31st December 2025 @ Stony Edge, 7A (6C+-7A)

No beta. The UKC page has a decent video which I watched after sending, which helped confirm I’d done the right thing! The video is of the first time I went from bottom to top.

After first doing The Grit Exam in 2024 I had a little chat with an Instagram friend, Andrew Dixon, who recommended this line to me as a bit of a soft seven, but a banger. I had a go early in 2025 and flashed up to the move where you have to gain the groove. However, I think I went higher with the left hand to a worse hold, and didn’t have the confidence to try the move with my chosen pad placement. Then for some reason I decided I wasn’t psyched on it, and decided to try something else. I think it was an end of the session thing, or maybe the pad placement put me off.

I had another go later on in the year, but I’d been climbing a lot outside and one of the holds was causing me a lot of pain – it felt like my fingers were bruised, so again, I let it go and tried something else.

Then, with a slightly iffy but probably dry forecast on New Year’s Eve, and another day to myself with my wife at work, I decided to head out to Stony for an end of year session. This involved working moves from Longship into Do Like Zoidberg (as part of a possible traverse from The Kingdom Of Slope into Do Like Zoidberg), and working on the opening move to Longship. After getting tired with those things, I took another look at Molly.

Going again I made the move to the groove first time, this time I believe from a lower left hand hold. It felt pretty reasonable so I decided it was time to give it proper goes. The top out required a bit of work – and I tore a small hole in my jacket getting up the first time which soured the experience a little. However, with the top out figured out I had a bit of a rest, set up the camera, and went from the start. It went pretty smoothly. In the end it was a really nice line with good holds on mostly quality rock, and a solid recommendation from Andew. I found it quite pumpy for the right arm for some reason. Probably deserves a star.

My first climb of 2025 was Baby Bouncer, the line to the right of this (another cracking line) and in a way it was quite nice to bookend 2025 with this one, its neighbour.

It’s included in the video because I was a little concerned that the credits would not be long enough for some people at LAFF to snag the QR code. Rather than have Robin pause it, I thought it would be better to stick a longish bonus climb on, then at least the majority of people at LAFF would have something vaguely interesting to look at whilst the hyper curious types got their phones in gear. If that’s you, thanks for taking the time to read this!