I'm a woman

I'm a woman
Photos copyright Laurence Gouault
No reproduction on other media without the photographer's permission.

Sunday 11 January 2015

To bolt or not to Bolt, by Stevie Haston.


 Bolting isn't easy. There's a lot of problems that people don't appreciate. Today there's problems with the metal, corrosion, stress corrosion, there's bad placing of bolts, people argue about length between bolts, and there's an often overlooked problem-glue.


 This is good glue, but the container has ruptured, this means that only one part of a two part glue has been used, there fore rendering the glue just so much expensive mush. The glue would never harden, the bolt would just pull out! Luckily I felt something wrong with the squeeze, and noticed the  colour of the glue was wrong. My clothes and gear got ruined, but I didn't put really bad bolts in!


 This is a route called 21.12.12, it's just over two years old, and I still haven't done it! Neighbouring 21.12.12 is 12.12.12, I did this two years ago -an interesting 8a, the names are the dates on which they were bolted, funny numbers eh? 21.12.12 is 8a+ or 8b, and is really good overhanging wall climbing, tecky and fastidious, it's breaking me, there's a wet section on it that doesn't seem to dry, although I haven't tried it in the summer. It's in the guide book as 7c, a bit of an error eh! My bad.

   
    21.12.12. is brill, delicate, foot intensive, lots of memory.

There's a little boulder problem to gain  the chain V6, which involves stuff you cannot see, a finger tip mono being the choicest, and the shake out before this section is not so great for Hippo Haston. Anyway if you go to the White Tower, there's loads to do, six 8's, and three new 7's, Flying thru Fog, Frothing the Froth, and Jap's Eye next to Wee Man in a Boat . Wee Man in a Boat has been suggested as 7a+, and not 6c+, my bad. The oranges and lemons are all out, and there are still some daffodils out at the White Tower, at Sopu the neibouring cliff 10mins walk away the daffodils are sadly gone. The sky reflected the sea in a painting Turner couldn't have done justice too.     Why is the world so beau, and humans so stupid, the beauty of humans is only skin deep, natures is millennium and millennium, luckily we had a good day sharing the cliffs with the wind, a Kestral, and the smell of Thyme.