Roaches Meet 7th - 9th November

 This blog is a little different, instead of a seamless flow of Captain eloquence, in Jack’s absence the remaining committee members, myself, Amy, Emily, Charlie and Callum have decided to piece the trip together from our various points of view. So we’ll begin with Emily and Amy recounting the trails and hilarity of Friday night:

Emily: (Note: Kerry is a penis). After pre drinks in the very heavy mini bus, heavier drinking proceeded in the hut. A game of ‘never have I ever’ proceeded and as usual it was pretty boring and no one had weird or disgusting secrets to share…

Amy: We started off the weekend with a bit of a shock; having expected to find our normal 15 seater minibus we turned up at Uni to find that, to our horror, we only had a 12 seater… how on earth were we going to fit everything in?! After a quick couple of phone calls and a bit of Tetris style planned packing we managed to fit everything in, albeit quite snuggly, and were soon on our way!

On arrival it was a nice short walk up the hill to the hut and after a bit of settling in we were ready to have a great night (forecast was looking a bit shit for Saturday). Unfortunately the well-known boulder problem was no longer an option as the warden had very nicely decided to put some heating lamps into the kitchen.

Food was eaten and the shenanigans of the evening began! We started off with Remy’s rendition of Ride the Bus, ending with amazement when Conner managed it on only his 4^th try! Normally this is impossible and results in copious beverage consumption, a fact that Jake took upon himself to prove. Next came ring of fire, the usual ensued with a lot of drinking, swapping of clothes, rhymes, categories. Far too much was found out about each other during ‘never have I ever’, particularly some delightful facts about Emily Mobley and also Charlie and Jack. The game culminated in my naked hut run, to what appeared to be the great surprise of our newer members who maybe didn’t realise I was going to actually get naked!

The night concluded with extravagant dancing and sing-alongs to some amazing Frozen songs. We headed to bed expecting to have a day of hard hangover recovery at Awesome Walls.

The Don Whillans Memorial Hut, our home for the weekend looking atmospheric in the morning mist.

Ellie: Well of course she was going to get naked…this is Amy we’re talking about! I only want to add that Connor, Remy and Jake managed the impressive feat of drinking a 2 litre bottle of tramp cider each plus a bottle of whisky between them, with a little help from Bethan. Much drunkenness. Much dancing. Not so much hangover it seemed!

Emily also forgot to mention that she blew it at the petrol station, putting in £50 and 1 penny. One job Emily!

I also take great pride in my 100% successful navigation of the bus to the hut. We won’t discuss the subsequent navigational attempts of the trip, suffice to say that any detours taken are not noteworthy in size.

 So Saturday dawned alluringly un-damp…or wet, so we dragged our varying degrees of hung-over selves outside at 8am to do some bouldering on the lower tier. Emily, Jake and I sent Three Pocket Slab V3, which I was pretty psyched about. Everyone had a go at the various boulder problems, apart from Chunder Charlie who sat dejectedly on a stone threatening to live up to her infamous name.

Charlie: At 7am Callum, Ellie and I headed outside to check if any rock was dry so we could squeeze a couple of hours’ bouldering in before the rain set in.  Much to my dismay I was far too hung over to even manage one boulder problem, but before 10am the rain had already started. Everyone piled back inside the hut, but a bored Ellie decided a rainy walk along the crag could improve everyone’s psyche for Sunday. 

After walking for a while everyone was completely sodden, so we headed back to the hut and off to Awesome Walls in Stoke.  Everyone got their indoor boulder on and some (plastic) routes were sent. Saturday night was far less eventful than the previous one, and Jack and I were in bed by half 9!

Ellie: I can only add a few points of interest to this.

Namely Jack is a moron: have you ever wondered why you don’t leave pasta in water after it’s been cooked? Probably not, because it is blatantly obvious why this is a bad idea. Apparently not to Jack Knight, who returned from his walk to enjoy a humongous saucepan of turgid, waterlogged pasta which not even a whole pot of pesto AND an entire chorizo could mask the taste of.

nomnomnom…! 

Secondly the warden is a prick: this gentleman made a surprise appearance to do some maintenance while we were eating lunch, fair enough, he seemed like a nice enough guy.…That was until he took the untoward action of opening Charlie’s crisps and feeding his (admittedly rather cute) dog. Charlie impressed levels = low. I’m sorry? Did we miss him asking? No, apparently this was his standard polite behaviour as he proceeded to attempt the same with Ali’s pork pie: “I know who would like that” nodding towards his (still rather cute) dog. “yep, me actually!” said Ali taking a stand against his obnoxiousness. Then he left and returned(!) to try and abscond with Charlie’s scones. Charlie impressed levels = at rock bottom. So we left in disgust to attempt to regain our faith in humanity at Awesome walls, which were as Emily put it “Awesome! (walls)” There we were welcomed with hugs by none other than Sam Eady who lives near by (Jealous!). We tired ourselves out cranking hard and had an early night.

Emily on Pine Slab V2

So I’ll let Emily continue with Sunday: After another shit nights sleep, we got back to bouldering. Amy, Steve, Ally, Ellie and I got on some slabby boulder problems at pine tree slab and Steve fell off Pine Slab, V2 into a very muddy puddle much to our hilarity.

 

Ellie’s turn on Pine Slab

We all sent it in the end, and after a while we moved up to Upper Tier and then to The Cellar and Attic Boulders. Some people left to do some trad, but Ally, Steve, Connor and I remained bouldering, and after trudging though the mud there was love at first sight as Steve found the boulder problem Scrack f3+ (no surprise it was a surly crack problem). It was Connors turn and he’d decided to not use any jamming at all until the top section where he managed to jam his body into the off width crack, and get a little/very stuck. Steve ran up to help and in the meantime Connor was thrusting his way out, making some very questionable noises, providing Ally and I a lot of entertainment at the bottom while spotting. Hopefully we didn't put you off too much from crack climbing Connor..? We ended the day down at the Bog Boulders which were surprisingly boggy so ended up doing very little there.

 

Ali on Pine Crack V0

Ellie: Callum’s attempt to climb Valkyrie on Saturday had been tragically thwarted as the rain came down the precise moment we were about to start the first pitch. But he was pretty keen to get back on the rock as this meet was the first time he could climb without danger of his eye falling out!

Callum: After a morning of torrential rainfall and some hard sending on plastic the afternoon before, everyone woke on Sunday pretty keen to climb some real rock. Unfortunately everything seemed to be sopping from the day before and so the search began for climbable boulders.  With Ellie and Emily both sending a 6a boulder the day before, Jack and Callum decided to give it another try before consenting that this was not the boulder for them. Jake was quick to find a lovely 7a undercut-to-sloper-3m-dyno problem round the corner which resulted in a game of who can slap the chalk the highest. 

Jake attempting the seemingly impossible dyno.

On the corner of this boulder was a lovely f4 problem which everyone gave a good try, particularly enjoyable was Charlie’s short person beta of the route once she’d stopped complaining about the dampness of a starting foothold.

As people found their feet and began searching for their own boulders, Jack and I spotted a cave boulder problem directly beneath Valkyrie. It had chalk on it and was dry, so seemed like a great idea – welcome, to the wad cave! Figuring out the moves in a rather backwards fashion, all but one were connected in the roof part of the route. Upon later UKC inspection this turned out to be the aptly named ‘The Gutter” – a mighty V8 7a+!

 

Joel on Flake Crack V0

  

Ellie: While Callum and Jack were being ‘real boulderers’ in their wad cave: i.e. spending <90% of them time trying hard but not actually sending the problem, the rest of the group headed to the upper tier. Everyone was remarkably psyched and problems were being knocked down left, right and centre. The holes in the boulders made for some very achievable bouldering, even more so for the impossibly lanky: “Paddy, it says ‘do not jump’ to the hole”, “yeah I’m not jumping… oh look and there’s the top”.

 

Pyjama bouldering Paddy

Extra incentive was added to Staircase, a V1 with a sit-start and sketchy wet top out, when a fellow boulderer on a day out with his kids, put a chocolate coin at the top of the boulder. Joel speedily figured out that an unlikely heel hook, a gurn and a hope-for-the-best would get him to the top. Others and I quickly followed suit… yay beta monkies!

 

That’s the move. Now rock and gurn!

Connor, looking the tboulderer type in his awesome yellow bouldering trousers, chilling on a rock. He later enjoyed a good nap on the pad in true chill boulderer style!

Callum: In the afternoon the sun came out to play and some of the new-comers were able to get on their first trad leads! Callum and Jack took Jake and Remy, respectively, in which they found out about a particular climb that was cursed. While Callum climbed his first lead in several months (an easy crack into an awful gearless off-width which I did in awful style) Jack was abseiling down a Vdiff next to him to retrieve a hex. An inventive use of two nut tools was the key to this retrieval. Afterwards the two groups switched routes upon which Jake lead his first ever trad route and dropped his phone from the top of the route. Callum heroically abbed down to retrieve it, finding it amazingly face down on a grassy ledge half way down the route, completely unscathed! While this was going on Remy was finishing his second lead of Prow Corner Twin Cracks, VDiff,  in which he built a (rather unnecessary) hanging belay  that Josh Taujanskas would definitely have something to say about (Tradfest, 2014).

 

 [insert schlp noise here]

Ellie: Marie and I meanwhile went to do Right Hand Route HS to warm up on, the laybacking start proved to be a polished mess but it was accomplished and the main thing was I got to place 4 of my shiny new Cams! Much happiness. Then Marie did her second trad lead, a HVD called Prow Corner Twin Cracks, which she dispatched in style. Bethan also lead this route, a choice for getting back into leading after not having climbed in a while.

Here she taking a nap in a conveniently shaped boulder.

Charlie: Whilst this was all happening, Jake managed to drop his phone out of his pocket which landed halfway down a route in a crack!  Callum abseiled down for it and miraculously it wasn’t even damaged!  At this point Marie had turned up, and she did her second lead and made it look incredibly easy! Joel also got on his first trad lead, Prow Cracks VDiff, and didn’t seem to have any problems either.

With it getting dark, everyone headed back to the hut to get it emptied and into the minibus.  Despite the damp rock, everyone was in high spirits as we headed back to Leicester via a trip to KFC, which I’m sure Bethan, newly vegan, was very happy about ;)

 

Paddy, Remy, Jake, Ellie and Emily: a successful ascent of Big Boulder

Ellie: So this patchwork of up of a weekend gave everyone a little taste of everything: ULMC fun and dreadfulness, outdoor and indoor bouldering, the joys of a soggy walk in the Peak, and of course some good old trad climbing. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, were quick to help the diminished committee out, and altogether both competence and psyche levels were high considering the rain.

 I guess this patchwork of a blog reflects the weekend, with a bit from all of committee who were there, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading it!

Thanks to Charlie and Joel for the pictures!