The Bowderstone.
Last year it was the true start of
my bailing on routes trend. Time for revenge :D
The start was pretty normal really.
We all got onto the bus and departed in short order. We even got money off
everyone bar Ollie and Jim who, of course got on later. As Jim and Brad were in
the front of the bus with Harry I decided to take my original spot in the back
of the bus. From here of course my vantage it rather small but I still was
aware that there was a fair amount of traffic on the way.
We stopped at Holmes chapel to meet
up with Bullock, Lidiya and Amy. We gave them the hut key and a boulder mat so
they could start attempting problems. We got our food for the meet and left the
toilet void car park :P. The rest of our trip to the hut was a sequence of Lake
District corners with Jim repeating the fact that we were nearby. Well apart
from the when we got to the first lay-by and left brad behind to go to the next
parking area, which of course turned out to be too small for the bus.
We got to the hut, Unpacked slightly then arranged our mass of mats under 'The Ramp' a V3 problem on the ladder face. While most of us did try the start there was only a few of us that actually were trying the problem. The closest anyone came to finishing was Bullock who practically got his left hand on the final hold. Matching became the main issue for him :P.
After we got a bit bored on the
ramp we moved a few mats to the Crack. At this point a load of people went back
into the hut and the warmth. There was only a few of us trying the crack and
most of us could barely get out of the starting cave. With my beta from last
year I was able to help people with the starting moves and how to move into the
full crack. Jim managed to get one move away from the easy ground early on but
didn’t quite stick the feet necessary for the later moves. Despite a few of us
making it past the lip of the cave most of us did not get many moves further.
Somehow though I managed to send it on my second go. Apparently ignoring most
of the things that you do is one way to do hard problems. Most of the fun stuff
left was a few attempts at the crack and the password entry to the hut, as
managed by the Old Boys.
Saturday.
Thanks to Amy we were all up nice
and early. Given the glorious weather we were to hit shepherds crag. We
arranged to stay in a farmer’s car park in exchange for going to their café afterwards.
Brown slabs was the initial destination and as a warm-up we did some basic
leading letting people second. This took rather long than anticipated and by
the time we had finished up our first few leads Jack was starting up brown
slabs crack for one of his first few leads and the rest of the group were leaving
for the Little Chamonix area. Great respect for Jack actually, he pulled off a
VS 4c as one of his early leads. David had a little more trouble seconding up
though. As such I was sat at the top mincing like a boss to keep and abseil in
place for ease of return to the base. Once Dave had topped out lowered down Jack
and I scrambled down the descent path and met up with Ollie at the base. We
left Brown Slabs and found the rest of the group beneath Fishers Folly.
Awkwardly, just as we arrived the group was thinking about leaving. Having
stood at the top of brown slabs being hungry I wanted lunch. Jim and Brad were
awesomely helpful at this point in taking a load of people back to brown slabs
to teach leading. I was to take Jack and David up Little Chamonix. Little
Chamonix as it happened had a group at the top of the first pitch but waiting
on a group above them. It was probably the wrong decision but I started to lead
up anyway and a few minutes and horrific gear placements later I was making a
belay. The first pitch is surprisingly badly protected :P. When I got to the
belay there were 3 groups on the route; one on the 3rd pitch and one
next to me on the belay. The top group arrived fully at the saddle belay and
the group next to me set off in quick order. It is my assumption due to their
speed that the top group let them pass through. Being kind I decided to stay at
the belay after bringing up Jack and David. Unfortunately we were stuck there
for probably 1.5 hours. David got a bit too cold and made the decision to lower
down to avoid an epic on the top pitch. It was at this time that the group
above offered to let us through for a little help.
The leader of the group had got a
little freaked out on the top pitch with the exposure and was requesting a
top-rope rescue. I pushed forward and silenced the fear in my head due to the being
on display situation :P. Once at the top it was a pretty simple rescue overall.
Bring up Jack, bring up the leader Natalia, Bring up the first second; Mia,
haul their bag up, bring up the last second; Lewis.
My first rescue … yayyy.
Unfortunately this entire sequence meant that it was getting pretty dark as we
were descending. The rest of the group had not known the situation I was in and
was without a minibus or hut key, as I had them in my pocket…. Woops. So as we were all descending we were
joined by Brad, Jim and Ali who brought with them 2 head torches, which
massively helped the situation we had of almost no head torches for over 5
people.
The rest of the day was mostly
spent in the hut in a huddle. We played table traversing, a quick campus
challenge, crimp deadhanging and a few drinking games.
Ali owned the deadhang with over 20
seconds completely destroying everyone else, with Amy beating every girl and
over half the guys with around 9 seconds.
The rest of the pretty tame night
ended with everyone going to bed early.
Sunday
The weather was forecast to be wet
and miserable. Britain didn’t disappoint us. While it was raining and miserable
it wasn’t the worst it has ever been and we were still planning a mountain day.
The actual plan changed a few times regarding the general area and the actual
route. By the time we were leaving the hut we were to be going to Ambleside and
doing a quick walk in that area. A few people were going to go indoors but the
majority of us were going on the walk. Getting to Ambleside however was not as
easy as anticipated. We made a few wrong turns and ended up heading to Penrith.
After a quick layby seat change the Brad-Nav was sat at the front and directing
Harry to Ambleside. The traffic was horrendous and when we eventually got to
the car park of the climbing wall it was a relief to be in the right place.
Brad and Amy were both pretty ill
and therefore gave up the mountain day in favor of the best ULMC activity …
MINCING!
The final group that ended up on
the mountain day was Myself Harry, Jim, Ali and Dafydd. The ‘bad navigation’ continued
as we started the walk on the wrong path. After going a bit too far to change
our minds though the route was amended so that we would continue uphill and
return via the same route as originally planned. The uphill leg was pretty
average for a hike, until we hit the road called .. the struggle. The path was
pretty consistently uphill from there. We stopped outside a pub where SAR dogs
were being trained for a quick break. After that there was a very steep rock
stepped ascent of 3-400 meters. Surprisingly my calves weren’t that solid after
the steps, it was more the quads, but then that’s probably a technique thing.
The rain and wind were much worse
on the top, so we lingered very little before starting our speedy descent. From
the top to the bottom probably took less than an hour and a half and was a
pretty fast pace, but actually quite fun after the windy, rainy, cold step
climbing.
The last non-return home part of
the trip was a quick visit to some shops and a goodbye to the Old Boys. After a
bit of a look at clothing I found myself in the ‘Climbers Shop’ with Harry
trying to work out whether to buy stuff or not. The 3 cams for £120 convinced
me that I should add a few more to my rack of dragons. We said goodbye to Amy,
Bullock and Lidiya and left Ambleside for the hopefully dry Leicester.
The Drive Back
This will be the abridged version
for pure ease of writing J.
As I was sleeping for most of the
journey back I can only really start at the rest stop near Keele. We all had a
bit of a bitch about Ollie and Harry getting soft-shells at Ambleside and had
our food. Nothing much really happened for a while until the main event when we
were about 30 miles from Leicester. A tyre went on the minibus and before you could really think about
anything the bus was parked quite nicely on the grass next to the A5. Having
checked the bus we found that the wheel was taken out. We were stuck where we
were. We got everyone to a ‘safe distance’ and huddled next to a gate. Many many phone calls later the
breakdown garage guy had collected the minibus and taxis were on the way to
pick us up. Despite stopping for food around 9ish and looking good to be back
in Leicester before 11 we were still waiting for taxis by the gate at around 12
(GMT time). The rest of the trip was as expected; most of us asleep bar the
people in the front. We
emptied the taxi of gear pretty swiftly and left for bed :P
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