Britain has a host of fantastic climbing from sea cliffs to mountain routes, to gritstone in the Peak district to unique places like the Slate quarries in wales and the lakes. Scottish winter climbing is world renowned and hopefully the winter scene will pick up in wales and the lakes too. But sadly, as a few of my french friends seems to (always) want to point out, in the grand scheme of things we don't have proper mountains.
Well sod you, we have better ethics.
Having finished my small rant about why Britain is the best place for climbing in the world I'll proceed to further my point. My and Rach managed a route of alpine grander in the peak district, and there's another one to do just up the road!
Elbow Ridge probably isn't the most well known of Britains epic ridge routes, but then again the Peak district isn't exactly the home of alpine climbing. The route discription is hidden away inside "On Peak Rock" in the Esoterica section, something that I can only assume more normal people would by-pass. Sadly the Esoterica section contains many classic routes, that if they were say in North Wales, they just be part and parcel of the climbing there. Mam Tor gully is as loose as anything on the Lleyn Penisular, Elbow ridge and Matter Horn Ridge and as thin as Crib Goch (but with less of a walk in). The Raven Stones stomach traverse is probably about as much fun and trampling through the bushes mid summer to finds the base of a route at Tremadog and Chocolate Blamange gully is clearly as dangerous and as fun as climbing over the wet slate scree slopes of the lower oil drum glacier (though probably less life threatening). On Sunday Rachel and I roped up in the best alpine style we could and headed off to tackle Elbow Ridge...
The original plan was to do both ridges, but this would have required 2 things. More time is the first and better weather being the second. Actually I would rather have just has more time. The weather was pretty cool and turned what would have been a complete walk in dry summer conditions into a proper interesting and fun experience. The fog was so thick that after 30 metres of rope I couldn't actually see Rach, which was alright because I had not brought any think more than a 30 metre rope. The wind was also blowing across the ridge so it turned sections that could normally easily walked across into something that it was potentially easy to get blown off.
Our plan was to get up early to do the ridges then get to Northfield to get tattoos done in support of prostate cancer as part of Movember. We didn't exactly get up as early as we'd planned but when has that ever stopped someone from getting out and going climbing. It would just mean we'd have to be a little quicker instead, so we adopted an approach that any aspiring British student alpinist would be proud of and any french alpinist would probably sneer at and packed a small rack (read: medium sized rack) harnesses, helmets and a bottle of water and set off into the peak.
Now I don't really know how to describe the route other than it was awesome. There was a semi-hanging belay, some waist belaying, heavy use of tri-cams, moving together, slipping on wet grass, loose rock, cold hands and finally some epic topping out only to almost slip and fall off. The best part is probably that we filmed it all so I'll try and put a video up asap.
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