Disappointment and consolation

Yesterday I had planned to head to St Bees but the old elbows were hurting. Maybe that fingerboard session after Pex was a mistake! Today after two days rest I had ideas of crushing Ian’s arête up at gillercombe. The weather had different ideas and by the time I was parked up at honister slate mine and hiked up the shoulder of grey knotts I realised things were not going to be drying out quickly over this side of the lakes. I looked down the pass towards the wild west of Whitehaven to see blue skies. Gutted bad choice for the day and I had the dog with me so St bees wasn’t an option. I hoped things down in the south east would be drier and I headed to rolling rock to check out Jungle Hobo.
Walking up next to pasture beck passing numerous pink sheep was very pleasant and got the dog all excited. The boulders bellow raven crag came into view quickly and looked dry so I plodded on.
Landing up at rolling rock the first thing that struck me was how sloping the landing was and I wished the dog could give me a spot. I got warmed up on the ace rolling rock wall and not so pleasant left arête. Then I quickly climbed the excellent Kopparberg wall which involved a long reach to hard pull off a razor sharp edge to the top.
Jungle Hobo was up next and is the destination problem. This problem features in the lakes bloc top 50 problems and is something I’ve wanted to send for a while. The start puzzled me. Pulling on direct was hard. There was a good hold for my left but only a very small razor sharp one/two finger edge that I couldn’t use to pull on. Next to this was a fresh (ish) looking scar on the rock. Later on looking at a photo of Greg doing the sitter to this he seems to use a hold in the region of said crimp but seems to have three/four fingers on something so I think the good part of the hold has snapped off. It felt desperate to get on using the remaining part. Major disappointment a classic problem defunct. Maybe it could go and Greg might get on to me telling me I was just being a pussy and need to man up. I hope so for the problems sake.
A bit gutted I left. The day couldn’t end on a low so I though I’d drop in to finish some business off at the Garburn pass boulder. Before school broke for summer I’d had a couple of midgey, humid, hot sessions trying phatasmagorica. It felt like it should go but I found it difficult not to grease off at the time. Today was different, it was much cooler than in July and the cooler temps made the moves feel much easier. It went third go today and the only problem I seemed to have was the heather in my face as I topped out. The problem doesn’t look to great but the moves are funky.
On the way back down I tried run on weasels. This only gets a star in the rockfax but the thuggish moves feel cool. I managed all the moves except the final dynamic one to a flat jug, just didn’t have enough left in me. One to go back for!