|| Drier, better || Staying cool ||

The Thing, Crag X || Climber: Billy Ridal

|| Focus On... ||

The TIPPING POINT

Finally it feels like we’re turning a corner, light at the end of the meteorological tunnel. After the endless January we’ve had it’s been great this past week to actually enjoy some dry weather, some sunshine, and a sense of optimism again. I even climbed in shorts, albeit briefly. At this rate even Crag X will be drying up soon.

I’m very much a sort of daydreamer; prone to wishing my life away instead of concentrating on whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing. I spend all winter moaning about the weather (as you may have noticed) and dreaming of more comfortable temperatures, I then spend all summer moaning that it’s too hot, then all autumn moaning that it’s too damp and humid, waiting for it to cool down again. I’ve spent decades working in jobs where I stared at a spreadsheet all day but really the mind is throwing around all sorts of possibilities for the session that evening, or on the weekend, or the next Font trip or visit to the Lakes. Sat in meetings zoning out whilst visualising moves and trying to remember if I did a drop knee on that move to the pinch or not. As a result, I don’t necessarily really do ‘now’ very well, and make the most of it, only realising after the event when ‘now’ was actually quite good.

The one thing ‘now’ has going for it is that’s it’s currently happening. That much is guaranteed. No uncertainty. ‘Now’ is here. It’s imperative to live in the ‘now’ at this time of year especially, since it’s basically the best period for climbing. Why is it so great? Because we’re in that transition point between summer and winter that, if you’re lucky, combines the best of both. Now you’re thinking “well Dave actually we have two of those points every year” - correct, but autumn is increasingly damp, warm and crap, and the overnight temperatures stay quite high, so these days autumn really functions more as an extension of summer, but one where the limestone gets wet but the grit conditions stay poor. So basically the worst of both worlds. Autumn is now dead to me as a climbing season to look forward to. Spring, on the other hand, is where it’s at.

Cool grit conditions are still around for bouldering, it’s comfortable enough for trad, and even after a dreadful winter the Peak limestone is starting to dry up again, slowly but surely. Humidity is rock bottom, the sun burns through with remarkable heat and clarity, casting cool shadows, overnight temps are still low, the the days are long enough. People are out clipping bolts, placing gear, the flowers and wild garlic are out in the limestone dales, the birds are singing, and you can stride confidently off-piste at grit crags not yet blighted by smothering tick-infested bracken. Disposable BBQ silly season hasn’t yet arrived, and you can finish your evening session sat atop a gritstone edge, unlace your rock shoes with tired fingers and watch the sun’s disc ebb away behind the horizon without fear of being eaten alive by midges. Good times.

The clear spring air is full of possibly - maybe those last grit projects will be tidied up over the next few weeks. Maybe this will be a drier summer, maybe the Cornice will be ‘in’, maybe it won’t crap out in July again. You temporarily forget that you’ve already exhausted all the low-hanging fruit of decent Peak limestone problems at your grade, and it feels like anything is possible again.

I suppose the one ‘benefit’ of living through a total collapse of the climate and ecosystems is at least it keeps you on your toes. There’s actually no point planning very far ahead as you now don’t know what will be thrown at you. You get the feeling that the aftershock of living through the wettest 18 months on record will be a monster midge season, which could kick off at any moment, unless it’s followed by some epic drought - again, very possible these days. Conversely a flick back through the photo archives to 2013 shows we had so much snow in the Peak during April that it was almost a return to the fabled (and incidentally, much overrated) snowballing scenes of 2010/11. Well, at least you could try Big Air above just a pad or two in total safety, which I’ll admit was a rare treat. So yeah, it’s all over the place, and the general theme of the weather and hence any climbing plans is that all bets are off. So I wouldn’t go putting all your eggs in one project basket, that’s all I’ll say. But for the time being I hope you can manage to make the most of the better weather in whatever way you can.