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 21 august 2023
‘Stuff’ - each item in of itself relatively benign; each one to solve a problem, to make things easier. To enhance performance. But in another way each one contributes to creating a problem, to changing the experience, diluting it, getting in the way of what’s good about bouldering in the first place - the simplicity. And suddenly five boulderers plus all their gear and pads would no longer fit into a Nissan Micra.
Pennine Lines w/c 14 august 2023
As I mention once or twice in Grit Blocs, in the world of gritstone bouldering we tend to look up to Fontainebleau; we borrow Font grades, and we use ‘Font style’ as the highest accolade we give to a problem. But the weird thing about British climbing’s relationship with Font is our tendency to characterise the climbing there as being exclusively rounded topouts on rippled slopers, reducing it to a stereotype and ignoring the wealth of climbing styles on offer. Font is in fact pretty well equipped with savage crimpy walls, horrendous cracks, tendon-snapping pocket pulling, steep basic pulling, one-movers, long stamina problems, low physical roofs, highballs deserving of route status and just about everything in between.
Pennine Lines w/c 7 August 2023
Fallen Slab Lip is a traditional problem, done regularly before any of the modern-era guide or apps existed, before anyone had pads, and before it had a name. The meat of the problem, the original thing, starts by hanging the big hold/ledge on the nose then hand traverses the lip up rightwards through a tricky sequence, a few really good sloper moves, until reaching an obvious good hold where you sort of run out of rock and are forced to roll over and top out.
Pennine Lines w/c 31 July 2023
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.
Pennine Lines w/c 24 July 2023
One unexpected bonus of Britain’s political shambles of recent years combined with spiralling cost of living and rampant corporate profiteering here at home means that Switzerland now barely feels any more expensive than the UK. Certainly when you collapse into a remote mountain hut at then end of an exhaustingly nerve-wracking 10-hours dodging crevasses on a melting glacier and order a pint of helicopter-supplied Swiss lager for 7 francs (about £6.30) then that starts to look like astonishingly good value compared to the average UK town centre pub.
Pennine Lines w/c 17 July 2023
One of the things I think is great about climbing is it’s one of those pursuits where a relatively small set of skills and knowledge can go a long way. Ideally gained early on in your career and well embedded so you can dredge them up from the back of your mind when required, just a few nuggets of know-how can gain you access to some pretty special places and stunning scenery.
Pennine Lines w/c 10 July 2023
When all anyone was supposed to be interested in was route climbing, Baslow took a back seat to its near neighbours. It lacks the stature and the big routes of Curbar, it’s not equipped with classic after classic for the slab climber like Froggatt, and the rock quality for the most part is nowhere near as good as Gardoms. So Baslow is a really the underdog of the Eastern Edges, but viewed through a pair of bouldering eyes this underdog has a few tricks up its sleeve.
Pennine Lines w/c 3 July 2023
In climbing circles we talk a lot about the rock, understandably, but at this time of year it’s really two types of vegetation which are dominating the scenery of the moorland grit crags. Firstly, my least favourite aspect of the Pennines: bracken.
Pennine Lines w/c 19 June 2023
When you've lived in the same place for a long time it's easy to fall into complacency and routine. Now, I'm not saying routine in climbing is necessarily wrong, and in fact I'm a strong believer that building a relationship with a place, with a crag or venue, can be a very a positive thing. Generally speaking it's got a lot going for it instead of the fashionable but consumerist approach of just flitting around picking off low hanging fruit. However, I am as guilty as anyone of falling to the trap of frequenting the same places each year almost by default.