Three sevens in a day!

After an unproductive trip to Crookrise on wednesday when I slogged up to the crag with 2 mats but failed to do anything new and a brief trip to Ilkley with Matt on friday - got to crag, it was raining, came back for cup of tea - I was keen to get out this weekend. It was wet and windy yesterday but today was forecast to be perfect. I got woken up before 8 by the sun streaming through the windows but Matt was suffering from a night out in Leeds and so it was nearly 12 before he arrived in Burley. I wanted to go to Simon's Seat/Lord's Seat and so after some cunning parking (glad we weren't in my car as I doubt it would have fitted in the space) we slogged up the hill to Barden Fell. This was nowhere as bad as I thought it would be (only 1 mat helped) but I think it was more of a struggle for Matt!

We headed to Lord's Seat first and after a quick warm-up (the grit here's so rough that I was keen to preserve skin) I tried the 7A to the right of the classic prow/arete McNab. Despite having video beta my "flash attempt" was pretty lame. Matt then had a go and found a great heel-toe and with that and a bit more video foot beta a few goes later it was in the bag. I then pulled the mats over under McNab and after some more video beta and a bit of skin loss I got the crucial undercut and was rocking up onto the slabby topout for the second Font 7 tick of the day.

Matt had quite a few more goes at the 7A (Deep Black) with his lanky method and a few other folk turned up. He was looking pretty close but didn't quite have the energy to pull on the crimps so decided to sack it and so we packed up the pads and headed back towards Simon's Seat. On the way we wandered across the moor to what I thought was Hen Stones but as is often the case the great looking crag in the distance turned out to be tiny and the real crag was a bit further away. When I found it the classic arete we were looking for was obvious and some kind boulderers had put loads of stones in the bog below the arete to keep the pads out of the mud.

The right side of the arete gets 7B and has a much less nasty looking top-out than the left side (7A) so we got on this first. After working out the sequence (no video beta) I was ready to throw for the top but didn't commit. Matt seemed surprised as it didn't look that far and next try I did slap up - missing the good hold but the friction was so good that I stuck it and bumped my hands up to get the jug and then top-out the final 7 of the day. Matt had lots of good attempts on this but couldn't stick the barn-doory move lower down. I got Matt to take a post-send glory shot:



I then had lots of failed attempts to pull onto the 7B+ arete of Free Range but only succeeded in wearing through a couple of tips. Matt managed to get off the ground on this (unlike me) with some extreme span, high foot sequence and so he's keen to come back. I then had a few goes on the left-hand side of the arete that Bird Flu climbs on the right but the first time I got up to the top I didn't commit to the scary mantle and the tries after that I didn't really try to get to it (so I didn't have to wuss out of it again!) We headed back in the faded light after a great afternoon.