Dental slab has been on my list for longer than this year. I first looked at it when I went to climb its neighbour President's Slab with my wife five or so years ago. It a huge sweep of perfect grit and at the time it looked hard. Today with a few routes in the bag it looked fine.
After meeting up with John and Alice and sweating up a humid 40 minute walk in we got on with it. It was better than fine though, it was a brilliant pitch of well protected slab climbing on perfect rock and worth it's billing as the best Severe in Yorkshire. It even saved an undercling mantle on to Dragon Teeth holds for a finale. John managed a sag on the pull through the bulge to make me feel all macho on his turn. Then he made short work of the rest of the slab. We ate a light lunch and celebrated with an adrenaline high whilst the Yorkshire Dales appeared from the mist and the sun broke through. I managed to turn my ankle on the way down and thought it for broken as it hurt a lot.It wasn't broken as I walked out on it. Looks like I have just re-annoyed my old lateral tendon injury and I'm wearing a bag of peas as I write this.
I will climb better routes than this in better style but it won't happen very often. One for the top drawer of memories.
