True Slovenia

So as I mentioned briefly in the previous post our super strong Slovenian friend, Gasper, spent the last week kicking it in the Peak with us geezers and learning what British climbing is all about, along with what us lot have to deal with on a daily basis.

Bearing in mind this guy climbed 8c when he was 15 we were all syked to see how he would get on! For his first ever 'trad' route he boshed out the highball E6/7 Thumbelina at Ina's Rock in the Churnet! Check out the pics, and I will upload some video when I get around to it.
It was an awesome day out with a big crew, and huge crush fest with us all sending this scary classic. Cornelius was up next just to the left, Dave led the way and soon found himself through the high crux and topping out. We'll be back to finish this off soon, that bloc is high!

Being mainly a sport climber, Pinti was especially excited about checking out the Tor, however we arrived and the place was soaked, but he was happy to have seen all the famous lines and to experience his first taste of fish and chips after!

We then took him out for a crash course in proper trad climbing on the grit. The guy turned out to be a natural and you would have hardly guessed he'd never placed a cam or nut in his life! Respect bro. See you again soon, hopefully for some hardcore euro style training in Slovenia! Peace

River of Life

Ed, Bailes and myself headed to try this problem the other week so here are a few shots that my sister LYDIA took of us getting involved. Cheers youth.
This last week we've had our good friend Gasper Pintar staying with us from Slovenia, its been awesome to see our true homie again and show him around the Peak. I'll get onto writing something about what we've been up to shortly.

Keeping it real

The cold weather and snowy conditions we'd all been wishing for all winter finally arrived but unfortunately didn't bring quite as many amazing days as hoped for! Nevertheless we've still all been getting out and digging deep! It can be hard to maintain motivation sometimes when every visit to try a route turns out to be dog weather, but you just have to learn to get on with it and be super patient because eventually it'll all come good. I've been getting stuck into the bouldering the last week or so and had a really good weekend sending some stuff on the lime! Most of the grit was pretty much out on Saturday so me and Ted ended up retreating to the grotty local toilet of Toms Cave to check out a few things. After warming up and a good brew I was able to get the fairly new problem of Hannibal (V9) done before heading for cake, tea and rugby with the Hamers. Sunday Ed joined us for a sesh at Stoney, a place I've not climbed at in years, and it turned out to be a brilliant call with most things bone! We must have ticked close to 30 odd problems between the three of us, mostly down to Teds excellent knowledge, nice one homie! Few 'highlights' included Power Allowance, Swing Thing, White Ladder and a total of four V10's for Ed! Good un youth.
Anyway check out some video from the weekend and the pics from Tom and Pete's birthday bash at Millstone, no idea how those guys found the psyche to tie on and get up that thing in those conditions, but waddage to them both for the effort!

Some blonde chic going for it on Masters

Banana man

Ted the Hannibal