Sandyhills and AuchenGray

Went to Auchengray hill on Saturday, I had been a number of years ago and found a nice boulder with a couple of half decent lines on it, one a traverse and one an easy arete. My plan was to traverse the entire boulder which would give a 20 metre 6a and to document what else was there. Unfortunatley a tree had fallen down and was lying in the way of both the traverse and the arete, so I spent my time trying a couple of lesser lines, which if I'm honest I'll not bother going back to finish. Picture of the boulder below, if anyone wants to know where it is just leave a message and I'll get fill you in.

I was at Sandyhills this morning, was meant to be the Thirlstane but there had been a frost and the sun was strong so I didn't fancy sitting in the cave so went to the beach instead.

As it was so early and had been wet on Saturday the only thing that was dry was the slab flizz off, which is graded font6c. Its a bit fingery for a warm up but I went anyway and to my surprise got it first time - prompting me to rethink the grade (to which I had agreed with in the past) - its really more a technical font6a+ though.

I then went and looked in the boulder jumble to see what I could see (not a lot to be honest) I did find a big undercut that I was going to try something off but on inspection I found that a huge spider was using it as home so left well alone. I also looked at all of the problems I put on the SC wiki and they're pretty worthless really, except Southside Sun - I have no idea how I managed to climb this and only grade it font6b, I couldn't even find the holds to pull on.

My project was in the Super G state (ie. the ground had dropped a metre) so the sit down holds were now the stand up holds and it was still way to hard to pull on, my fingers had taken a beating by this point though as I'd found a better project...

The project is a hanging arete/prow, highball at around 5 metres but above a good stoney landing, big holds spaced reasonably well apart, steep... I got to the crux 6 or 7 times but I just didn't have the balls to go for it.

With a mat and/or spotter I'm sure I would have and I'd be the proud FA of a top quality font5 or 6a problem, its in the video at the bottom.

The furthest up the arete my right hand goes is to a crap pinch intermediate which is useless, another 4 inches further is a slopey flat jug of a hold, good enough for the angle I was at but if you cut loose on it, it would be uselss. From this you need to go again another 6-10 inches to a bucket which would be the finish (thinking about it, its maybe harder than font5)