Stone Soup

Once upon a time, in a land far away, 

A group of Yorkshire boulderers sat talking and wishing for something new..

Up from behind the bus shelter popped a wizened old man, who clutching a small leather bag, approached the group saying..

"In my magic bag I have a perfect bouldering adventure, if only I could find someone to share it with.."

"We will! We will!" said the group, welcoming the man into their circle.

"Hmm" said the old man " Whilst this bouldering adventure is perfect, it would be better if we could enjoy it in more mysterious surroundings"

The group overjoyed by the closeness of a new adventure thought hard and then..

" Old man!, Old man! .. We will take you to the dark and brooding autumn forests of a distant land, strewn with ruined castles and high pointed churches set on the topmost peaks of the rolling countryside"... and they did.

"Hmm" said the old man " Whilst this bouldering adventure is perfect it would be better if we could enjoy it in with some complicated cultural backdrop"

The group overjoyed by the closeness of a new adventure thought hard and then..

"Old man!, Old man!... We will take you to a new Republic, fresh born from a dark struggle with its Stalinist past. The country will be littered with brutalist concrete buildings and decaying country houses"..... and they did. 

"Hmm" said the old man " Whilst this bouldering adventure is perfect it would be better if we could enjoy it in with some stunning rock architecture"

The group overjoyed by the closeness of a new adventure thought hard and then..


"Old man!, Old man!... We will bring you to granite castles of jumbled rock arrayed with soaring aretes, ice sharp crimps and bulging slopers"..... and they did. 

The old man looked hard now into his small leather bag and said slowly "This perfect bouldering adventure is as good as good could be, If only we could have some local colour"

The group now brimming over with expectation looked around and then...

"Old Man! Old Man! Look around, we have brought you crazy unidentifiable foods, pickled sausages, villagers drinking at 07:00 on Sunday morning, cheap beer, fantastic weather, Eighties pubs, Trains running in the roads and good company, surely now this adventure is ready?..."

At this last word the old man laughed out loud and disappeared into the wind.

Overcome the group called out...

But as they looked around and saw the dark forest crammed with boulders in the warm sunshine, they realised that it was indeed ....

The perfect bouldering adventure

Tribal

At 09.32 Saturday morning the queue outside the Tattoo shop in Gleadless had 6 people in it.

4 blokes and two women all in tee shirts, it was cold, as I passed them they were lost in each other 

Check it out ! 

Tribal.

The dividing line between sunshine and mist, Autumn and Summer sat fixed over Hathersage.
Cold toothed air forced my attention into setting off over the moor.

Pads on, rucksack sorted,  a thousand times familiarity over the heather, alone, a wry smile.

On the path a lone girl in harness staring out, she was frozen, I walked past she didn't blink, trapped in her envelope of morning slow time.

On the crag, a bottom rope is up on the Arete next to Sampson. They are trying hard in the trying hard conditions before the sun crests the grit edge. 

He wont break the kinaesthetic barrier.

The woods are quiet and in conversation with the goddess, I sneak through loathe to force attention my way.

Its good to be alone. Good to feel things as they are....

Later, forced down into the valley by the assault of blood suckers, I notice the valley filling with pads and snake chains of virtuous ramblings, the clank of hexes over the warming air.

Max and Ash the weak are there in the sun,  its been a while, its good to have company.

We climb and chat, the group grows. The climbing takes over we are oblivious to all other things

We are 

Tribal

Down to Business

Driving South, System playing loud.
The sky is torn in pieces.
Flying free.

Plantation car park 10:15 just me and a mountain biker.
Pads on, up the path Sunshine playing on my cheek, warm.

The wind is hard swirling, vortices of ripped ferns winnow the hillside.

10:30 Sunday morning Stanage Plantation Boulders.... Empty

Weighting mats down off we go, pull on to a few warm ups, the rock is just right.

Finger dragging friction without frostbite.
A few problems in the guys arrive from Leeds.. A marathon journey

Its good to meet with easy friends, lost time of no consequence.

We are here to climb.

The Business boulder is good, we sing the Flash Gordon Theme, the grit gets in our eyes, time is blown away.

The Hourglass next, Nice Aretes, small pockets to entice us upwards.

The washing machine wind moves on to spin cycle.

The Pebble follows we meet a few other hopeless addicts lining up to chance it.

The guys drinking beer on the mat provide good humour.

Later in the Fox House Inn over a pint of Peroni..

I realise that in the microsecond between launching up from the sidepull and slapping a hands breadth away from the finishing jug I was content.

Result!

Points and Prizes.

Me and The Girl
We were both on our feet.
Come On!
Fingers stretched towards the crimp on the volume...
Come On!
Shouting at the small screen
Come On!

Watching Dave Barrans on the last Men's Semi-final problem in the Climbing Works International Festival.

In retrospect it was very like watching England vs Germany in a world cup final penalty shoot out.

All the hope and aspiration boiling up, too scared to watch, just in case.
Hiding behind the cushion

Come On! Just reach the bloody hold, Come on Dave................... !

With one thing and another this winter has seen a lot of climbing competitions for us, we didn't get the weather timed right/missed the boat/got it wrong.

So in time honoured tradition we have been making our votive offerings at the houses of mental pain and muscular correction.

Dipping in and out of four bouldering competitions has been fun, lots of climbing, feeling pretty fit, pulling hard.

But it leads to this every year, feeling hopeful, entering a national competition, no false hope of doing anything than just being better than before.

Pulling on, the shock of realisation as to how hard the problems are, trying hard, feeling beaten up and pleased.

But then watching the semi finals and finals at home with a warm recognition of the people and surroundings and slowly chilling out.

Stretch for it! You can do it! 

Dave came off, the penalty over the bar, the fans silent in the stadium. Crashing down. Emptiness filling the gap left .....litter blowing through the empty rows

Hang on ! This isn't mere football. This is climbing, this is where everything is possible.

This time is different, He made it through.

The final was spectacular.

This time the shots hammered home, full in the net. The crowd on fire. Heads held high.

He did it !

This was a glorious time to be a climber.



(Well done Dave)

Yorkshire Boulder Liberation Front

Ali battles alone

 John and the Worm girl got there first.

It had been the sort of morning that stripped the black from the crows.

Muddy bus stop greetings, new faces & old friends.

A minute in denial then we go, this is it, into the woods.

The dark ancestral wilds creeping over the land reclaiming their own.

A green calm carpet putting sleep in the heads of rocks.

Light work for many hands

Well not today!

Today is a day for valour. 
For labour.
For rolling back the night.

The team swells, a raising voice over the wind.

Plans drawn, we launch into the offensive.

Peeling back 10 years of gathered gloom.

Xmas again at the Yule log

It's a blur.

Branches falling, moss flying, bracken pulled away from the pristine glistening crystals.

Underneath, its what we came for.

Old faces long buried cleared of moss, mud wiped from their eyes.

What a precious find, the value of which increases in the recognition and the time spent in recovery.


We eventually fall, spent, aching and bruised.

Victorious!

Walking back to the terse delights of the Dyneley Arms the forest tells us of our temporary nature and in hail blasts starts slowly rolling back in.

In no order, thanxs to Ali, Peri, Worm Girl, Kirsty, John Whyte, Dave, Paul, Bryn, Stuart, Andy, Johnathan, Preston, Will, John from The Leeds Wall ( Thanks for everything Guys!) John Hunt and Nigel.

WE WILL STRIKE AGAIN!

525

525

On average during 2014 I climbed about 10.09615 problems or routes a week, every week, for the year.

I had set myself a target of over 500 lines at the end of last year having scraped in at 491 in the run up to Xmas.

There are no F9a's or E7's in this list of climbs, no new lines on Alpine faces, no sea cliff labryinths.

Probably an entirely unremarkable list, in fact.

However in the process we define ourselves.

In the conception we allow our dreams substance.

In the plan we flesh out our fantasy

In the doing we test our soul

In the achievement we glow

In the emptiness following, we realise our hopeless addiction and dream again to fill the vacuum.
In this feeling of eternal hunger we are all 525.

Left to Right

 The thing about Peak Grit is its simplicity. I prefer Yorkshire and its stubborn complexities but sometimes you just need a rest.

Of the myriad of options available in the Peak, Stanage offers a really easy relationship, you open your door and there it is,seemingly supine, a grey-stone climbers watermark.

Stanage demands to be dealt with as a whole, not just a day on an isolated buttress.


I don't remember how it started or where the idea came from but someone said.......

"Lets just start at one end and just climb things till we get to the other end, you know, Left to Right".

Simple really! Why not?

 22nd October 2011 sees the Girl and me at a freezing Stanage Left Hand End gearing up at Start Buttress.

No big deal, just climbing what we wanted, looking at the lines, poking around in the forgotten corners.

11 visits later (of which only 9 involved climbing) and 70 odd routes later we have arrived at the Plantation path.

We have climbed nothing super hard, but we have been together, usually alone, looking out from the rock as 3 years have rolled past us.

Stanage, in a different mood every time has welcomed us in its stoic, stony fashion as we have relaxed amongst its folds and soaked in our own existence.

But this is the point, its not the difficulty of the engagement or the celebrity of the actors its your own involvement which makes these things worthwhile.
It doesn't need to be Everest or E12.

It just needs to force you to really take part. To recognise your existence

We both arrived at the Plantation path and looked South and what struck us most was the fact it was Bus Station busy.
People everywhere.Crags wrapped with ropes. Litter on the ground. No solitude.

Ready, Deep breath taken, we stepped across the Rubicon.

Stanage Popular ......We are coming to get you!

Dualism

From the northern edges of Brimham rocks, on a sunny day you have an uninterrupted view across towards Pateley Bridge and Guisecliff.

Just down in the valley, straight ahead, behind the Half Moon Pub is a small crag called Park Crag.

I have noticed this crag over the years and have done the background work, It had a fleeting mention on Yorkshire Grit (RIP), 8 problems up to f6c, It was in the TC Bouldering guide as a Connoisseur crag....
Vague mentions in bits and pieces scattered across climbing narrative.

Just my cup of tea

Sunday morning sees me early doors, dropping the girl off at Harrogate Climbing Centre (she's working) and then off over the hill to Park Crag.

 2 mats and a rucksack over saturated water-meadow, coupled with blocked footpaths, cows, bouldering mats dropped in the river and mud up to the knees get the morning off to a good start.

But then here I am, amidst the combed down bracken, in the sun, on the rock.
Time slows to almost a stop, a buzzard joins me, I drink my tea.

Scouting around under the storm blasted thorn trees, I find the problems mentioned on the web, see some more and off we go..

An easy high-ball with mats sliding off down the hill, A sitter from within the overhung scoop, bridging out until hands hit the jugs and legs cut loose.

Next bloc, Three more problems, the long unclimbed rock surface sparkling in the wind-shine. A fun two stepped Arete. A confined crouch start out from a recess crimping on micro-edges onto a wall. A one move roof wonder.

Next bloc, four problems all on delicate chicken heads, all powerful sit starts, I can do three. A right hand start eludes me, right leg flagged an inch from the floor, right arm stabs fingers to a slot, adjust, then goes again, hits the worn groove and throws me off down the hill rolling and laughing.

I am lost within the crag, within the line that separates now and forever.

There is no need for anything else and the world stops at the edge of the field.

Judge Jules

I am not sure we scared him.

It was more that he did not understand that people could exist over the edge.

It had been a peculiar sort of day.

At previous sunset we had walked up over the toe of Ramshaw Rocks and submitted our votive offerings in the hope of a good day on the rounded sanquine grit.

It was dry and cold, everything looked good..

Morning came through one too many Bunnahabhain, a quick breakfast in Lognor.

 It looked wet.

Over the moor road the summit wrapped in mist, optimism flagging
Ramshaw was washed out,  the Roaches look ok.... change of plan

At these moments hope springs eternal everywhere was obviously wet and unclimbable but there was bound to be one dry line..right?

The Shropshire plain's watery winter sunlight, infilled by rising cloud to break around the end of the North, condensing droplets ran off every granule ..No climbing today.

So time to have a scoot around, I have been wanting to look at the five clouds for ages so tension broken, easy conversation with old friends we walked and talked, pausing to look at compelling lines, working out placements, catching up.

Slow in it's effect. We didn't notice the change for a while

Around us the wild crowded out mild experience, alone in moss covered heather and thick leaved Crowberries we started to phase out, back into an older world taking our easy friendship deeper into the lost forest.

Over the wall, broken trees, thick moss, a seeking blustery wind hid the sound of hunting velociraptors.
Up to our waists in moss scrabbling up the broken banking slipping and sliding on jumbled rocks.

Above us the zigzag line of Art Nouveau calling us upwards.

Crazy trees leaning away from normality, a mazed rock pathway, nearly lost forever..

As we pulled crazily over the top the little boy stopped wide eyed, his mother unaware of our sudden appearance.

We had broken back through the membrane into suburban Sunday walking..

We all smiled at the change

Like I said, I don't think we scared him.

He just didn't understand that people could exist over the edge

Dark Earl

The clear terminating line between sunshine and shadow, a knife cut of cold as we walked over the edge of Earl Crag.

Down shouldered we hunched up against a smooth fractured pinnacle of Millstone Grit.

Thumbing a guidebook with winter gauntlets, steam train breath on the air.

A clean edge of arete and wall stretching away seemed to intensify the cold, blackening the shadow.

"What do you fancy?" 

The idea of a warm up climb felt laughable, we all knew that as soon as we started dressing down for the climb we would freeze, still in our tracks.

Down in the abyss carried on the warming valley air the sounds of Saturday football drifted up, dreamlike.

"That bloc looks good"

A quick hand out of the glove, the rough caress to test friction is all it needs, The eyes dart, assess a line, holds identified, body dance ready.

And there it is, the moment when the climb takes over, I do not feel cold until later....

Left foot on the incut, 

high right foot, 

flag, 

reach the flake, 

balance, 

step up, 

undercut, 

match feet, 

left foot out ,

rock over 

right hand over the top 

mantel.

Stood looking down at the small mat, our bags and the stretch of valley away to Lancashire

I flex my fingers 
I am clean again

Come down from the moors

I have had this going round my head for a while... its trying to condense the feeling of not wanting to return from the wild.

Come Down

They heard it through wind fire, waving bent grasses.

They heard it susurrus through gaps in grey stones.

A gentle hand dragging, plucking attentions

A pleading through darkness of moss drawn plantations.

“Come down from your moorland, come down from your hill, we need you to care us and wind us in tightly. We need you, we need you, come down from your hill”

Spread-wave rolling from light veined valleys.

It caught on the hems of the moor, tattering, un-walling

Welled from the depths of red rich dependencies

Filling and pooling at each feather lined hollow

“Come down from your mountain, come down from your peak, press yourself to me, gather round me and love me. Come down, come down, come down from your hill”

Winding through high flatlands of bog-oak torn tendrils

Drowning the catch a glance rising, miring long shank bent beak.

Cloying sedge tendrils and filling peat footprints

Taking your frost breath before even it was thought.

“Come from your Iceness; come now from your wildness. Come now when I need you to wrap me up warm. Hold my grey head to your body and whisper me lifeness. Just come down, come down, come down from your hill.”

Substantiality

SUBSTANTIALITY

Last evening I tried "Perky" an out of the way f6b+ problem at Brimham.

I brushed it off a bit and dabbed chalk on two edgy crimps, had a few attempts and then left.

"Perky" obviously stayed where it is, where it has been for hundreds of thousands of years.

The two crimps may have come into existence countless millennia ago and will erode out into finger jugs in another few millennia.

In the middle point of all this relentless change, for a few hundred thousand years "Perky", is an out of the way f6b+ boulder problem at Brimham.

Whilst I slept "Perky" had shed the chalk I added, with the help of a morning dew and returned to it's slow development into something else.

In my terms of course, this piece of rock will remain largely unchanged during my lifetime.

I can rely on the hanging start, the wild offside flag and the palm ripping Arete, to be there every time I visit.

More than that, I can discuss these abstract movements and holds with other aspirants and they get it.
We share a common understanding of "Perky", we can laud success and console failed attempts. We discuss different tactics, slight variations in body position, in hold use.

We add "Perky" to our lexicon of shared experience.

In this way "Perky" becomes part of our developing persona as a climber.

Which is funny really because "Perky" does not exist. 

Neither does Brad Pit, Zoo York, High Fidelity or Voyager.

The rocks eternally grinding down to dust do not care for our dalliance and continue their entropic dissolution every second of every hour of every day of every year of every millennia.

"Perky" only exists when we are there to define it, to outline it, to climb it.

The challenge is internal.
The construct is internal.

This is how we must understand climbing 

It is all within us, every historic attempt, every Joe Brown jam, every Cam placement, every route name, every fall, every bold success.

We by sharing this understanding, project ourselves onto the rock. 

Our hopes,our dreams, our brief fluttering beauty.

Without us all, its just a rock.

Back from the edge

The overwhelming feeling on returning from a climbing trip is initially dogged tiredness, sending you crawling into bed on all fours, this then melts as you regain some outward function and in my case gels more into a mild feeling of emptiness.

The return from the necessarily heightened state you inhabit whilst you are away leaves you empty of Endorphins, a twitching nervous system, cringing, needing another hit.

Its not that I specifically miss anything/anybody, rather that there is a crossing from one state of mind to another.

So when I write about the individual aspects of a trip, the drunk Italian swearing competition, the "who has he killed anyway ?" throwaway comment, the wooded sandy micro deserts, the acorn van bombs, in themselves they are merely closely packed pieces of an experience which was larger and more vibrant than the norm.

I suspect that even the climbing was peripheral, in that it served to stick the group together, but was only one in a cast of thousands.

I reflect that this heightened shared experience is the point of trips/expeditions and to some extent the "objective" is secondary.

I can also see the addiction, the need to be other than the norm, the trance.

So the only question which really remains is....

WHAT NEXT?