Millstone Edge

Went climbing at Millstone Edge in the Peak District on Sunday. My Saturday was spent wondering around Cannock Chase, disturbing wild deer (which I've still not got a decent picture of) climbing trees for elderberries, picking black berries and finding a surprisingly small amount of mushrooms. I was very disappointed with my poor haul of mushrooms (about 4). Rach found loads of fruit so she's made loads more jam (blackberry, elderberry, wild pear and wild apple) which is good!

Sunday as I said was spent at Millstone Edge. I'd planned for an early start based on the fact that I only had one day and wanted to make it a good one. This plan went a little out the window when I picked up Ronnie, who was still in bed and therefore forced me to make a cup of tea. Once that was drunk and Ronnie awakened, we then went to the next pick up point Nat's house to pick up Tim and Andy, who were well both asleep. More tea was consumed and more people arrived and eventually when it started raining we sent off.

It's started raining, you say? You might be wondering why we jetted across the peak if it was raining. Surely it would be better to make more tea and play xbox whilst enjoying the rain as a spectator. This wasn't to be as everyone in my car was psyched to get out and try and go climbing and the other car didn't have much choice but to follow. We did actually stop outside Buxton to make a final decision (based on the information gathered from a borrowed iphone). It said good weather would be there in the afternoon and seeing as we were still in fog with a visibility of around 50 metres I had faith in the met office, we voted (5 for climbing, 1 against) and then carried on.

It like it when life pulls little stunts like this. If it wasn't for Ronnie being in bed, Tim and Andy being in bed, several cups of tea and waiting around for people then we'd have probably either binned going climbing or arrived at millstone to find it encased in cloud. Instead we arrived find it's golden walls bathed in weak autumnal sunshine and the promise of dry, clean rock!

We ended up splitting down into two teams of three for the climbing and I set off up Embankment Route 2, dressed in garish lycra (the less said about that the better). Needless to say the thermal properties of lycra leave something to be desired and hence my change back to my regular climbing trousers. Embankment Route 1 gets VS 4c and I'm not going to lie but I had a really hard time on it. I couldn't seem to get a decent finger lock in at all and my jams felt all off. It was quite nice to be humbled on such a route. Ronnie and Andy Finn (new guy to climbing) seconded it with few problems, Ronnie mainly laybacking the whole route. As we climbed with Tim climbed P1 of Embankment Route 1 (VS 4c in it's own right) with Andy and Scott. There was a definite crux that stumped him for a little while while he lead it. Once we were all on the edge we opted to abseil off a tree (no directly obviously). Once I'd actually abseiled down I realised the error of our actions and made sure that I didn't abseil at all for the rest of the day. There was just no need to abseil and I'm sure it took us longer to all ab off rather than just walk down.

Ronnie took the lead for the next route and headed up Embankment route 1. Considering Ronnie is normally against trad climbing and prefers bouldering he lead the route really well. I think his talents are wasted on bouldering! He made short work of the crux which was great fun to watch. I seconded and the crux was had. It was like a 4c stopper move which was really unbalancy and awkward. Instead of trying to do it nice and technically making all the moves easy, I just grabbed and pulled (shamelessly) upward. Our next route was a little more awkward. Ronnie had spotted the what he thought was the continuation of our route on the wall above and set off to start leading it. The downside to this plan as that we'd not really looked at the guidebook and knew that there was a VS line and an E2 line somewhere up there. He started up the route, got a couple of pieces of gear in and then decided that it looked very hard and sustained for a short section. In the end he downclimbed and offered the lead up to me, which I took. 

I made reasonably good progress up the route placing a lot of gear as I went. I very soon came to the conclusion that this wasn't the VS line at all. At my high point there was a pretty hard move I had to make, running my feet quickly up the wall on smears with a layaway from my hand. This would (hopefully) enable me to reach up and slap for a big large hold (by passing a tiny intermediate crimp on the way). Sadly I was getting hopelessly pumped so instead of committing to the move, I down climbed as steadily as I could and took a rest at the floor as my forearms screamed. I had a little wonder about the ethics of down climbing a route, but not weighting the gear. I mean it's clearly a very different ascent to a pure onsight, but it doesn't break the rules of the onsight does it?

Eventually I couldn't put it off any longer and I dived back on lead climbing to my high point and smashing straight through the crux moves. Like most things the crux wasn't as hard as I'd originally thought and I probably could have done it on my first attempt (before the downclimb). It didn't stop me being as pumped as hell for the final section though. The top-out also left much to be desired. It was loose, like a lot of the tops of routes at Millstone, but this was seriously loose. Ronnie and Andy flashed the route on second, and were both really careful at the top. I did wonder why neither had a helmet on?

Once back at the floor (walking off this time) we checked the guide book and found we actually climbed the second pitch of embankment route 1 an E1 5b pitch. We figured that we'd need a break and some food. I think we both knew what route we would be up for next (Great Portland Street) but it had just reached that point in the afternoon where we'd would chill out and enjoy ourselves. I had a good think about the last route (whether it was far to claim the onsight) and about the rack. I've used Ronnie's Rack for the route and therefore was without my 6 million pieces of gear. I think I might need to put my rack on a diet again. 

Eventually we actually go round to doing some more climbing, as the sun was standing low in the sky. We did Great Portland Street (HVS 5b) and I incorrectly took an gear larger than a size 2 cam. This was a slight mistake on my part ad it meant that the bridging/mantling crux was done with some less than perfect gear but I managed it anyway and carried on right to the top. I was really beautiful climbing as the sun was setting and all the walls glowed with a golden hue. I think this is why I like climbing in autumn so much.