In reply to AJM:
Pretty good trip in Turkey, with a decent haul of onsights. Cheers to you and Ally for the beta!
Mon - rest
Tue - flying to Antalya
Wed - first day! Woke up to rain - a recurring theme throughout the trip! Fortunately it cleared up at midday so we got out to Sarkit. Warmed up on
Bizon (6b+), and then quickly fired off
Zalia (7a+) and
Melting Souls (7b+), two great tufa routes. In retrospect this was really quite soft for 7b+ but at the time I thought I might just be really strong, raising my expectations for the trip a bit! Then we got rained off.
Thurs - Back at Sarkit again due to unreliable weather - there's lots of caves to hide in! Warmed up on the very fun
Saxafon (6b+), and barely got up it! Super steep tufa combined with inadequate technique lead to a quick flash pump. Next, I fell off
Psycho Sheppard (7a+) due to piss-wet tufa which I naively thought I could get past, and also failed on a 7c+ to the left which looked easy from below. Not going too well, and then the rain set in again! We moved to a big cave and I managed a 7a and 7a+,
Karinca (7a) and
Amele (7a+) before yet another failure, this time on a short steep 7b+ tufa,
Sabotaj (7b+). Serious lack in pinch strength and endurance.
Fri - Different sector of Sarkit, I don't like it much here but Dad likes the sun. Ridiculously busy, so lots of queueing and 'are you finished?'. Started off on a great, long route,
Amongst Friends (6c+) and then a really cool techy face route
Power Slave (7b). Next came another pinch-power failure,
Ange de Loubli (7c), and then a pocket-power failure
Inner Smile (7b+). On both of these I was seriously lacking that little bit of tenacity I normally have required to properly have a go when pumped at the crux, bit annoyed with myself.
Sat - finally a change to a quiter crag! Also nice and shady, though everyone complained about the cold. Warmed up then did two really good routes,
Sucker Punched (7a) and
Greek Gift (7b). Having found over the last few days that grade-hunting wasn't working out for me, I wandered around looking for the best line. It turned out to be
No money no dance (7c), which became the first 7c onsight of the trip, and a bit of a turning point. Tricky techy face climbing up to a lovely tufa, this time manageable because it was featured enough not to require pinching! Admittedly I followed the chalk up a less direct line than is perhaps intended, which was what everyone else was doing, but that may have been the reason it was a little soft. Next up was
Ying Yang (7c), more solid at the grade and one of the best onsight fights I've ever had. Big moves on huge holds, broken up with strenuous no hands rests, all to a blankening between the ornage and the grey rock. All I could see was a faint tick mark (thank you to whoever put that there!) a fair way above. So I bunched my feet up into a super high Egyptian and made an awesome last ditch slap, and just about hit the pocket. I even skipped a clip for the first time ever! And then a proper elbows-up battle lead to the chains - amazing.
Sun - drove down to the seaside to visit Olympos. Cennet has an awesome, sheer vertical wall, looking totally featureless from below. After struggling on easier warm ups, we did
Cennet Cehennem (7a) and
Ela (7b), the latter requiring a very cool mono undercut move. I finished off on
Pradise Lost (7b+), with a battle to rival yesterday's! Barely steeper than vertical, on shallow finger locks and flat side-pulls, every move was properly sketchy but just about manageable, with no rests between - it felt like E7 6B (although obviously on bolts).
Mon - down at the imaginatively named 'left cave'. Started on
Rocketman (6c+), and then did a semi-flash of
Black Moon (7b+) (I didn't actually want the beta but it was shouted at me anyway). I went the wrong way at the top anyway, following the tick marks which turned out to be marking the foot holds a metre to the left of the good handholds, leading to a close finish scraping up on two-finger crimps. Had a good go at on sighting
Junimond (7c+) but had difficulty with a clip a couple of moves from easier ground - perhaps I should've pushed on but I don't have the confidence for that on a 7c+! Finished off doing
Flying is Fun (7a) with very sore skin!
So its been a decent week, similar in terms of onsight ticks to the El Chorro trip last February - I suppose I can't expect much progress from an average of two sessions a week over the past three months.
Negatives were a big lack in tufa technique and 'go for it, never say die' attitude, although those improved over the week. Also just a generic lack in endurance.
But from those negatives came positives! Due to the lack in fitness it became necessary to become adept at finding loads of sneaky no-hands rests. My knee-bar technique has come on particularly well, finding one or two bomber bars on most of the hard routes this week.
Final onsight tally: 4 x 7a, 2 x 7a+, 4 x 7b, 3 x 7b+, 2 x 7c.
The 7c+ would've made a nice point to my pyramid!
Cheers, Jake
Post edited at 16:26