Taking stock.

Sporadic blogging, sporadic things of interest to write about. I've been climbing in a variety of places, done some nice climbs, and have to think a bit harder to actually remember them all. It's been that sort of May - it started well by pissing it down but even the weather has perked up enough I don't even have that to moan about. So here's the current crag review:

Balgone Heughs - a demoralising pile of rubble that perfectly blends the aesthetics of the worst Peak limestone crag with the rock quality of the worst Central Belt quarry. HOWEVER the climbing is actually quite good fun, and it's a far better use of bolts than any retro-bolting nonsense in the Central Belt. I only had a fleeting visit but felt pretty confident climbing despite the weird rock.

Bramcrag Quarry - a demoralising pile of rubble that perfectly blends the aesthetics of the worst Central Belt quarry with the rock quality of....something considerably better. The aim was a mixed trad/sport hit and we did well to get any trad in as it was in the process of being retro-bolted as we climbed. I think they have done a couple of routes too many, but overall it is more suitable than any retro-bolting nonsense in the Central Belt (RBing is being done by the FA, most previous trad routes were not so classic, many of them relied on pegs and spaced bolts, trad is not as precious a commodity as it's surrounded by 2 guidebooks worth of classic Lakes trad, and clear delineation between quarry and nearby crags precludes bolts spreading). Did a few pleasant routes and left the harder sport for a breezier day.

Armathwaite - an appealing crag of aesthetic rock that is somewhat more traumatic to climb on. I'd visited a few times over the years, worked my way through some classic leads, and got inspired by harder lines. Unfortunately those lines tend to be bold and rounded and smeary with worrying "half-in" gear and it's all pretty spooky terrain for getting on the lead. Thus I'm less enamoured with the place and will file it under the "late Autumn pseudo-grit death route" wishlist.

Bleater's Wall - an appealing crag of aesthetic rock that is somewhat more traumatic to climb on. It's a fine sheet of Arrochar schist at it's most obtuse, with blind fingery holds and hidden and spaced gear and a strong sense that none of the harder routes get onsighted, at least neither at the grade given nor by people who climb the grade given. I certainly didn't manage that much apart from a lot of furiously crimping up and down the start of routes trying to place tricams and C3 cams quicker than they fell out under their own weight. Thus is the price of straying 30 mins drive from the Central Belt / honeypots of Cambusbarron / Dunkeld / Weem to a sunny idyllic crag with a 10 minute walk-in and a nice grassy base.

I think I want to go somewhere vaguely normal now...

Maybe Gruinard Crag, Stone Valley, Creag Nan Luch, Goat In The Woods, Mungasdale or Reiff?

Maybe Iron Crag, Castle Rock, Reecastle, Goat Crag, Falcon Crag, Bowderstone Crag, or Gouther Crag?

Maybe Creag Dubh, Stac An Eich, Glen Nevis or Creag A Mhuilinn, Tunnel Wall or Aonach Dubh if it gets warm?

Maybe my wrist is better enough to get on some harder stuff too. I've had reassuring sessions down Ratho, pretty much at my previous standard with pretty much not much pain. It seems a while since I got on something solidly and reliably challenging (Easter) so I am getting those urges again....May has been a bit headless chicken so far and I want to feel more focused.

It's just the newness wearing off...

A classic phrase from a classic climber, George Smith. I think it was used in his excellent article about Lleyn climbing a few years ago, and I had good cause to use it on a recent trip to the Far North, which is far north of the Lleyn but certainly has the potential for similarly high quality experiences. In general North Scotland lacks good choss compared to North Wales and North Devon / Cornwall sea-cliffs (apart from the Old Red sea-stacks), but it seems there is enough lurking around the fringes if you know where to find it. My partner Steve knew where to find it, except he didn't know he knew because he sold the cliff to me as "clean and beautiful", well one of those is certainly true. Actually the cleanliness is partly true, it's just the occasional bit of cleanliness likes to detach itself to reveal more potential cleanliness underneath.

So the Far North in general. I'd been to Creag Shomarlie before and I'd been to Scrabster before, but never the section of coast in between. It was cold and desolate and beautiful when the sun came out. There's just enough civilisation up there even if it doesn't stretch to two-lane roads and cafes in every hamlet. Ben Hope and Ben Loyal provide a dramatic backdrop to the coast, or is it the other way around as the coast is spectacular in itself. It reminded me a lot of Devon and Cornwall, the difference being you can feel the emptiness and solitude at your back, compared to D&C where a few miles inland and you're in back to back villages and towns and back to back caravan jams.

We didn't actually do that much climbing up there, due to driving, cold weather (belaying in t-shirt, windproof, bodywarmer, hoodie, downie, snood, beanie and gloves and still freezing?? Yup welcome to May!), crag complexity and the need to balance out the Cocoa Mountain cafe with the Craggan pub, but it was certainly interesting exploration. The most interesting being The Tiger....for which I went through as many motivational fluctuations as the stripes on the cliff. The first photo Steven sent looked kinda scruffy - unpsyched. The next photos shown in person showing the scale and dramatic rock markings - psyched! Abseiling over the grassy edge onto highly variable terrain - unpsyched. Belaying at the bottom and looking at all the potential lines - psyched! Following up and encouraging the newness to wear off a bit quicker - unpsyched. Lying in the Tongue hostel thinking about the next line I spotted - psyched! Standing on the headwall with two shallow cams at my feet, two more okay cams 6m further down, looking up at fragile rock leading to a final smooth gearless groove - ummmmm..... Well I spotted a tiny bomber C3 placement under an overlap and topped out and it was a bloody brilliant adventure up a bloody dramatic cliff. You're not going to mistake it for mundane honeypots like Sheigra...

 

  

Who Rattled Your Cage? E3 5b ** 45m
Requires a non-provocative approach and a double set of cams. A fine adventure up the central black stripe with good climbing but spaced protection and variable rock.
1. 5b 12m. Start as for TT or on a rock left of the blowhole, depending on swell. Gain the smooth wall at the black/orange boundary, where fine bold climbing leads to a good foot ledge and large cams above. Belay or on the ledge just right useful to prevent rope-drag.
2. 5b 33m. Continue up the orange/black boundary to the overlap and traverse right beneath this on quartz rails. Pull over leftwards (medium cams) onto a block. Step left to avoid dubious blocks then climb boldly to the final slim quartz groove (tiny cam on left). Finish delicately up this.

Peace and quiet.

The Lakes...

Iving Crag in Kentmere - a peaceful dead end valley where the only disturbance to the quiet is distant thrum of engines as cars try to rearrange themselves in a complex parking puzzle on the tiny cramped lane to avoid the £5 payment for a privilege of using a field. Actually the whole journey down to The Lakes was unusually relaxing and pleasingly swift, right until leaving Kendal from whence it was insta-gridlock presumably all the way to Ambleside and beyond. Thankfully we were only stuck for enough time to remind me how shit Lakes roads / driving / fucking bumbly drivers are, before swerving off to Kentmere. Iving Crag is a bit off-piste but it's pretty good for the mid-extreme climber and we got a few good routes done, I didn't do anything too hard as it was all a bit steep and intimidating. By the time we were shat out of the valley, the queue had pissed off to whatever BnBs / holiday cottages it was infesting and it was another relaxing journey over Wrynose to Duddon.

Far Hill Crag in the Duddon Valley - not a dead end valley but even more peaceful, and one of the best places to escape from the hordes in The Lakes, as well as sampling some fine outcrop hidden gems. Far Hill Crag is relatively far up the hill towards the backside of Dow and is thus more hidden than most, it also has some finer gems than most. Every route would be worth an extra star at a more popular crag, and the exceptionally rough rock - with a texture of cement sponge and endless right-facing side-pulls - is worth a visit in itself. If you have working legs and can cope with the walk-in, that is. I don't, but I could, only because it's relatively low angle for it's long length. A couple of routes in and things were going great, but the disturbance of the day came when the perfectly bone dry forecast turned into a drizzly swirling rain shower when I was part way up Lagonda. I suspect they heard my tantrumic swear-a-thon in Seathwaite if not over the hill in Coniston too. Thankfully after a furious cheese sandwich and an hour sulking, the skies cleared enough to grab a few more routes. It got a bit too cold to make full use of the evening, but doing First Of Class (another Duddon guide photo tick) made the day for me, an exhilerating testpiece and my hardest route of the year so far.

Burnt Crag in the Duddon Valley - closer to the road although just as arduous to walk up to, and far more of a honeypot with classic trade routes like Shifter, but still just as tranquil compared to the fleshpots of Langdale just over the mountain ranges. Well it was tranquil for a bit and then a group of local old boys turned up and any semblance of quiet was shattered by a storm of Cumbrian banter, beta, and bloody good laughs. This was actually quite welcome as they were an entertaining bunch, I do like meeting local veterans as they know all the hidden holds and gear placements, are amused when you don't find them, impressed when you ignore them, and generally can share good knowledge and crack about the crags. This was particularly true on the day and perhaps the highlight was the reaction to my last ditch solution to the squirmingly thin intricacies of Scorched Earth (yup another photo tick, the Duddon guide is full of inspiration that way). Tenuously bridged with a juggy ledge just out of reach, the obvious choice was to leap sideways for it....."foooking 'ell, he jumped for it! Did you see that Keith? Aye, foook me that's the move of the day, never seen anyone jump for that!". Quite amusing as that was considerably easier than the moves below.

3 days. 8 routes. 2 new venues. Mostly good weather and only 1 hour of rain and 10 minutes of traffic jams, I can live with that. Quite a lot of walking, and a few pretty challenging routes....I'm feeling more on form and more inspired. So here's a picture of the sunset from Far Hill:

Seperating wheat from chaff.

I've always been rather fond of the North Yorkshire Moors / Cleveland Hills. I think I first went to Scugdale 17 years ago although I'm not exactly sure. I went to Goldsborough Carr in the evening and got a bit scared by the steepness, slept in my old 340, had a morning soloing at Scugdale and then shepherd's pie for lunch in Thirsk, marvelling at an area of a country that I'd never even seen before. The 1992 Orange guidebook was my bible for esoteric craglet exploration for a while. Later on it was replaced by the North East Outcrops guide in which the information was more plentiful and only a bit less esoteric. Sheffield replaced Nottingham as a base, Northumberland replaced NYM as a sandstone destination of choice, but still I went back on sporadic visits, introducing friends to the quiet crags, expansive views, and funky little sandstone climbs. Then I moved to Scotland and it all got a bit too far away.

In recent years, there's been another replacement: noise replacing quiet, static replacing silence - not on the crags but in the new pico-community that are re-discovering and re-developing them. Unfortunately rather than a calm celebration, it's a discordant babble of grating catchphrases, embarassing hyperbole, transparent trolling, beggy look-at-me personalities, and juvenile gimmickry. All of which obscures the useful information and realities of the climbing being done. The attention-seeking "characters" involved don't need any more mention, but perhaps their discoveries DO. No smoke without fire and even if the smoke is pretty noxious, the fire could be quite pleasant.

Thus I headed back down to the North Yorkshire Moors, seeking shelter from strong sou'westerlies and some new crags to explore. We had a whirlwind tour and went to Tranmire, Stoupe Brow, Roseberry Topping, Round Crag, Smuggler's Terrace, Thorgill Crag and Clemitt's Crag, with variable results, all in a few days (and there's enough trekking around there for my poor wee legs!). I was a bit hampered by travelling tiredness, steep ground weakness from lack of training, and skin that was out of practice with continuous sandstone climbing and thus rapidly wore out, but still managed some good routes. I missed out on a couple of other good ones and saved some for the future. I did have to remind myself that I'm still in injury recovery mode - although my wrist has reverted back to steady healing from the last blip, and survived this trip well, it's only a month or so ago I was having to be careful wiping my arse to avoid tweaking it! With the colossal portion of home-made chicken (surely ostrich?) kiev at the Lion Inn above Round Crag, that was some hardcore wiping on this trip so I'm glad it's feeling stronger now.

On the subject of shit....what about the recent routes and developments?? What gems were hidden amongst the forum/blog diarrhoea?? Quite a lot, it seems. The new routes are good, the new venues and re-developments of old ones are good too, simple as that. The information gleaned online was mostly accurate - more so than outright fallacious - and while the grades and descriptions might be a bit varied, the star quality is genuinely appropriate. Out of everything we did, almost everything was worth it's stars, a few maybe one less, but a couple maybe one more. The quality of the developments and the climbing speak for themselves, and that's what I hoped to find down there. At the end of the day, ignore the chaff and enjoy the wheat - that is what we did and it was worth the effort.

Back to square zero...

I've only had two sessions climbing this week:

The first one I did my hardest trad lead of the year so far and thus felt pretty confident about how my climbing was going :)

The second one I pushed myself training indoors and ended up with my wrist the sorest it has been since injuring it two months ago :(

Cuntflaps.

Anyway this was the day out at Glen Coe roadside crags, which were fairly accessible if completely hidden, bone dry despite the location, sheltered from the brisk easterly, and offered fine climbing despite their mossy appearance:

Warming up on the soft touch Sweltering.

Cranking through the crux on the non-soft touch Smouldering. 

The latter took some effort committing first to a fingery 6a crux on the lower wall and then a bold 5c crux on the upper wall with few positive holds and only a C3 000 between me and a whopper whipper. All fun and rewarding stuff. Notice my taped up cranking right hand on the above photo - that is NOT the problem. Direct cranking on small sharp crimps has been fine on my wrist as it's locked in place with little rotating around. Conversely, forgetting about my wrist and flicking my walking pole up into the air and waving it to signal that I'd actually found the damn crag - that IS the problem. Combine that with some fairly cold climbing temperatures and it was a bit tweaky and susceptible.

Then I went down to GCC after a rest day and was trying pretty much as hard as normal on the steep stuff, and now it hurts pretty much all the fucking time. A restrained and gentle session after the Glen Coe tweaking would have been fine. A steep cranky session without a previous walking-pole-induced re-tweak might have been okay. Combining both has been a fucking cock-up. What do I always say to people about looking after injuries??   
 

"Be diligent - always keep aware and keep careful or you'll re-injure it"

Again, CUNTFLAPS.

Ice, rest, wrist-guard, very gentle training, vitamin I blah blah fucking blah.

Opening the NW account.

3rd year in a row getting to the North West in a fortuitously dry if cool spell in March?? Yes please. If there's a guaranteed way to liven the heart and alleviate the aches and pains, it's cruising along the A832 or A835 on a sunny morning with a rucsack full of chalk, a bag full of guidebooks and a car full of drum and bass. I'll let the pictures do the talking for this one, the only things they don't show is that my wrist is still recovering okay, it coped fine with more, and diverse, climbing, and that my head and confidence and passion are coming back pretty well, and that my plans to get to Glutton and Tynrich were spot on so those two crags are off the list but many more remain...

 

The Tweaky Wrist Tweaklist...

Some ideas for recuperative cragging during the early spring, in rough order of preference:

Mull - Kintyre, Erraid - I've been before but the new guide has shown so much more, loads of little granite crags and sweet looking slabs.

Mid-Wales - Rhinnogs - Off piste for many climbers but a genuinely wonderful place with perfect exploratory cragging on great rock.

Glutton Crag, Ullapool - The latest and currently fashionable bolted Torridonian sandstone crag and looks spot-on for plentiful F5-6c mileage. - done :)

Tynrich Slab, Inverness - Just a neat slab in the tranquil Ruthven valley. A good mid-grade choice and I've heard good reports from an ex-local. - done :)

Glen Shian Slab, Glenfinnan -  Just a slab en-route to Mallaig, with a typically rapidly-downgraded Dave Mac E10 of course. Slightly harder route choice but a lovely bit of rock.

Beinn Ceanabeinne, North Coast - A great sounding slab that has been heartily recommended by a local. Throw in some good options at the Skerrary sea-cliffs and apparently there is a classic Simon Nadin bolted F6c slab up here too. Intrigued?

Callerhues, Northumberland - A bit burly but plenty of choice to go at. 

All Doire Beith, Glen Coe - One of the roadside crags in the Glen, an accessible slabby wall.

Yorkshire gritstone - Rylstone etc - some good slabby trad here.

Yorkshire limestone - Giggleswick etc - some good slabby trad here too.

Canna - Another gem in the new guide, looks perfect for mid-grade cracks and grooves, all in an idyllic location.

Aberdeen sea-cliffs - Rob's Butt, Perdonlie Inlet, Seal's Caves - still some places I haven't been to that I can hopefully sneak in before the birds come back.

Cumbria - various crags - A reasonable choice at varied and accessible locations like Armathwaite, Carrock, Bramcrag, South Lakes Limestone etc.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that most of these have good mid-grades slabby stuff, and/or are pretty accessible, and/or are sunny and amenable - for good reason. I don't have the fitness, confidence nor moral fortitude to be thrashing around at Creag Dubh nor Earnsheugh nor The Leaning Block nor Super-Crag etc....I need areas with plenty of easier choice and a welcoming "get on with it" feel. I'm interested in similar ideas / crags, I think I'm aware of most of them in Scotland but I might have missed something?? And of course I'm always interested in more people who are keen to explore with me in such places....