'Summer' time is ticking...

I know it’s still June, but I am seriously getting the fear about the way summer is advancing. It’s something I’m not very good at dealing with - an uneasy feeling of time slipping by with seemingly not much happening.

Autumn is firmly in charge in Lochaber right now. It’s getting close to a month since I’ve even been able to get on Echo Wall. I figured when the bad weather hit that a couple of weeks of time away to train was no bad thing, but now things are getting complicated. With no decent weather on the forecast horizon and less than two weeks before I have to leave for the US for work. It’s looking like the final week in July will be my next opportunity to even get a session on the project. Thats not good.

That leaves five weeks through August to get enough good weather to keep working on the route and have attempts on the lead. The likelihood of it happening was slim to start with, but realistically I think I might have had it. Maybe I just have to accept that it’s not possible to project a route thats so near my physical limit in a place like the Ben. My original estimation was that I could see it off in a season if I was climbing 9a and soloing 8c. Perhaps that was wrong. 

I’ve had about 8 days climbing on the route and done it in overlapping halves (but without placing the gear which adds a fair bit). So nowhere near close basically. Bummer.

Plus points are that my fitness is getting to be not bad, I get closer yet to the monster traverse. Another traverse over at the Skeleton boulder went down the night too. About 8a I think? This time it went first try despite making loads of mistakes. A good buzz.It was really good to complete something, especially after getting sooo close last time. 

What can I do? Just keep training and hoping for the forecasts to be wrong. Last night I couldn’t even have proper redpoints on the monster traverse at Sky Pilot because my fingers were numb! Sottish weather - arrgghh!!!!

What else do I have up my sleeve? I won’t be able to get much fitter, stronger or more psyched, but one thing that is not good right now is that I am a heady 2kg above my fighting weight. To have the form I do with such a heavy ass is really encouraging. In the month since I have been back to hanging on overhangs every day rather than pounding up the Ben a kg has disappeared already. More work in this area might swing things a little in my direction when I do get my next chance to do battle.

By night I have been learning the world of post production video editing. Video formats are a barrel of laughs I must say. This has given some very late nights and frustration, but excitement too as Claire and I are pleased with the footage we have so far for our film.