A tale of two 7b+

Had a spiffing day at Rubicon today. Me, Dave and Charlie went to take on the sunshine after an exam in the morning, having figured this is our last full totally free day before getting sucked into revision. Anyway, to cut a long story short and I feel knackered, we ended up going to try Brachiation Dance, a classic (Soft) 7b+. I have never climbed 7b+ routes before, it isn't cause I am not capable, I have just never really done much sport climbing. Charlie went first. After attempting to do the slab at the bottom, and not being able to quite do it, I had a burn. Went on it and had to really stretch to reach the first clip after a few failed attempts. I basically ended up bolt to bolting the entire thing so as not to get knackered. Every single hold was a jug. What a gift. However the biggest problem was we weren't quite sure where the route ended. After each of us had more attempts on it trying to climb it in one from the ground, we got to the last moves - trying to grab some jugs round the final lip off a fairly pathetic difficult to see rounded crimp we were forced to give in. It felt like we had done the route (We had reached the last bolt!) but because the route had no real lower off we were lead to believe you have to basically top the route out and then drop onto the previous bolt. Oh well. So I either managed a 7b+ with relative ease, or well, just didn't do a 7b+. Meh.
Later on in the day I was psyched to get on the press after trying it a few weeks ago with Bob Hickish. The press is a 7B+ boulder problem which massive plays to my strengths. Crimping the life out of gastons on gently overhanging limestone. Perfect. I found I could do the press moves very easily and the only obstacle was the last dynamic move off a mining cheese grater crimp. After afew goes (3 according to my video camera) I crushed it. Literally crushed it. Miles Gibson told me about a way he did it, where he could take one hand off on the gaston move and drink from a bottle of water, I had to try it. I couldn't finish the problem but managed the drink. I also had some good attempts on The press low start which goes at 7c+. This should go soon I think.

The Press, Rubicon from Tom Butterworth on Vimeo.