Sunday 20 April 2014

Stamina Boys

Yesterday I climbed what's probably the hardest bit of route length climbing I've done. This classic testpiece takes an audacious and improbable line though intimidating terrain, with unrelentingly bold climbing, continually challenging technicalities and the very real prospect of severe injury should you accidentally sit on the tree part way through.

The Boy Band/Staminaband link tags another 15 move 7C boulder problem on the start of Staminaband, adding a really quite surprising amount of difficulty and absolutely no quality! But hey, it's a fairly obvious challenge, good training for something, and most importantly doesn't involve any heavy crimping for the right hand, which probably makes it one of the few hard things of route length that I can try at the moment in the UK. Plus I get to have done something that Steve Mac called 9a (fortunately it's easier for the tall) and even Ondra enjoys the odd local challenge of dubious quality. I used the cheaty lank method at the end of Staminaband. Sorry.

Here's some send footage

Stamina Boys from Alex Barrows on Vimeo.


Only the inadequacies of windows movie maker saved you from having full length rests accompanied by a split screen with this glorious footage: