Pennine Lines w/c 5 February 2024
|| Mild and wild || Cooling off through the week ||
Beluga, first ascent || Climber: Jon Fullwood
|| Focus On... ||
Rubicon
On the one hand I feel smug siting here having managed to make the most of a fortuitous three dry hours between the rain on Saturday. But then again looking at the forecast for the coming week there’s not a lot to be smug about. So it’s escapism time once again.
There’s a few love/hate venues around in the Peak; that’s a well trodden avenue of discussion. What we don’t talk about so much are those places where most people tend to love the location, but hate the climbing. Actually a location/climbing quality imbalance isn’t all that unusual. It’s just that normally a stellar location will tend to drag the climbing - or at least your perception of the climbing - along with it. You can often forgive a venue for its faults if it’s a nice spot. You don’t hear it being slagged off. So somewhere that’s a lovely place but people still hate the climbing? Then you have no option but to assume it’s pretty bad.
Rubicon is one of those spots. The ceaseless tide of walkers in all-weathers, even when the path is knee deep in mud, tells you something about the beauty of Water-cum-Jolly dale for the non-climber; that’s not really up for debate. I never really tire of standing on the edge of the river and looking across to the crag basking in late spring evening light. Or admiring the long and beautifully curved sweep of the Caviar wall from over by the bridge. Or enjoying a bit of winter sun, ducking out of the relentless cold winter winds. It can be a good place to recharge, assuming the river hasn’t flooded out the crag again.
It’s lovely, but even by Peak limestone standards most climbers aren’t universally enamoured with the place. I’ve always found this odd in comparison to the enduring popularity of its neighbour Raven Tor. If anything Rubicon should be MORE popular than the Tor, as there’s more on offer for the lower-grade climber. Maybe that’s part of the problem though; there’s little scope here for further development or new harder routes. There’s no linkups waiting to be done, there’s no Font 8b problem underneath The Bastard to link up. The classic F8b route Zeke The Freak doesn’t have umpteen different extension finishes. There hasn’t been really been a significant new boulder problem put up since 2008. So there’s little excitement about the place, nothing newsworthy enough to keep the place at the forefront of anything in particular.
There’s also the small matter of the crag’s reputation for being polished, sharp, and loose, of being held together with various types of glue, sika or car body filler. People used to joke that the holds on the three warmup traverses changed more often than the holds at The Foundry. Although in Rubicon’s defence it’s nowhere near as loose and polished as you’d think. Mainly the problem might just be that a lot of the climbing is fairly crimpy even by Peak limestone standards, and being a bit of a sun trap it can be hard to get decent summer conditions, as the main sweep of the hard routes gets the sun earlier in the day than Raven Tor.
The bouldering is probably due a renaissance that will never happen, as it too is sort of unfashionable by today’s trends. There’s a lot of traverses, and a lot of holds which whilst not being that small per se, or sharp, are somehow just too crimpy or over-positive for comfort. Doing your comp-style problems down the wall isn’t really going to prepare you for this. Neither is all the board sessions on smooth lovingly crafted pinches. You’ve got to get into the pure filth, with a lot of holds comprising various fingertip-bruising lumps you have to muller your hands into violently. Kudos wall in particular is one of those places you need to burn two or three sessions here just to deaden your finger pulp before you’re going to get anywhere. I suppose most people aren’t keen to make that sort of investment of time into it. The same goes for the hard routes - Zeke, Caviar, Dangerous Brothers, Tribes, The Sissy, even Salar and To Old To Be Bold can feel like feel like finger ruiners.
There’s also the thorny issue of there being no heelhooking compression problems here. If recent years have shown anything it’s that if there was just one single dabby lowball compression prow everyone would be all over it like a bad rash, regardless of the quality of climbing. But there isn’t, so you’re stuck with some fairly brutal short problems which make fairly high finger strength demands and will send most people home feeling like their hands have been repeatedly backed over by a small family car.
But that’s exactly why I like it. It’s brutal but you’ve got to be climbing with the bit between your teeth on Kudos wall, no two ways about it. You know where you are with this stuff, and it’ll expose finger strength issues you have, nowhere to hide. There’s basically a really good circuit of problems from mid-6s into the mid 7s, across different styles, which if you can build up to doing them all then you’re going OK. And barely a sit start in sight.
In roughly ascending order of difficulty you’ve got Debris Groove, the lowest of the three traverses R-L, then move over to Kudos wall for Miller’s Tale Start, Whitebait Start, A Bigger Tail, Kudos Hard Way, Kudos Traverse, A Bigger Splash, The Press, A Bigger Splash Direct. Then you could take a look at Caviar Start for something different, or try one of the lower starts, or head over to the surprisingly fall-off-able Dragonflight Traverse. Or just be content with that for a decent session of anyone’s money.
The final thing I’ll say in Rubicon’s defence it it will sharpen your wit vis a vis members of the general public engaging you with various bits of “you’re not going up there are you?” or “what’s these mattresses for, are you camping out?” banter just as you’re about to pull on to try a two-move problem. By the end of any given spring afternoon session dodging the showers you will, after the tenth time of such an enquiry being made, have invariably come up with some absolutely dynamite one-liners to leave the walkers satisfied with an invigorating exchange.
The skill is in appearing friendly and jocular without committing you to ten minutes standing there having to explain why your afternoon is going to consist of failing to do the same single move over and over again, and why this isn’t a ludicrous waste of time, and why you’re filming this all on your phone propped up in your trainers, and why you will feel the need to upload this footage to the internet later. It’s probably the last part of modern climbing yet to be reduced from an art to a science, monetised, and hence it’s not yet been ruined. For this reason alone a Rubicon session is always worth scheduling in now and again; even if you hate the climbing you know your crag banter will be honed sharper than the crimps.
The View From The Bridge || Water-cum-Jolly Dale
|| Building Bridges ||
While on the subject of Rubicon, you may note that the bridge across to the south bank and hence the WCJ Cornice side of the valley is up for being replaced at an estimated £180k+. Yes I know, I was surprised too. Anyway, if you would like to sell your car or remortgage your house and contribute to this then you can do so here.
|| Recently Through the lens ||
All about the fine-grained quick drying rock this week, 100% Yorkshire (technically) at Almscliff and Wharncliffe.
|| Fresh Prints ||
If there was ever a week to hit the training hard, it's now. Get some Schoolroom inspiration at the Print Shop.
