Friday glee is not going to make any "moon" puns

[rydra_wong]

The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee: shortly before his 49th birthday, Ben Moon climbed Rainshadow, his second 9a (since his route Hubble -- considered at the time the world's first 8c+ -- is now widely thought to be 9a).

Here's an interview with him about it.

And here's some footage of Steve McClure on Rainshadow.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

I have glee because I spent the weekend in North Wales enjoying the sunshine. I climbed at two crags I'd not been to before, did the longest pitch I've ever done, the hardest multi-pitch I've ever swung leads on, and got to use my tricam.

[emperor]

Sounds good. What did you climb?

tricams? Scary...

[rydra_wong]

Saturday, lots of things at the Upper Tier at Pant Ifan (Tremadog) -- it's all short single-pitch routes, with metal stakes at the top making belay-building very speedy, so you can get a lot ticked.

Sunday: White Streak/Honeysuckle Corner and Dorcon at Craig yr Wrysgan (in the Moelwyns).

If I hadn't found that the tricam would seat itself beautifully in a little slot that would take nothing else, I might still be on top of Craig yr Wrysgan trying to build a belay. I was actually really impressed by how solid it seemed.

[wpadmirer]

That sounds fantastic!

[emperor]

I've had a great couple of weeks in climbing :)

Last week was spent in Provence, sport-climbing on limestone. Despite it being baking hot, and there being a lot of sandbags, I had a really good trip, and climbed a load of routes (30 ascents, 20 ticks). Any my fingertips and feet have almost recovered now :)

And then to cap it all, this week I got my project route at Harlow, which is my first F7a :-)

[wpadmirer]

Congratulations!

[rydra_wong]

Yay! Glad you survived the heat, and it sounds like you crushed! And the project is the cherry on top!

[cofax7]

I think I might have defeated my golfers/climbers elbow, and will text my climbing partner to meet me at the gym tonight...

[wpadmirer]

I send good vibes on that!

[rydra_wong]

Fingers crossed!

Also: I know a disturbing amount about elbow tendonitis and different ways of fixing it -- sounds like you've got it covered, but I can geek out about this endlessly.

(Incidentally, Dave MacLeod's new book Make or Break is a fantastic resource re: all sorts of climbing-related injuries. I need to write a review for the comm at some point.)

[wpadmirer]

My climbing partner is out of town and the gym's auto-belays are all down being serviced. So it appears there will be no climbing for me. SUCKAGE.

[rydra_wong]

WOE.

Do you have any climbing-related training you can do? I find that if I can't climb, it sometimes cheers me up to do something which I can tell myself will make me better at climbing. But that may be me being weird.

[wpadmirer]

That's not weird at all! I walk, and try to do some upper body work. But nothing satisfies like climbing. Also I live in Florida, so it's very flat here. If you can't climb in the gym, you're pretty stuck. (sigh)