Magical Mica

The weather wasn't looking to promising for Saturday so I wanted to go to Newtyle and kick off my tooling for the year. I managed to partner up with Scott G after asking for people to climb with on facebook, as apparently not many people like tooling. We met Neil Adams and Jim Higgins there and even Simon Yearsley turned up later on with his dog Bob.
It was raining a bit so we decided to climb in the tube all day and get strong on Fast and Furious. The tube, for anyone that doesn't know is a dirty big hole in the ground full of mud. The mud forms as minerals in the slate weather to form clays. I think micas are suseptible to this but without looking through my notes I can't say for sure. I also figure this has some sort of mica mineral in it as it has been metamorphosed. Id guess at Biotite but without actually properly looking at it under a microscope I can't say for sure.
I have blogged about Fast and Furious earlier in the year the first time I did it. It has been quite a while since then, and I managed to borrow Greg Boswells fruit boots for it so it made everything easier. This time I just had my normal winter boots and no-one to tell me where the hooks were or how to do the moves. I had 5 attempts at it in total, none of them clean, although I got to the top on everyone.
My first attempt was quite poor as I had to remember where all the hooks were and where my feet should go. On my second attempt I managed to get to the 6th clip, although we miss out the first 2, before I pulled out too far on my axe and the hook popped. On my subsequent 3 attempts I got to the 7th clip before I fell. It is this clip I find the hardest as I have to use a very specific foot sequence to clip off.
Hopefully when fresh, and now that I know the moves, it should go down.

Figfour

Tops off for power