Peak District Climbing

25/02/12. Froggatt Edge

Instead of jetting off to far off places and grand inspiring locations (read: North Wales) I spent a day in the Peak District on Saturday, climbing at Froggatt Edge. It was a nice simple day.

Armed with a reasonably early start and all my Peak District guidebooks I picked up Ronnie and decided where we’d go climbing that day. I had no idea about the weather as I don’t have very much internet access (mainly only when I’m at work) but it was good in Birmingham when I got out of bed and did in fact say pretty mild for the rest of the day. There was a lot of wind blowing at Froggatt when we got there but once you dropped down to the base of the crag it was barely noticeable.

I still allowed myself to misjudge the weather however. On out first route, a HS 4b called Terrace crack, I made the noobie error of thinking that as it was pretty warm at the base of the crag, then I’d be fine in a long sleeved base layer and a t-shirt. Bearing in mind that I’d been yomping into the crag and the afore-mentioned lull in the wind at the base of the crag then I might not have found myself sitting belaying at the top freezing cold and cursing my own stupidity. You live and learn, but I should have known better.

Its little situations like this which keeps me on my toes. Doing the simple things in no desperate or life threatening situations almost trains your brain so that when it does really count, you won’t be making silly mistakes. I normally take this approach to when I’m abseiling. Even on a nice easy day I’ll make sure that I’ve got 2 anchors to abseil from and I’ve taken the time to back up my abseil with a prussic loop. I find that forcing myself to do it in the best of conditions and not cutting corners helps when I have to do it in the worse of conditions.

With Terrace Crack out the way and my softshell back it was Ronnie’s lead. He lead Heather Wall (HVD 3c). It has been a while since Ronnie has had his leading head on and he took his time and protected the route well. I guess I’ve forgotten how useful the old hexcentric is, since I’ve got a relatively full rack of cams but Ronnie doesn’t have that luxury. Thus he seems to manage to wiggle hex’s into some great placements. He’s got a set of the DMM torque nuts (the same as me) and like me, he has a first production set. Both of us have the same gripe about them and that the extendable sling is actually really hard to extend! Unless I’m getting conscious of how many runers I’m placing I just don’t both extending them.

Eager to try something a little harder the next route we did was Ratbag (E2 5b) which takes the middle of the slab just to the left of Tody’s Wall. Considering it was graded 5b and claimed to be runout I didn’t find any particular difficulties on it. Now this could have been down to me under estimating my own abilities, maybe the route was soft for the grade or I was just having a good day. I miss I’d done Motorcade (which gets E1 5a and lies to the right of Tody’s Wall) as a comparison. Regardless the route was good, with a series of nice moves with high steps and rock overs on good, yet slabby holds. A definite for lower grade slab addicts.

Ronnie then took on Tody’s Wall and well, let just say he spent a long time lying on the block in what looked like a very awkward position before he decided to bin his attempt. As a consolation me and Ronnie did the cave crawl route, which I still maintain is one of the best routes at Froggatt, sans head torches!

I finished the day with our final route with took the left hand arête of Tody’s wall, again E2 5b. This route (named Grip) claimed to be at the top end of the grade and very exposed. Again it was a lovely section of slab and arête climbing and well worth doing. As for runout, well the protection is in the same break as for Ratbag so it isn’t that runout. The climbing was definitely worth of the 5b this time and it was sustained all the way to the top. I took me a while to actually get established on the face (from the break) but once I was on it I flew up it. It was just one of those routes that flowed I guess.

Then for god only knows what reason I started having an awful headache and throwing up. I still don’t know what caused it but I had no painkillers with me. I wasn’t dehydrated so the current blames lies with a pork pie I’d brought to eat for the day. This meant that my day ended on a bit of a low note.

25/02/12. Hen Cloud

This was a less than fulling day out, only because the weather was so good but the motivation wasn’t there. I say the weather was good but in the morning it was bitterly cold and thus this affected the motivation somewhat. I should have manned up and just got on with climbing.

Still I got to Hen Cloud and managed to get one route in before the grand bailing. I’ve been slowly working my way through the HVS routes up there and today it was the turn of Bachelors Left Hand (HVS 5b). Previously I’ve attempted this route before, but I bailed because it was too cold and I was in no state of mind to run it out. Instead today I racked up leaving my 2 large cams behind and carrying only a few runners. I knew the start was hard and that I’d have to climb quickly to get through it.

The weather was pretty mild, though the sun I’d been promised was refusing to show itself. The only bit of worry I had about the route was the large area of rather luminous green looking lichen that the route crossed but I’d figured that it would probably be ok. The start was as hard as I remembered with though moves getting out of the top of the crack which flared outwards to gain the good horizontal break. The downside to getting the good break is that there are pretty much no positive footholds other, you’re just down to smearing on the face. By now my hands were getting pretty chilled what from jamming my hands into the crack. I’d felt the warmth being sucked out of them each time I did it. It was defiantly a day for some hardcore slab climbing!

With freezing fingers I groped for a little pocket in the face. Relying on feeling the handhold wasn’t a option as my finger were really that cold and I just banked on the fact that I’d managed to get three fingers over three knuckles deep into that pocket and I pulled up. They held, I didn’t fall off and I carried on pulling up till I got my feet on the good rest and I could rewarm my hands, a much needed luxury!

About 6 months ago I’d have been a right state about leading something like this. I generally stay away from steep or overhanging routes because you can simply pump out and fall off. Slab climbing that isn’t really an option. Recently it seems my attitude has changed for the better and I’ve developed a “meh” approach running it out. It figure that I’ll probably not fall off, but then if I do I’ll have protected the route anyway and I’m not exactly going to get hurt.

With what I was pretty sure was the crux done I got stuck into tackling the luminous green section of the wall which stood between me and the finish to Bachelors Climb original finish (which I’ve done before). After a quick check about which way I was supposed to be going across this small second of slab (the guidebook was very ambiguous and thoroughly unhelpful) and I tested standing on the green. I don’t know how but it held and didn’t seem of be slippy at all. Soon I was nipping over this section, cursing myself for leaving behind the large cams, but grateful that there was nut slot anyway and I lay backed by way up the finally section to the victory… well the top at least anyway.

Killian had an even tougher time than me seconding the route. He slipped off a couple of times which I know must have angered him and I had to watch on unable to do anything as he suffered with vicious hot aches. He still topped out in style but I could see in his eye that his heart wasn’t in it today. Maybe it was the cold rock, or the hard route to start with, or maybe Hen Cloud is just as imposing as it looks (and I just enjoy that feeling). We took a walk along the top to check out the left hand end of the cliff, which I know I’ve neglected over the years. A couple of routes caught my eye, both jamming cracks (Delstree and Reunion Crack) and I’ve had visions of doing either one as the last route of the day in the dying light of the golden evening sun.

With a single route done but several hours of the day left oddly we bailed from the crag, ending up at my old university climbing wall cruising their hardest routes before each heading our separate ways home.