Pennine Lines w/c 18 November 2024
Last night’s snow fell on gritted dry roads, with recent high ground temps, and hence there shouldn’t be be much problem getting out today. However, it’s always worth remembering that the main roads and the bus routes are your safest bets. So from Sheffield the A57 out of Crosspool towards Rivelin is a reliable route, as is the main A6187 Hathersage Road out to the Peak via Fox House - this is a busy wide road with regular buses so is always well gritted and it takes a lot of snow to make this one impassable, meaning you can often access crags like Burbage South, Millstone, Lawrencefield, Mother Cap and Secret Garden OK, and with a bit of a walk the rest of the Burbage Valley too.
Pennine Lines w/c 11 November 2024
One thing I’ve been pondering whilst eating up the motorway miles is the sometimes rather uncomfortable status which eliminate problems occupy in British climbing. This has been brought into focus during visits to some of these iconic old-school venues like The Bowderstone and Dumbarton, not to mention Peak Limestone. Talking to people at various crags it’s clear everyone has a different take on eliminates, ranging from leaning very heavily into them, to completely denouncing them. Climbing is supposed to be about taking the line of least resistance to the top, anything else is just stupid, right? While I recognise this is a topic which warrants a more detailed dive than I will offer up here today, I’ll offer up a few points for consideration.
Pennine Lines w/c 4 November 2024
It doesn’t matter if you’ve done everything before, there’s always sport to be had, always a traverse or a variation to be enjoyed, the almost-lost-art of playfulness and creativity still rules here. On a quick hit on a marginal day everything is a bonus, there’s no such thing as wasted time. Everything is a win - at least you didn’t give up and go indoors.
Pennine Lines w/c 21 October 2024
The quarries at Rivelin particular are one of those venues where nobody can ever come up with a good reason why the place is never that popular, unjustifiably so, given it’s potentially a reliable winter option when stuff is clean. Hence it tends to get periodically rediscovered by a new generation every few years. Those around in the 2000s will fondly remember a few routes appearing in Dan Honeyman’s films, and it’s been the scene of several brief but frenzied renaissances since then. At some point a critical mass must be reached and it obtains sustained traffic, surely? It can’t be far off. Right now there’s lot of brambles and undergrowth to negotiate but also some outstanding rock architecture. For the bold trad devotees there’s plenty to go at, but even if you’re ‘only’ bouldering there’s a few classics to check out - most obviously the problems around Happy Campus / No Class, the ‘popular end’ of the crag. But it’s worth picking your left leftwards along through the various quarried bays and eyeballing some of the blank slabs and walls.
Pennine Lines w/c 14 October 2024
As I have mentioned in previous emails and on Instagram, I am excited to be able to unveil this one to you, the loyal subscribers to my weekly email. This is a calendar of my Peak landscape images from what I think of as my neck of the woods - the eastern gritstone edges and the central limestone. It's an area close to my heart and I know it’s a special place for a lot of you too, so I hope this collection of images does the place justice but also drops in a few surprises for you. The final selection of images will stay under wraps until the calendars ship, but what I can say is none of these images have been available for sale before in any form, and all twelve images for this are shot on 5x4” transparency film. This is something I mention a lot, so for the non-photographers out there who might not be down with the terminology, what exactly does this exactly mean?
Pennine Lines w/c 15 September 2024
I have to say actually receiving a physical copy came as something of a surprise, as part of my personal magazine expectations baked into my psyche stem from the late 2000s. In many ways this era ushered in the decline of the UK climbing magazines, where along with not being paid very much for image use in magazines in the first place (that is if you got paid at all, or paid without having to chase them up a few times first) I distinctly remember actually having to go out and cough up a few quids worth of that hard-won cash and buy a physical copy of the magazine to even see your my work in print - hardly surprising then that a lot of us just stopped bothering submitting images to the mags. So it was great to see a couple of my images in print again in Klettern, although it does expose the fact that my grade C in GCSE German doesn’t go very far these days in terms of actually reading the magazine. Still looking for an article containing directions to the Bahnhof, taking the first straße on the left, then ordering two beers and a coffee mit sahne.
Pennine Lines w/c 9 September 2024
At this time of year I am always reminded of 2021 when, with the summer fading and gritstone prospects looking better, I embarked on the rollercoaster ride of going out up and down the Pennines shooting images for - and writing - Grit Blocs. The first dedicated photoshoot specifically for the book was down at Cratcliffe and Stanton with Gwyneth, who climbed superbly despite having about fifteen taped-up fingertips. If you can imagine climbing Egg Arete in gloves, then you’re getting close to it. But anyway, the crag of choice was fairly indicative of Septembers for me, when I look back through my September photo folders of old.
Pennine Lines w/c 2 September 2024
Let’s not linger on the fading daylight hours, that’s a given, but at this time of year there’s space to imagine if it’s going to be one of those vintage autumns. Cool and dry, the gritstone feeling crisp under the skin after the sweaty grind of summer, shoe rubber feeling sticky, and the limestone crags staying dry well into November. Confidence running high, momentum building, and maybe a few long-term projects will fall? We must be due a good ‘un after the last couple of warm and damp autumns. Last year in particular was terrible but I’m determined to not look back in anger.
Pennine Lines w/c 5 August 2024
Mountain scrambles are one of the few facets of climbing which is still fairly untainted by tech, gear, and the superfluous paraphernalia. There’s a real freedom to be had, a raw and total experience, even on something as well travelled and busy as the Yr Wyddfa / Snowdon horseshoe, or some hidden exposed ridge tucked away in quiet corner of the Lakes. It requires some focus, some effort, and it’s always repaid with a day out to linger in the memories.
Pennine Lines w/c 29 July 2024
It's a short one, due to various logistical headaches this weekend, so I thought this was a good opportunity to simply direct everyone to the Crag Clean Up day that Outside are once again running this summer. Sat 17th August is the date for your diary. These are great events for the local crags and climbing community (and it IS a community) and a great use of a day which, lets be honest, will be too warm for any serious hard pulling. So it’s worth checking out if you’re in the Peak that weekend; get involved and make a bit of a difference. Big shout out to Outside for taking the initiative to organise and run these days year in year out. It would be great if more brands / walls in the Peak and further afield followed Outside’s lead with stuff like this (nudge nudge…).
Pennine Lines w/c 22 July 2024
Warming up, brushing the scrittle off the topout, sorting out the pads, doing a few of the moves, making sure the droppable top section is dialled in, getting the spotters in the right place, and wafting away the final few midges. A quick chalk-up, the crag chatter pauses for 20-odd moves, and it’s done. A short distance above, walkers and runners circuit the rim the Kinder plateau, oblivious to the tiny bit of Peak climbing’s continuing and ever-evolving history being written just below.
Pennine Lines w/c 15 July 2024
So in the short term you have to just go with the flow of the dull grey damp days, mix things up with a trip away if you can, and take the little wins when they arrive if you can’t. For a start, the bilberries are out; salvation arriving in the form of tiny droplets of dark sweetness. And where you can’t win, you can always double down on the grimness - the crimpy sharp greasy limestone. Fight fire with fire. If you don’t experience it in terrible conditions then you can’t really appreciate the good days when things cool off. I sometimes think it’s possible to actually climb better in poor conditions anyway, as the weight of expectation is lifted. Or failing that, just count the days till you’re next sat outside a French gite, baking in the sun, like Jerry, semi-ironically serenading the dull British weather. The cycle continues…..
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 24 June 2024
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.
Pennine Lines w/c 17 June 2024
For the Climbing Photography groups in particular we were blessed with two really engaged workshop groups, representing a wide range of experience levels; from people who’d started climbing in the 1980s to people who’ve started just this year. Outdoor climbing lifers to those just taking their first steps outdoors after learning the ropes indoors. The same goes for the photography side - some participants had been at it for years but just ticking over as snapshooters, some had success in other genres but now looking to bring it to climbing, and others were just learning their craft for the first time.
Pennine Lines w/c 10 June 2024
Whilst wandering around these deserted crags last week, trying desperately to not allow any fronds of bracken to touch my trousers lest I be covered in ticks, I was reminded what a friend had once said about certain grit problems; that the best ones wouldn’t look out of place dropped onto a plinth in the lobby of a big fancy hotel as pieces of art. Now I don’t know art, but I know what I like, and I like this theory. What nature lacks in artistic intent it makes up for with fortuitous random chaos, helped along by thousands of years of wind and rain. Good things take time to make, nature has played the long game here, making any human art project seem trivial in comparison. The Lanny Bassham block beats half a cow in formaldehyde any day.
Pennine Lines w/c 3 June 2024
Local Guy pulled on and summarily despatched both the long and short versions of Exorcist with apparently remarkable ease, climbed absolutely perfectly with a precision and fluidity that left a lasting impression. If you’ve ever been in Font and experienced an anonymous Bleausard turning up and casually climbing something desperate-looking while you thrash around like a punter, well this was basically that, except he had a Pod pat and a bar towel instead of a pof rag and one of those weird French triple-fold pads, and these were 8as not some gnarly red problems. I didn’t even have chance to grab a photo, just a quick “good effort mate” had to do, and with that Local Guy was off from whence he came, leaving me to puzzle why I didn’t have the hip flexibility to rock over properly in the fading dusk light. I drove home not thinking about the content of the training course, but about just how well Local Guy had climbed those problems.
Pennine Lines w/c 27 May 2024
Why am I plugging this, you may well ask? Well yours truly here will be running climbing photography workshops throughout the day. We’ll look at some technical skills, thought processes and problem solving, lighting and composition, with plenty of hands-on shooting too. If you’ve got an interest in photography but never really managed to make it ‘click’ (pun intended) with climbing, or you’re new to climbing and naturally want to take nice photos of climbing, or just want to raise your climbing photography game a little, this this is for you. Spaces for each session are limited - no passengers - so don’t forget to book. I’ll also have some signed copies of Grit Blocs on sale on the day too, so get involved.
Pennine Lines w/c 20 May 2024
It’s jarring to hear Honnold’s name bandied around at Rubicon especially. You or I would not expect the arching walls of finger-wrecking crimps and glazed footholds, all held in place with industrial epoxies, to really be up Honn Solo’s straße, but soloing speaks to everyone at an elemental level so all such contextual considerations of genre go out of the window. Or maybe the passing walkers are much more knowledgeable on Peak climbing trivia than I give them credit for and are in fact referencing Quentin Fisher’s famous attempts to solo Caviar back in the day? I guess we’ll never know. One thing is clear though; soloing is a great leveller and captures the imagination of climbers and non-climbers in a similar sort of way.
Pennine Lines w/c 13 May 2024
The short-lived aurora craze does provide a neat segue into a short paragraph about Great Roova up at the north end of the Yorkshire gritstone area. This is the home of the problem Aurora, as featured in Grit Blocs, a book that I wrote and may have mentioned once or twice before. As I am always keen to point out Grit Blocs makes no claim to list the 100 best problems, rather than 100 of the best problems, a rather woolier definition. This is no accident, because it can be leveraged to showcase a few out-of-the-way crags as much as for the problems themselves. Certain crags, certain venues, are more about this-hold-then-this-hold-then-this-hold-then-top. It’s about going somewhere new, putting the extra effort in, and dare I say it, forgetting about the grades and just letting the rock dictate the experience. You’ll note it’s not called Reasonable Roova, or Above Average Roova. Aurora is a great problem worthy of the long walk-in, but having a memorable warm breezy afternoon up at Great Roova, just moving on rock, exploring a bit and getting away from the same old crags is what it’s about really.