Some more Progress

This morning I went up to Flagstaff for a couple of hours before it got too hot. I now have two circuits for warming up starting from the second short wall below Tree Slab. The right hand one eventually leads to the top of the ridge above Pratt's Overhang and is in the V0 range, mostly much easier. The left one also starts low and finishes on the Pohling Pebble Problem V4/5. Generally I focus on moving fast and having fun, so it's more like rock climbing than bouldering, where I look at cumulative elevation gain and distance instead of difficulty. After I was done with this routine, I went over to Red Wall to try my elbow out a little bit and worked on the Real Moffat Direct V8, a powerful crimpy problem I have been trying unsuccessfully for a while. Today my elbow felt much better and after finding a key foothold I had missed earlier, I was sticking the first crux consistently. Unfortunately the sun was coming around the wall so I had to place a crashpad in the adjacent tree to be able to see the hold as I tried the move. After a few tries I made it through the two lower hard moves and finished up Varney. This problem is quite hard if you are short so I used an intermediate crimp for my right to get the first move to the edge below the soap-dish hold. I am hoping this shows some real promise for the future.