Weather’s been great here in Rocklands and I’ve managed to tick some boulders of the list that I still have to do. Over the past week I did Golden Shadow 8B+ and King of Limbs 8B? along with a bunch of other problems. Saturday night I managed to make the first repeat of Fred Nicole’s Oliphants Dawn in one session. This finger-strenght testpiece had remained unrepeated for over a decade after Fred’s first ascent in 2000. Fred never proposed a grade for Oliphants Dawn but said it is somewhere between 8B and 8C. I agree and most importantly it’s a beautiful climb and it was fun trying it with a great group of motivated people.

There’s still problems here that I want to repeat and also many hard projects to try. Yesterday I did the first ascent of an incredible new problem at Kleinfontein which I named Power of Bar-One and it probably weighs in at around V12. Tomorrow the plan is to go to the Champagne sector to try a couple projects while other people in the crew try Livin’ Large. There are still so many projects to try here! Stay tuned for a video of my send of Oliphants Dawn!