Project

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Back on project at Rubicon last night, but thwarted by warm greasy conditions and general wave of weakness. Saturday’s attempt was no better either due to the base being flooded making getting onto the rock something of an epic.
Getting a project at Rubicon has not turned out to be the most sensible use of my new six day blocks of days off. Basically it doesn’t come into decent nick typically until about 7pm so most of the day is wasted. The best sessions at Rubicon so far have been the after work hits.
To date I’ve had four sessions on the line. First was a recce whilst hanging off bolts on adjacent lines. Managed most of the moves with some tension during this session, but was usable to access the first bit. The second session was the day that Mr Harris did Barracuda. On this occasion I bolted, and cleaned the line. Very minimal gluing was required the rock being very solid, but I did back up a couple of things which looked like they might work loose in the future. I believe that if you are going to bolt up a line you should make the effort to back up any potentially dubious holds so that the route survives in a climbable state. You’ve only got to look at nearby Eugenics and Tribes to see what happens when holds aren’t fixed properly. This opens up issues of route manufacturing, but that’s another topic altogether. After prepping the route I figured the moves properly but had no juice left to try for a redpoint. During this session a key hold crumbled a bit making the route significantly harder, but also better I think. The hold seems totally solid now. Session three was the very wet Saturday mentioned above and session four was last night’s poor show.
The line dubbed Cake of Power (from the root words for caviar chav-jar literally meaning cake of power) for the time being, starts with the first couple of moves on Caviar then continues direct/right where Caviar goes left. It rejoins Caviar at the break, but there is scope for an independent finish. I guess it’s a direct version of Caviar but it contains more separate climbing than first appearances would suggest. It feels a fair bit harder than Caviar (which I did a couple of weeks back) but I’m not sure if it’ll be a full grade harder.
Next attempt will be Thurs eve. Hopefully the conditions might be a bit more conducive to success.