Stanage Far Right, again

Stanage Far Right is fast becoming a favourite area.  Easily accessible from Sheffield after work, and the walk in is fairly short and easy - even if we stay until sundown it's not hard to get back to the parking.  It's also really nice rock.  After our recent trip to The Henge we already had desire to try the Huge Slab area so as soon as the forecast was good plans were made.

The Huge Slab is easy to spot and we walked in, landing next to The Cube.  A little bit of Head Scratching on Cube Left made me decide to warm up elsewhere, and I soon bagged the straightfoward Upper Cube Traverse before going back round and working at Cube Arete and Cube Left, comfortably getting them done.  At this point Liz was attacking Lower Cube Traverse so in her rest breaks I was trying Slots but just couldn't get it to work for me.  After a brief look at some of the problems on Huge Slab itself and deciding they weren't for me we moved on to Gripple.

Landings are pretty sketchy with a jumble of rocks at the base of the rock, and it's quite high, but Gripple One was dispatched On-Sight with only a few sketchy moments. Gripple Two needed more work being higher with worse holds and there was a moment when topping out when I thought I was going to topple backwards, but it all came good. Gripple Three looked too green, too high and too poor over a bad landing to even warrant an attempt.

Around the corner Ed, Kelly, Andy and Kelly were already on Gripple Nipple so I went and joined them, but was struggling to link it all up.  The start was fine, thanks largely to some significant reach, but going up from the slot to the top was not working - I was repeatedly chickening out of throwing for it and making neither one thing nor the other moves which weren't going anywhere.  I carried on working it while Ed was grappling with Gripple Graunch, and it was getting rather frustrating.  I switched from trying Kelly's beta from matched on the slot to Andy's beta of pressing down on the left hand in the slot and going for the top with the right.  Eventually my right hand stuck - just - and I matched the top and hauled myself up the wall with more than a bit of noise.  For something I worked so hard I was expecting more than a 5b out of it, but I'll take what I can.

After catching my breath again I joined Liz, Andy and Kelly on the Pert Block, going straight up Pert Wall then making a meal out of Pert Bloke by trying to climb it on the steep overhanging side rather than the slabby side.  With this pointed out I got up it and then ticked off Pert Block Arete too before we called it a day as the sun was setting.  All in all a good session, and just what I needed to clear the head after an indulgent weekend.