The Jippy scuttler

It felt brutal getting up at 0350. I rolled out of bed and tried to shake it off. It wouldn't go, and I felt terrible. Nauseous, bleary,cold. Dressed, kissed the monster goodbye and headed out to join Ben in his van. Thick fog shrouded everything in gloom, and we both felt ill. The drive and journey was all fine. I would write more about it, but am tapping this in from my blackberry and there's more interesting things to talk about than travelling.

We arrive, check in and discover dai koyamada staying next door. Haven't actually seen him yet. Didn't climb saturday afternoon for two reasons - one: we all felt shocking, and two: it was filthy anyway. Made dylan's legendary chorizo stew, everyone very impressed (thanks dylog!) And collapsed in a heap.

Sunday dawned and the sleety death rain battered on the windows. Brilliant we collectively thought. Just brilliant. With no urgency we breakfasted and slithered in the snow up to chironico. Couldn't even get the hire car up the flippin road. Didn't think we'd be climbing so just had a walk up to find the alphane moon, which is a dave graham problem which stays dry. Amazingly, it was. I can't really articulate just how wet everything else was - fully and totally soaking, constant rain and snow - none of which was there the day before. So, we went and got the stuff. Since more people had now tried the road now had tracks, and we decided to move the car. Fiat doblo's are shit in the snow.

I'm really excited about this problem. It looked like it would really play to my strengths, I honestly thought I could do it. We started trying. As there were no other dry holds, so we had to monkey around on the start to get warmed up. Two or three easy moves on jugs lead to a series of long should presses between crimps. Dave, gangle and their dutch friend michael turn up. I'd researched this problem and commited the sequence to memory having watched the internet and doyles film over and over. Landing is a bit more spicy than you'd think having seen that though!

There's a heartbreaker of a move right near the end which I knew would be a problem. Its awkward, insecure and requiring you to sort of lurch in off a straight arm. I kept getting to it and failing as expected. But I knew I could do it, and thankfully managed to do so just before beginning the downward curve of performance trajectory.

James and ben make progress, but ben is injured and james starts to go backward. We go home, eat tea, drink beer and watch east bound and down on ben's laptop - which is brilliant by the way. When he told me about it I thought it sounded awful, but it was actually really good.

As predicted, the appetite for typing on this thing has worn thin. Its chucking it down again, and we're in bed drinking tea reading. I think its supposed to stop raining later today, then tomorrow and the rest of the week looks amazing. Fingers crossed!