Dave Mason and Mina Leslie-Wujastyk have just been on a month long trip to South Africa.

Both Mina and Dave had been to the Rocklands before and had therefore climbed a lot of the problems that they could do quickly and so went out with different aims for this trip, some really hard problems. More specifically; King of Limbs, 8B+, Ray of Light, 8B, El Corazon, 8B and The Power of One, 8B for Dave and The Vice, 8B for Mina.

Unfortunately, Mina was not successful on The Vice but did manage to climb; Shallow Cave, 8A, Leopard Cave, 8A+, The Arc, 8A, Au Bord de L'eau, 8A and Pandemonium, 8A. Mina commented on her blog about how she felt about not climbing The Vice:

"I felt disappointment initially and some shame at being wrong about what I thought I could do. BUT…after some time I felt content and psyched. I felt content knowing that I had tried my hardest and psyched that I was nearly good enough. That might sound strange but in climbing there is such a fine line between success and failure, it only takes a little bit of something to turn the tables, and that is my plan. The table is going to get spun around and it's going to land on its head not knowing whether or not it is still a table."

Dave was more successful, managing to climb two of his four aims with El Corazon, 8B, and The Power of One, 8B. Dave commented on what he learnt through multiple sessions on problems at his limit on his blog:

"What I climbed is not the important part, the important part is the progress I made when I had a number of sessions in close succession. This is where I hear you all say: "of course you make progress with successive sessions that are in close proximity to one another" and when I say it to myself it makes complete sense but I don't think I had honestly thought about it before."

You can watch a video of Mina in South Africa on BMC TV:

And here's one from Dave Mason's Vimeo Page: