Pennine Lines w/c 31 July 2023
|| Showery and breezy || Dodge the rain for good conditions ||
Sidetrack on a July evening || Climber: John Coefield
|| Curbar ||
Sidetrack
I know the weather hasn’t exactly been doing much heavy lifting of late, but nevertheless the Peak seems oddly quiet at the minute. Part of this must be an eagerness to get away at the beginning of the school holidays for many people. Plus we have the strong wads off to the competitions in Europe, globetrotters off to Rocklands or wherever. Or maybe for some people once the Cornice is seeping again there’s no reason to stay in this country (kiss goodbye to Cornice Season 2023!). But whatever the reason, there’s a lot of scope for enjoying some unusually quiet mainstream crags right now if you can dodge the rain showers.
As I’m now out of the usual term time routine with various kids’ activities this opens up a few more evenings to me. Coming back from the Alps it’s been a welcome opportunity to catch the odd breezy hour before dusk. Getting moving on rock again and wearing off some of that flaky sweaty glove skin. It serves as a timely reminder that in a ‘normal’ UK summer, minus the heatwaves of recent years, gritstone is still very much ‘on’ in the evenings if the breeze is there.
Trackside & the village || Curbar
We talk a lot about friction when discussing gritstone climbing, and it’s never better than when dry grit takes a hit from a passing shower, then dries off in a keen breeze. Something happens there; the friction goes sky high, even in summer. Maybe it’s just the fact that it cleans off the surface chalk and debris and just refreshes the holds. Maybe the water evaporating off actually cools the surface a little. But whatever it is it’s real and you know it when you find it. And find it you certainly can at this time of year in this sort of weather.
When I look back into my photo archive it sometimes becomes clear that I’ve tended to respond to the same stimuli year after year, and hence end up at the same sorts of local crags at the same sort of time of year and the same sorts of evenings and doing the same sort of problems - often with the same climbing partners. Why change a winning formula, that’s what I say. Anyway, one problem popped out of the archive that I thought deserves a little more love than it often gets.
Sidetrack at Curbar lives a little in the shadow of the more well known Trackside. UKC shows about one tenth the number of logs for the former compared to the latter. It’s a sort of a little paradox of a problem really. It shares most of the holds of Trackside yet climbs totally differently. It looks like nothing, very short lived, but packs a punch and feels pretty involved. It gets the same grade and yet you won’t struggle to find someone who finds it harder than its neighbour - despite the fact it used to actually be graded lower than Trackside!
Tussling with summer grit on Sidetrack || Climber: John Coefield
Unfortunately Sidetrack doesn’t sport a heel hook, which in today’s market severely limits its potential popularity. Basically the rule is if a problem has a heel hook then it’s immediately on everyone’s radar - and if it’s a compression prow then that’s an instant classic regardless of quality. But I digress. No heel, no compression moves, and potentially compared to Trackside it’s a little harder to get initiated on the problem, so that’s also off-putting. But I say you need to persevere with Sidetrack and not let appearances or perceived collective wisdom dictate your experience.
It isn’t harder than Trackside, and it is potentially just as good, if not actually a little nicer. It doesn’t get battered by people insisting on attempting it when it’s still damp in winter (I’m looking at the Trackside heel hold in particular here) and in general despite being only six inches away it feels a lot less worn that its partner problem. You’re also not going to pop your knee on it on a cold stiff-feeling winter’s day when not properly warmed up. But you still get those big handfuls of premium demerara-sugar-textured grit to wrestle with. If it feels hard then that’s just because you’ve not sussed it out yet. There’s no trick, but it will click eventually. You will suss it out, given time. You’ve gotta play the long game, no shortcuts, this is gritstone after all.
|| SUPPORTED BY ||
|| Crag Cleanup ||
Outside's Crag Clean-Up day is rapidly approaching, 12th August, get involved!
|| Recently Through the lens ||
Breezy summer evenings at Curbar are never a chore
|| Fresh Prints ||
Up and down the moorland of the Pennines you'll be starting to see the ling heather coming into flower about now. Not quite the full show of colour yet, but we're starting to get there. So to celebrate this I've added a couple of brand new prints to the Print Shop, with the flowering heather being the star of the show.
