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