd had too much coffee and not enough food, and Antonio twatted his A2 pulley on the 2nd route of the afternoon. Mierda.

Day 5:
F6b - succeeded - F6b+? - tenuous 6a smearing crux
F6b - succeeded - F6b+? - continuous 5c for many metres

The perfect continental winter sun day: climbing at 1200m, in the shade, on frozen rock, with a icy NW wind howling down from snowcapped peaks at 2200m.... ummmmm. For a brief moment, while there was a briefer respite in the gale, the conditions felt like the best friction conditions ever, perfectly dry and perfectly crisp. Which made if all the more galling to have to walk away from a well bolted sheet of F6c-F6c+ slabs after just one "warm-up" route. So we went around to a sunny face on the far side of the massif and did one route in very pleasant temperatures, clipped the first bolt on another route, and then it snowed. Mierda.

Day 6:
V5 - succeeded - slab in 5 goes - classic bloc problem
F6b+ - succeeded - F6b+ - vertical face, sharp
F6c+ - failed - F6c+ - vertical face, jump crux for the short, silly
F7a - failed - F7a - vertical face, mis-read crux
E1 5b - succeeded - E1 5b - offwidth, good fun
F6c+ - failed - F6c+ - did all cruxes but slipped off scrittle at top

The forecast for Pedriza itself so we diverted to a small local area at an outskirt town, a mini-Pedriza....a Pedrizita! This was okay and we climbed most of the day whilst god knows what sort of precipitation hit the main area. The highlight was a beautiful slab boulder problem, with either good handholds (1/3 pad single crystals), or good footholds (1/3 pad micro-smears), but never both. The F7a failure was disappointing as it was a good climb and a simple mistake, the F6c+ was also disappointing as I'd done some proper Pedriza desperation on it and just got too casual on the top - it would have been a good punctuation to the trip. Mierda.

Today would have been Day 7 and the current weather is cool cloudy and fresh, just a pity about the big dump of snow on Pedriza last night. Skiing down the slabs would be more feasible than climbing up so that is the end of that. Mierda....but it's still been a good trip...

Day 3: The Inbetweener.

A bit of this (shocking success), a bit of that (merciless failure)...

F6a - succeeded -F6a+? - by the skin of my teeth, felt like solid 5c for several metres.
F6b+ - succeeded - F6b+ - fierce 6a start, delicate above.
F6c+ - succeeded - F6c+ - vertical bouldering with rests, not the usual weirdness.
F6c+ - failed - F6c+/7a - pure desperation on non-existent micro-holds
F7a - failed - F7a - hard but missed hold in break, doh.
F6c+ - succeeded - F6c+/c - maybe even soft touch? Bouldery but brief.
F6c - failed - ungradeable - 8m of pure friction with every move English 6a.

The successes were sometimes not pure slab stuff but still good fun. Some of these were not pure failures due to pure mierda de las cabras grading, and thus some of them were a bit annoying. The F6c+ was ridiculously hard moves so that's that. The F7a was very close and I think I would have done it if I'd looked around more (maybe easier said that done when your eyes are on stalks from all the slab desperation), and the abominable F6c, well it was a surreally desperate experience but I only slipped off randomly a few moves from salvation. BLEH.

Learnings today included that: I really like griffon vultures and goats, breeze is crucial for optimum friction, Balvennie Double Wood tastes pretty nice at the crag, I am a bit hampered by my inflexible right ankle from an old break, very subtle variances in angle make a huge difference on friction slabs, and some of Pedriza is still as fucking random as ever.

Tomorrow....will I have any skin left??

Day 2: Da fuck?

....kinda went like this:

F6a - succeeded - F6a-ish - 5c start then padding
F6b - succeeded - F6b-ish - 6a start then padding.
F6c - fell off thin start - F6c bloc - not inspiring
F6a+ - succeeded - F6b/+ - scary friction
F6b+ - succeeded - F6c+, 10m of sustained 6a/5c, mentally draining
F6c+ - succeeded - F6c+ - hard but fair
F6c+ - succeeded - F6c+ - thinly crimpy but fair
F7a - fell off hard crux - F7a - similar but stretchier crux

So I did the sort of thing I have been aspiring to do. It helped a bit that conditions were amazing later on - proper grit friction style - the F6b+ was mind-warpingly hard and "warmed me up" (i.e. I had to sit down and shake a bit afterwards), and both F6c+s were really very good, the first one being perfectly balanced immaculate slab desperation. The main conclusion I can draw from this and previous experiences, so far, is that the Pedriza grade reality goes something like:

F6a = F6b
F6a+ = F6b+
F6b =F6c
F6b+ = F6c
F6c = F6c
F6c+ = F6c+
F7a = F7a??

Below F6c is such bollox that I might as well not try "easier" routes apart from token warm-ups as they are just as hard as the harder routes?? Too tired to draw any more conclusions for now....dunno what will happen tomorrow but I will try to keep an open beginner's mind.

Back in Pedriza.

2011. Easter. 20+°C temps every day. No slab practise. No training. Completely unprepared. Pedriza slabs were unbelievably hard, F6a was desperate, F6b was my limit (compared to F6c/7a elsewhere).

2014. Mid-winter. 5-10°C forecast daily. Some very reassuring slab mileage on grit and in Scotland. Specific gym training for calves and leg presses. Very aware of the challenges. Pedriza slabs ARE unbelievably hard....

Day 1:
F6a+ slab - succeeded - F6b? Sustained English 5c
F6b slab - failed - F6b+/c? Sustained 5c/6a - slipped off by making a slight foot mistake near the top.
F6c slab - failed - F6c? 6a crux - fell off trying a slightly wrong line, could have done it
F6c+ slab - failed - ??? - fell off a very hard crux with a hidden hold.
F6b slab - failed - F7a? Sustained 6a/b(!) - fell off after 5m of the hardest slab climbing I have ever done on lead.
F6c+ face - failed - ??? - fell off a desperate (6b?) rockover at start.
F6c steep wall - cruised -  F6b/+ Easy.

But maybe I'm not good at slabs? Maybe I haven't done enough slabs recently? Except in my 2013 Of Climbing The Best I Ever Had, I did plenty of good varied slabs in the autumn and winter. According to the Rockfax conversion for bold routes (which gives relatively lower sport grades), some recent ascents look like this:

DIY E3 6a - F6b+ - English 6a solo crux at 4m
Stanleyville E4 5c - F6b+ - 5c cruxes before and next to poor cam
The Beautician E3/4 5c - F6b - 5c crux runout from good fear
Hunky Dory E3 5c - F6b - 5b/c finish with gear by feet
4 Pebble Slab E3 5c - F6a+/b - 5b friction moves 5m above gear
Nijinski E5 6a - F6c/+ - 5c/6a rockover and swing with distant side-gear
On The Verge E3/4 5c - F6b - one 5c crux next to gear, a bit of bold 5b
Risque Grapefruit E4 5c - F6b+ - blind 5c crux with 10m groundfall
Triode E5 6a - F6c - a couple of steady 6a moves with distant side-gear
On The Beach E5 6a - F6c+ - 6m runout of sustained 5c/6a
Wall Of Flame E4 6a - F6c/+ - 5m runout of continuous 5c
Rosehearty route E3 5c - F6b/+ - a few positive 5c moves
Riders On The Storm E3 5c - F6b - 5b/c with bad gear
Scimitar route E3 5c - F6b - a few fiddly 5b/c moves with okay gear

In short, I have been cruising runout F6b and regularly doing bold F6c with enough determination. So actual F6b / F6c sport slabs should be okay??.......Hmmmmm!!

So that's day one and I the one thing I am now fully confident of is that Pedriza grades are pure mierda de las cabras.

Not sure what will happen in subsequent days but I am trying to treat it as a learning process....even if I have to do small numbers, it should be great training for slabs back home.

Further updates as I learn enough Spanish swearing to describe it!