Pennine Lines w/c 5 February 2024
The bouldering is probably due a renaissance that will never happen, as it too is sort of unfashionable by today’s trends. There’s a lot of traverses, and a lot of holds which whilst not being that small per se, or sharp, are somehow just too crimpy or over-positive for comfort. Doing your comp-style problems down the wall isn’t really going to prepare you for this. Neither is all the board sessions on smooth lovingly crafted pinches. You’ve got to get into the pure filth, with a lot holds comprising various fingertip-bruising lumps you have to muller your hands into violently. Kudos wall in particular is one of those places you need to burn two or three sessions here just to deaden your finger pulp before you’re going to get anywhere. I suppose most people aren’t keen to make that sort of investment of time into it. The same goes for the hard routes - Zeke, Caviar, Dangerous Brothers, Tribes, The Sissy, even Salar and To Old To Be Bold can feel like feel like finger ruiners.
Pennine Lines w/c 29 January 2024
The S7 mat covered an area of ground about the size of the phone you’re reading this on, hence the yellow target on the mat was a fortuitous addition. When you stared down between your shaking legs you at least had something to aim for, no matter how statistically slim your odds of hitting it were. You were aiming for the bull but considered yourself a winner if the dart even stuck in that sort of cabinet thing with the doors that you hang a dartboard in. Bounce-outs were common. The set of on-the-fly calculations and seat-of-pants dead reckoning required to land was on a par with the successful return of Apollo 13. Nevertheless, it totally changed the world for us, as it was already starting to change climbing over the next decade.
Pennine Lines w/c 22 January 2024
Some words in the climbing world are so loaded with history and expectations that it’s impossible to actually assess the place objectively. Words that carry a lot of baggage one way or another. Just saying “Plantation” will elicit a response of some sort. It might spark memories of feeling like a hero cruising confidently on some airy line or other above a sea of onlookers, or finally solving the critical position and landing the top hold on your project as the winter sun sneaks out from behind a cloud. Or backing off Crescent Arête with trust in your footwork in tatters. An ankle-wrecking fall from high up on something, feet rapidly peddling an invisible bike down some tall arête, with the rest of your climbing year flashing before your eyes perhaps. Yep, the highs are high, and the lows are low at the Plantation. The soaring bulletproof arêtes, and the sandy battered orange holds and snappy flakes. Or maybe you’ve never been, so it’s a crag of the imagination yet to be experienced, which you’ve avoided because you’ve heard it’s always rammed.
Pennine Lines w/c 15 January 2024
With the Millstone arête, I’ve not been on it, and you probably haven’t either, so we don’t really know. And to be honest, maybe it’s fine that certain things remain unclimbed. Sometimes these lines have as much value in their status as tantalising possibilities than they do as realised routes. They are nobodies route, nobody has their name on it in a guide, but simultaneously they belong to everyone. A great leveller. Maybe it HAS been climbed and whoever it was just didn’t tell anyone, now there’s a thought. Unclimbed lines leave possibilities open in the imagination, and these days climbing is so well documented, classified, instagrammed, videoed and photographed (guilty!) that sometimes there’s little space left for the imagined.
Pennine Lines w/c 8 January 2024
In fact, Rivelin is a classic winter venue, THE January crag. I swear some years have passed where it’s the only place I’ve found dry rock. Low lying and sheltered, yet open enough for that fine grained rock to dry fast; it’s a sun trap too and rarely feels as grim and bleak as other Sheffield local moorland crags. On a dull day it can seem like a brown crag for those brown January days, so it just fits. But it's even better when the low winter sun rakes through the bare trees, the light modelling the crag, shadows are cast and everything pops into relief. BOOM.
Pennine Lines w/c 25 December 2023
There’s a saying or rather a sentiment expressed in climbing which we hear time and time again, offering comfort to anyone who’s just failed on their project, or fallen off something, other otherwise taken an ego-bruising; “Never mind, just come back on another day, it’ll still be here next time”. This works great, until we hit one of the rare instances where something isn’t there next time.
Pennine Lines w/c 18 December 2023
There’s a saying or rather a sentiment expressed in climbing which we hear time and time again, offering comfort to anyone who’s just failed on their project, or fallen off something, other otherwise taken an ego-bruising; “Never mind, just come back on another day, it’ll still be here next time”. This works great, until we hit one of the rare instances where something isn’t there next time.
Pennine Lines w/c 11 December 2023
I had been regaled with tales of amazing tors of premium grit dotting the fell, and the brilliant days climbing on them as enjoyed by various friends over the years. I had avoided going up there in summer as I wanted to experience the place in cooler temps and to see it at its best, and I wanted to go with a small team for the ‘crack’ as much as pad/spotter prudence. But being a bit of a longer drive from Sheffield, and a long walk-in, and limited winter daylight, things had never quite lined up before. At some point that December I realised though that it was now or never, there was a book to be written, so I was going to have to just head up there myself.
Pennine Lines w/c 4 December 2023
Nevertheless, even a hint of snow demands some thought when it comes to choosing your venues. Crags at a lower elevation are generally favoured, as they usually get less snow to begin with. If the crags offer some problem-at-the-base-of-a-trad-crag type action, not topping out and protected from above, then all the better when it’s snowy. On this side of the Peak that usually means the lower lying crags around Stanton and Cratcliffe are preferred, similarly the Amber Valley is at a lower elevation, along with Rivelin - often a winter sun trap - and Wharncliffe. Even opting for, say, Curbar over Stanage in heavy snow can be a winner, especially as such classics as Sean’s Arete and Walk On By are, barring dripping from above, completely snow proof.
Pennine Lines w/c 27 November 2023
There’s often a lot said about the ‘perfect gritstone day’, typically implying solid clear blue sky and the sun out. Even better; the crag bathed in the last orange light of day, with someone heroically questing up a highball spine-chiller, as above. Classic gritstone, you can’t knock it.
You’ll see a lot of these on social media, living your best life, inspirational content etc etc. You can’t move for it when it happens. During the long dark drudgery of winter that little window of sunshine can do wonders for the soul, and conversely it’s guaranteed to make the blood boil of anyone unable to get out, stuck at work or whatever. But it’s not all about the perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good.
Pennine Lines w/c 20 November 2023
On occasion the prevailing weather, daylight, time and other circumstances conspire to turn certain crags into a sort of black hole, from which only objects with sufficient kinetic energy in the opposite direction can escape. Without that energy you’re well beyond the event horizon long before you’ve driven past the Norfolk Arms, and regardless of your intentions you’re going to end up there inevitably. Burbage North is one of those places, Almscliff is another. So far this November that gravity field as been well and truly in place. When self-driving cars really become a thing I will put money on most cars just driving to Burbage North automatically in the run up to xmas unless you hack the firmware.
Pennine Lines w/c 6 November 2023
On these Sundays-after-bad-weather a bit of breeze, a bit of sun and a lot of patience usually does the job in terms of providing dry prospects, and can often give some of the best conditions, once a bit of the rain-washed scrittle is brushed off your slopey topout. Not everyone got the memo though and it doesn’t mean you won’t see groups turning up mob-handed on a wet Saturday to Stanage - presumably buoyed on by the knowledge it’s a ‘fast drying crag’ - and just cracking on with climbing on wet problems, as folks were reporting last weekend. ‘Pffftt, it’s only the Plantation’ I hear everyone north of the M62 cry. Well, yes, but next week it could be Caley, or Brimham, or Widdop. First they came for Deliverance, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Peak local. Etc etc.
Pennine Lines w/c 23 October 2023
I will say that since climbers increasingly get into the ‘sport’ (it isn’t a sport obvs) via indoor walls rather than through a sort of casual apprenticeship via peers/friends/family, logically a large part of the moral imperative to ensure climbers are equipped to climb outside responsibly should fall onto indoor walls. And in fact even onto brands and companies who also make money off climbing and growth in participation. It’s also no surprise that most brands associated with climbing do next to nothing to actually take this kind of responsibility on
Pennine Lines w/c 16 October 2023
When you first start out in climbing you improve pretty fast. So your available universe of Things To Do expands away from you at an exponential rate. Every time you go climbing you get better and better, and the almost infinite possibilities offered by the world of climbing await you, like one of those big kids’ play mats with all the roads and houses and shops printed onto it being unrolled in front of a toddler with a box full of new toy cars. Every guidebook you open is like unfolding the menu of your local takeaway having just discovered that Indian food exists. A kaleidoscope of possibilities which will take you three lifetimes to devour.
Pennine Lines w/c 9 October 2023
In fact we are part of nature, and hence why being outside, climbing or whatever you do, is so fundamentally important. Even just being at a crag 10 minutes drive from the suburbs, with an ice cream van parked in the layby and tied up bags of dog muck hanging from the gates, it’s still fundamentally a different world. Even if the place has been intensively sheep farmed, or mismanaged for grouse shooting or whatever, it’s still better for us than the urban world. The wind blows, the weather changes. We’re not calling the shots out here.
Pennine Lines w/c 2 October 2023
There’s also something to be said for sensing when the prevailing winds are blowing in your direction and allowing yourself to be carried along on the breeze. This is true of Raven Tor as much as anywhere. Make hay while the sun shines etc etc. When things align and it goes your way, sometimes you’ve got to go with it - and sense when it’s time to move on.
Pennine Lines w/c 25 September 2023
Hawkcliffe was a bit of a surprise really for more than one reason - I was not expecting such an impressive crag, for such a relatively obscure venue. The rock architecture is formidable; there’s some HUGE buttresses and big bold looking routes with the odd peg (pegs that I assume whoever placed them wouldn’t have gotten away with at a more popular grit crag). The ramparts of fine-grained rock emerge from a steep tangle of rhododendrons, moss covered bushes, slippy travelator-like mud and abandoned conference-venue chairs. It’s like Wharnecliffe meets Gladiators in a crack lounge.
Pennine Lines w/c 18 September 2023
Grades are one of the things about climbing that we can’t live with, but we can’t live without. They are inevitable to some extent, but we often use them badly, we ask too much of them, and we use them inappropriately. Granted, at best they are a noble attempt to form part of a theoretically democratic dialogue, to convey information usefully, and can give people some form of inspiration and maybe much need validation, provide a lot of talking points over post-climbing drinks in pubs and online.