Hideous flapper on the red wall

Last night’s weather forecast suggested I’d be practicing funky shapes on the woodies at Ingleton but waking from my pit this morning the floor was damp but the promised down pours hadn’t materialised. So a less than psyched Kobe and super psyched I headed for a low intensity high volume session on ‘the excellent’ red wall.
The plan was to get as many problems done to prepare my body for the onslaught of two days on Northumberland sandstone this coming weekend.

I got warmed up on the traverse and then started to work my way through as many problems as I could from font 4 – 7a. The first few problems went ok but like I said on a recent post some font 6a’s can still be a problem for me and one such problem exists on this piece of rock. It’s a sitting dynamic eliminate between three holds on the optimus prime section of red wall. The finishing hold always seems mm’s away from my finger tips no matter which ever foot sequence I use. After about ten goes I had to move on.

I continued to climb the 5- 6a+ problems until I got to the classic dyno Font 6a+. I never get this problem first go as it’s all about catching the jug at your dead point and not ripping your shoulder out of it’s socket. On the fourth go I lined up, launched for the jug with my right hand and held it but something didn’t feel right. As I dismounted I saw claret pissing out of my small finger. I had ripped a huge deep chunk out of my finger. Great a flapper before meeting the lads in the county!
Could be worse I though could have been one of the main climbing fingers and that Tommy Caldwell climbs with a missing finger tip. I wasn’t going home I had only done about 10 problems so I taped up and continued to get into the rhythm of red wall.



It wasn’t my day whilst trying a reachy font 5 I skidded off, smacking my chin off the rock and biting my tongue. Ace!

I battled on and managed to get a good work out climbing about 20 problems from font 4 – 7a. It was a struggle and didn’t feel that in tune with red wall. I felt quite weak and heavy. It’s been niggling recently have I let all that winter training fitness slip over the last month or so. I haven’t been doing very many sessions, I’ve failed to power top up with the finger board and I’m feeling weaker than I was back in February. This bloody marathon training and I’m not even doing that properly.