The Shakti Stone

Two nights ago most of the climbers at my guest house slept out on Jungli Plateau, an area too far away to get to and from in one day and climb.  After an evening session climbing we made a fire and slept on our crash pads before waking up as the sun rose to climb all morning.  Not long after this shot we were climbing some awesome boulders that unlike the stuff close to where we stay rarely see ascents.  The plateau is just by a reservoir so both days we there we spent time swiming in the lake it creates, cooling off from the the hot Indian sun.

These shots below are of an unnamed double arete on the plateau.  The Indian in the first shot is Tom of Tom and Jerry's climbing shop in Hampi.  This year he and his friend Jerry opened the first climbing store in Hampi and do guided climbing trips to the boulders while renting shoes and crash pads and selling some other gear.  They're both avid climbers and are here for the long run.  The second and fourth shots are of Gal, an Israeli climber who is in India for the second time.  Nick, an experienced climber from Manchester who has been coming to Hampi for 7 years, is the climber in the third and last pictures.  He has been climbing significantly longer than I have been alive and without him we wouldn't have found half the stuff we climbed on the plateau.  In the areas he knows well it's like having a walking guidebook!  He's also a very strong boulderer, and does many of the 7bs (V8s) here in Hampi.  Finally Fabienne from Switzerland is climbing in the fourth shot.

After this area we made our way to the Shakti Stone.  The boulder is precariously balanced above a large drop overlooking a canal running from the nearby reservoir.  The obvious and stunning middle line up the boulder has some loose rock but is safe to climb.  I was planning on resting but once I saw it not climbing was no longer an option haha.  The climbing is easy but fun, but the drop, despite not being somewhere you would fall, definitely adds an edge to the climb.

And to finish the post, here are some shots of a highball V5 called Cosmic Crimp.  The crux (hardest part) is low so it's not very dangerous; after where I am in the second shot the angle tilts back and it would be very unlikely you would fall.  But unlike some of the other highballs I've done this was not my style at all and doing it once was more than enough.  Everyone has a different build and different strengths when they climb, and this boulder definitely did not play to mine.  Nonetheless, glad I did it once.

The idea of going to the competition in Hyderabad slowly died so it looks like I'll be here for two weeks or just less, before heading to Mumbai (maybe via Mysore) for my flight to London.  So now I've got less than 10 days of climbing here to finish my projects; the climbs I've been trying and working but haven't finished.

Thanks for reading!