Pennine Lines w/c 8 July 2024
I’m not big on these challenge sort of things in climbing or the outdoors in general, but the great thing about doing the Stanage VSs is it occupies a niche where it’s too hard for casual outdoors folk, no big-mountain appeal, but not fashionable enough to garner any social media traction. Very Severe is not, and never has been, a sexy grade. It’s a grade from back when people climbed in nailed boots with their mum’s washing line tied around their waist. You’ll not find it perennially cropping up in lazily-thrown-together climbing mag “Top 5 British Scrambles / Mountain Ridges / Multipitch Adventures [delete as applicable]” filler articles. The benefit of this is you’re not likely to get stuck behind a group of Royal Marines dragging a grand piano up the routes for charity, neither are you going to find yourself inadvertently stumbling into some fancy-dress clickbait climbing YouTube video by mistake either.
Pennine Lines w/c 1 May 2023
Travelling south through the eastern Peak the gritstone gradually fizzles out, the long snaking crag escarpments giving way to more isolated outcrops. And just as it seems all the rock has turned decidedly pale and chossy, one last big finale remains, one last huge island of dark gritstone in a sea of limestone. Black Rocks; its name enough to scare off many, but it remains something of a hub of the climbing scene in this part of the Peak.