Pennine Lines w/c 11 September 2023
|| Cooling off || Normal September is resumed ||
Under the Greenwood Tree at Lee's Bottom || Climber: John Coefield
|| Focus On... ||
Limestone Esoterica
If I was hoping for a ‘normal’ week after a lot of shooting indoors then I didn’t get it last week. Increasingly hot, with the Peak District air hanging heavily with moisture, like a sodden blanket draped over the moors and dales. The steep limestone was condensing, culminating in one of the hottest days of the year so far. As I mentioned last week, I’m done with summer now so this sort of weather wears thin after ten minutes.
When looking back at previous Septembers in my photo archive it’s clear that this month can be characterised by see-sawing between sub-par attempts at gritstone bouldering while it’s still too warm, and limestone barrel-scraping. Always feeling like it’s the arse-end of the lime season, enthusiasm wearing thin, evening daylight rapidly deserting us, and the anything-is-possible endless summer vibe of late spring a distant memory.
So yeah, September is an odd month. But flicking back through images from previous years I was reminded of an absolute belter of an esoteric classic which is still apparently off most people’s radar. One logged repeat on UKC, it deserves a bit more love than that, so in the name of injecting a little energy into the flagging psyche of the limestone community (and it IS a community) I am going to big this problem up a little. Could this be the start of Lime Blocs, you might ask? Well we’ll see…
Sheldon Mango || Climber: Tom Briggs
Anyway, the problem in question is Jon Fullwood’s Sheldon Mango from the pre-Covid halcyon days of 2019. Although listed on UKC under Lee’s Bottom (not doing jokes about this, too easy), it’s actually hidden away up the hillside somewhere above and left of the crag, so really it’s Lee’s Top, or Top Lee’s Bottom, or Hard Very Far Lee’s Skyline. But basically you walk around right of Lee’s Bottom via the public footpath, take the path back left which crosses way above the normal crag, and then at some point once your esoteric buttress Spidey sense starts tingling you bear down left and with a bit of luck you’re now stood under “a tall problem with some fancy-looking moves on pinches”, a description I wrote of the problem for the BMC newsletter at the time, which wasn’t far off given I’d not clapped eyes on it at the time I wrote that.
The photos herein don’t really do the problem justice. There’s not really a good angle to be had and I was only taking photos as an afterthought, but by posting these here their existence should get scraped by Google and hence increase the digital footprint of the problem significantly. But enough SEO banter, all you need to know is this is an overhanging Font 7c, slightly high by Peak limestone standards, requiring a couple of pads and ideally a spotter as it’s possible to fall off this thing out of control. Nevertheless, I remember enjoying this one, good moves on interesting holds, pinches, drop knees etc. Good rock and shouldn’t really seep, unlike its neighbour down the hill, so should remain a possibility well into autumn. Also, as if it needed saying, expect an easier time if you’re above average height.
So there we go, a neglected limestone banger for you. Worth signing up just for this wasn’t it? I hope to see this one splashed all over social media in no time at all. You’re welcome.
The art of the rapid descent
|| Recently Through the lens ||
As I alluded to last week, one of the highlights of the week was a photo shoot down at the Core factory. As Core announced yesterday, they are sponsoring Aidan Roberts, so I was there to document a little of the initial stages of this partnership as Aidan was taken through the pad designs and got a look at the finished production set of Burden Of Dreams replica holds. In case you're wondering, those holds aren't jugs!
There seems to be a few voices out there highly critical of the use of replica holds these days. I get this, I get the issue, but of course people have been making replica problems to train on for decades - Malc's famous Hubble problem on his Dunbar board springs to mind. So maybe it's just commercialisation of replica holds thats the problem, or maybe replicas are only a bad thing if they are actually accurate? Say if Will Bosi had taken umpteen short haul flights to repeat Burden instead of training on a replica and doing it in one visit would we prefer that? Given the various negative aspects of climbing in the modern age - erosion, access issues, rampant commercialism, disparity of economic accessibility, eating disorders, environmental impact and so on - it seems like use of replica holds is a bit of a niche hill to die on. It's certainly less of an issue than people saying 'Peaks' instead of 'Peak' for instance.
On the subject of environmental impact it's always interesting to read Aidan's thoughts on this as he's on of the few being vocal about it. If there's an elephant in the room when discussing this issue it's that climbing has a culture of celebrating wide ranging and frequent air travel. This is now baked hard into climbing culture, especially in the social media age, and it's one that virtually everyone in a position of influence remains silent on. We're all sorting out card and plastic into the right bins at home but if we're all also blithely hopping on flights to Rocklands, Thailand and the States umpteen times a year then it's hard to see us recycling our way out of that. It's all too easy for brands and sponsors to say or do nothing tangible, and the often toxic nature of sticking-you-head-above-the-parapet on social media and fielding criticism for being in any way hypocritical (spoiler alert: we're human!) means you can see why climbers will just lay low and book another set of winter-sun short haul 'cheap' flights.
As Aidan mentions in his post there's also an issue of the cycle of consumption which the climbing wall industry seems to demand, and the impact that hold materials have on this. This isn't something I have much of an insight into, but it does make me feel better about going to the Foundry and climbing on The Wave as the holds they use on there are the same set that Edward Whymper trained for his 1865 first ascent of the Matterhorn on. Clearly this isn't an issue which is going to disappear, nether is it one we as individuals have much meaningful agency over (same goes for environmental and climate change issues in general) but it is one where change can happen, and it's unlikely to happen without pressure from all of us on the industry.
|| Fresh Prints ||
Last weekend was the Depot Youth Cup - huge thanks to all who stopped and said 'hello' during the day. A warm day to be indoors but just lucky it wasn't this weekend just gone! For anyone who attended or competed prints are up in the Print Shop.
