9 October 2016
After
long hard summer of work, injuries and disappointments, Craig and I got out onto the Cobbler today with a psyche to climb in the sun.
Craig sums up the day, here and on the Simply Epic website
here
We climbed Incubator six years ago and decided it needed a revisit. It's a meaty HS 4b with three
lovely pitches offering their own challenges along the way. Craig
headed off up the first pitch, a pleasant introduction to the joys of
mica schist in the dry...grippy but hollow rock in places.
The
next pitch is short with a sting on leaving the stance; an off-balance
overhung sloppy hold type move with little confidence but well
protected. Despatched with aplomb, Mark brought Craig up to the crux
balance-centric, bridging fest with a weird phallus rock protrusion half
way up.
Craig won the rock paper scissors duel and
headed off up the steep crack corner, lacing it up like a wild Western
bar girl trying to look thin. Half way up, the crack line terminates
and it seemed churlish, if not irresponsible, not to make use of the
phallus rock for safety, despite the sense of inadequacy it
engendered...
The pitch kept on giving and involved
some balance moves to escape the line right into a notch/haven and first
available stance. Mark followed up with style and led off up the final
short rock moves which we didn't really recall from 6 years ago. The
guide book may reveal the proper finish if we got it wrong but it all
seemed logical, unlike the heat from the October sun!
An
old egg sandwich for Mark and smoked salmon for Craig saw them back to
the car in the sun in jig time for coffee and cake in Arrochar. A grand
day in the hills for the boys, knocking off their THIRD!!! rock climb
of the season - where has the time gone?
Crikey, roll on the winter season...