Pennine Lines w/c 24 June 2024
|| Hot, muggy || Kick back & chill ||
Jug Right, The Wave || Climber: Jordan Buys
|| Focus On... ||
Surviving Peak Summer
You’ll have to forgive the rather lightweight email this week, as the simple effort of depressing keys on a computer keyboard is raising my core temperature dangerously high, and there’s only so many of those I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-A-Magnum ice creams from Aldi you can eat in one day. I will soldier on though, as this is the last weekly email of June, and the last of the first half of 2024. The crappest six months for climbing in living memory, broken up only by the odd fleeting glimpse of optimism, has flown past in the agonisingly long-winded manner of an uninspiring England draw in the World Euro Cup Of Paint Drying. It’s also the penultimate Pennine Lines during a Conservative government. So in many ways from hereon in Things Can Only Get Better, right? If all of this feels like a rather clumsy set of out-of-character pop culture references from me then you’re right. But it is, however, superb SEO-friendly content which will age extremely well, thank you very much.
Back in the real world, the recent persistently windy weather has abated as the warm weather rolls in. Aside from putting the kibosh on decent limestone conditions and hence proving that there is no God, this further raises a few issues for the landscape photographer community (and it ISN’T a community). Especially ones who like to use very slow and clunky Victorian-looking large format cameras - all three of us. Namely that it becomes midge-hell out there of an evening if the very light wind drops, even on exposed crag-tops, and simply making a single image commits you to standing still in the same place for several minutes at an absolute minimum. If you’ve ever been stood there belaying your mate on a very slow lead at the end of a day with your hood up, trousers tucked into your socks and hood pulled tight to just a single eye-sized hole then you will be familiar with this feeling of panic and impending doom. I know Scotland makes a claim for having the worst midges but I think pound-for-pound the Peak midges could hold their own against any biting insects globally, at least topping their group comfortably and could easily cause a few upsets in the knockout stage.
Cottongrass || Burbage
Luckily midges are rarely a serious issue down in the Derbyshire dales, and hence searching out the shady north-facing limestone bouldering when it gets hot is normally the order of the day. But this logic assumes that by the time the really hot weather hits, the crags have been 100% dry for a good month or so by now. But of course this year we’re now in the final week of June and crags like Badger Cove and The Wave aren’t even fully dry yet. Woe is me etc.
Why bouldering though, why not just get on some mid-grade sport routes? There’s always that option, but personally when I’m climbing in warm weather I want to be able to collapse on the pads every couple of minutes, not huffing and puffing six bolts up some route, sweating so much that I can’t even untie my knot to thread the bolt to abandon the attempt. Been there, done that. Nope, give me a comfy pad and one of those battery fans that I hate any day. Hypocrite; yes, but a cool one.
Whilst hot weather on the back the wettest year since records began is a pain in the backside for climbing there’s hidden benefits too. For example if you know any Cheedale Cornice die-hards then now’s maybe a good time to reach out and score yourself a good deal on a barely-used set of quickdraws. There must be some motivated sellers out there right now and they could put the money towards a road bike - everyone’s a winner.
|| Recently Through the lens ||
Just a quick one this week; one of Tom and Mike's final routes of their epic 18hour day on Stanage doing all 36 starred VS routes from the 1989 guide - a top effort.
|| Fresh Prints ||
Melting in the heat already? We've got you covered with a pair of cooling Peak District ice detail prints this week from the Print Shop.
