Christmas/New year holidays

A bit of a disappointing break for bouldering. Nearly ten days of brilliant conditions and I only managed four sessions on the real stuff. Two of the sessions were disappointing mornings up at Thorn crag trying my current project Fix My Sink (Fb 7b). This starts at the same point as and for my next trick but breaks out right setting up on some small crimps for a full stretch dynamic slap for the sloping arête/top and then a few easier moves to finish. My first session on this was pretty poor as the sloping holds were wet and even after a bit of brushing and towel drying still felt damp. After about half an hour of skin trashing attempts I gave up. My second morning on this was much the same only my skin was trashed until bleeding. Great!
The third session was a quality day out at Brimham with Laurie ‘I boulder for routes’ Carefoot and Peter ‘ psyched out of my brains for blocs’ Phillips. Pete showed us round the blocs and projects he’s been working on. I didn’t manage too many sends but got to play on lots of good problems. Highlights for me were getting the pommel (Ft 6b) third go, flashing black dog arête (Ft 6c) and climbing Pair in a Cubicle (Ft 7a) third go. A good day out on nice problems. Shame there is lots of packing up and walking between boulders but a place to definitely get back to.
My final day on was another trip up to thorn crag for a big circuit around easier problems for me. This was a great day out. I had the crag to myself, there was a dusting of frost/snow over the fells and a constant orange glow across the sky. I managed to climb about thirty problems up to font 6c+. Highlights of the session was to climb two problems I had previously not done. The first of these nice problems was red rose addict (Ft 6c+). This is a nice slopey left to right traverse on the paradise boulder. The second problem was the sitting start to guns and ammo (Ft 6c). This is a small but quality arete which I used a knee bar to assist with the lungey move for the arete.
So on the whole a bit of a dissapointing holiday for climbing with only two days out on the real stuff. Hopefully 2009 will bring good weather, good friction and some quality bouldering.