Our first meet this year on the
fabled gritstone. With the 1st day set to be Burbage North it looked
pretty good if you ignored the forecast. But with so many walls nearby we had
plenty of wet weather alternatives.
Friday was a normal uneventful
set-off. Brad was a bit late with the bus key so we hung out with the hiking
club for a bit. The journey itself wasn’t too bad either but I wasn’t paying a
lot of attention thanks to the Bens introducing me to a few phone apps. Once we
found the hut and got the door open bedrooms were picked and everyone quickly moved
to the heated ‘common room’ and socialised until it became more of a reasonable
time to go to bed.
Saturday
The 7am wake-up actually worked this
time. We were even out the door before 9, despite the bad night’s sleep that
several people got. Some plain bad nights and a few sleep talkers were the
causes to my knowledge. Regardless we had packed up and were on our way nice
and early. The fog was pretty thick in the valley but once we got up to the top
of the hills it thinned out and the skies cleared. We were some of the first to
get to the car park. The ropes and racks were dished out and we set off for the
Long Tall Sally area. Jim had flagged the route as a possible lead the night
before and there were sufficient easy climbs to validate the group going there.
We split up fairly autonomously and moved to our first leads. Jim and brad attempted
HS’s while the rest of us started easy J. Despite some of the VDiffs being
absolute nails the sending started. Olly was having a bit of a bad day on the
general climbing front but overall it went well.
Of our 2 freshers I know that Amy
did a lead … I’m not sure if James did though. Amy did very well on her lead
give the situation at the top of the route. Despite a good crack in the corner
of the route the rock was green and slippy. She slipped several times but
persevered like a boss and finished the route.
While I was helping her set-up at
the top Jim, Tanner and Brad were working on the start of yet another E1 :D.
Long tall Sally had, due to seepage a hard boulder start on wet holds. We all
blew the onsight trying the start and we all fell off pretty early. Luckily we
had mats in place. Jim started and got past the first section. Before the bulge
he arranged a bit of gear and then pushed on slightly to the crux. Trying to
work it out he slipped off the rest into his first whipper of the day. He
pulled through the rope and I tried the boulder again. Unroped I got to the
pocket that started the dry part of the climb. I took about a minute to
contemplate before backing off for the moment. Tying on while on the no hands
rest did not appeal to me at all. Jim tied back on to the sharp end and led up
again. This time he pushed through the crux and got to the ‘safe’ point. Unfortunately
while trying to place a small cam his foot slipped and he took a monster
whipper. This got him really riled up as he was essentially home free. Needless
to say he got back on and finished it. While Jim was celebrating he untied and I
headed up roped up for the first time. For gear economics I was leading on Jim’s
gear, however that didn’t stop me from placing my own nut beneath the crux J. Brad happily seconded up, removing
the well placed gear and we all ended up at the top in the cold wind. I gave my
jacket to David who was setting up without one and went to join Tanner at a V3
boulder problem. As I got down however I found that they were moving to try
Nicotine Stain (V4). We had several
tries but never got past the first few moves.
Although Tanner had already done it
we moved to the two pocket V3 problem and gave it a few attempts before it
started raining. Interestingly enough the heel hook move that I thought might
come in handy was in actual fact good beta which let me do it on my second
attempt. This annoyed Tanner quite a bit as he had spent a long time trying to
work out the moves. Unfortunately, shortly after we got to the problem it
started raining and we packed up for the day.
We returned to the hut and
socialised until the end of the day.
Sunday
We let people had a lie in due to
the bad weather. We were up at 8 though, and tidying the hut fairly quickly. We
were even out the door before 10am :O. Under 2 hours to wake up, clean and
empty a hut isn’t bad going for a meet. The drizzle however wasn’t abating so
we went to Hathersage to look at the weather forecast. It was borderline and
changeable so we went to Stanage car park to try out luck. The drizzle was a
bit on and off and the wind was horrendous. We waited for a little while and
watched a group from Imperial start a walk. After the forecast changed to a 95%
chance of rain, we made a decision, supported by a group choice, to go to the Climbing
Works in Sheffield.
And we crushed. We tried a lot of
problems on a lot of walls, and a lot of walls were sent. Not trying to boast
but I sent a lot of problems onsight. I did also fail on an awful lot and trash
my hands pretty badly.
I hope that the general consensus
was that the meet was good, and that the decision we made on the Sunday was not
a bad one. For this however I can only hope.
The last thing I have to say really
is that we returned massively early. We were arriving in Leicester as it was
getting dark. The bus was cleaned and being sent back to the uni before it was
6pm. It was a little weird. We all felt like it was coming on midnight while it
was actually late afternoon.
Roll on Christmas meet and the
holidays.
No comments:
Post a Comment