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| Psyched |
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| Pony Prancing |
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| Talfarach |
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| Sleep of Faith |
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First day at Talfarach was with
Jon and Glyn earlier this year. I’d never been there before, despite having
climbed quite a bit at Porth Ysgo over the years. I was amazed by how many good
boulders there are just a few hundred metres along the coast from Porth Ysgo.
On the first day we went to one of the middle areas where there are a couple of
great 7a+s and a 7b+ finger crack traverse. We also climbed a new problem, Pony
Prancing, a really cool 6c with a bit of a spicy landing!
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| Warm up 6b |
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| Two Aretes Syndrome |
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The next time, was an amazing day
with Pete Robbins and James Doc, and I realised how extensive the area is for
bouldering. We walked down past the Big Orange and I was blown away. In term of
a stunning line and quality of rock this is on a par with Careless Torque and
looked like a world class problem. Too hard and too high anyway, so we heading
down into the boulder field to check out some classics and hunt for new
problems. Solstice, Equinox and Piece of Pith are all superb problems.
Surprisingly there were still some mega lines to be done so we added four 2/3*
problems; Two Aretes Syndrome (7a+), Like It or Limpet (7b+), Sleep of Faith
(6c) and Shrimpmaster (7a)… I still haven’t done Like it or Limpet though.
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| Like it or Limpet |
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| ...Drenched |
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So I went back, to try Limpet,
but also as I was curious about Big Orange. We tried Limpet, fell off a few
times and then got swamped by a wave and had to move landward. I put a rope
down Big Orange finally and not knowing anything about it, tried what was to me
the most obvious sequence. It turns out that this is a bit different to what
Pete had done. It seemed doable, at least worth another go. A fourth visit,
with fresher arms and this time I didn’t bother to rinse my skin on the
boulders beforehand. On a rope, I could get the crux move using my sequence a
bit more than half the time. I tried Pete’s way and it seemed much harder. I
didn’t link it on a rope but felt like I had a good chance so set the pads up
and went for it. Before I had time to think I was at the top trying to reach
out to a loop of rope to grab and swing back to ground.
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| Big Orange |
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| Big Orange |
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