Lise Cracks 6a!

After a mammoth 5hr session at The Castle yesterday, Lise finally completed her first 6a. Yay!!! Not the one we'd all been trying - that one's still waiting to be solved - 
but one just next to it. Ant followed and finished cleanly too. I'd have had a go myself, but I'd completely knackered myself out battling with a brute of 
a 6b layback route on the feature wall ("Catacombs") opposite, which I
didn't finish, but gave a valiant attempt at. 

I've been conscious of the fact that my layback / crack work is a weaker 
aspect of my technique - probably associated with doing most of my 
climbing inside, as it's rare that you get pure layback cracks on an 
indoor wall, yet outside at Stanage they're everywhere.  Also, I've been
really enjoying features-only routes recently, as I like the freedom to decide
which holds you're going to use and how you're going to attack each problem,
rather than being constrained to a particular set of colour-coded holds
which dictate a given set of moves.

So I started on a 25m-high features-only route upstairs, on a large column
that thins out into a tufa at the top. It was rated 5b, and I did it fairly cleanly,
only stopping for a rest at about 20m when I got an attack of Elvis leg. I then tried a ridiculous 6a in the corner with an outrageous 
dyno that I couldn't get past, and moved downstairs to the catacombs
 - my favourite bit of the centre - where I threw myself at the features-only problems until my fingers just wouldn't work anymore. 

My forearms still hurt today, it's almost painful to type, but it feels....... good.