Manc sissy

Saturday morning club has its disadvantages. From anecdotal evidence at least, the weather is often better in the morning - the forecast weather for Saturday was good, but started off wet with low cloud. It had rained all night and there was almost no prospect of dry rock - at least, not until later, or so I thought. Ed decided to go surfing and James sounded exhausted. I dropped the monster off to do her morning of work and headed round to Chorlton to pick Follicle up. We went to Manchester Climbing Centre. Its in an old church in Ancoats and is quite handy for town. I was a bit fearful of the car, but the car park is guarded and has cameras and stuff so its probably ok....

 

I'll not launch into a review of the climbing wall, as its a climbing wall. Its not bad. Certainly it has more to offer than Rope Race. A bit wierd that the bouldering is separated out into three roomlets, two of which are moulded resin surfaces and then there's a small board. Which is too small really. They've done a good job with the available space, and it is a good wall, but upstairs is limited by the ceiling height - it feels long enough climbing on the moulded resin cave, as its really steep and therefore long, but the board isnt steep enough and so you've no soon as pulled on and its over. Some good well set problems mind - I imagine the hand of the barrans at work as they certainly felt like comp problems. Another major plus is a good cafe - good coffee and homemade cake.

 

The afternoon is spent at a barbecue birthday party back in Sheff. We get home at 10 drunk. Sunday is a better weather day and we pack our wellies and head down Cheedale. We keep trying to walk through cheedale and keep being turned back by the river or rained off but not on Sunday, we made it all the way through. Chee tor looks good, and is dry, Cornice looks brilliant but is absolutely soaked, max's wall is pretty wet but Two Tier looks ok. Saw Ed over there and half waded the stream to say hello but kept getting nearly washed away and bottled it.

 

Today I had hopes of getting back on the Sissy. I think I could redpoint it but cant find anyone to hold me ropes. So, in the absence of a belayer I hope to have a board session, still awaiting confirmation of that even. Wednesday ed is on about LPT but I need to be back at tea time so looking for partners then too. 

Nightmoves

Notes on using a petrol powered lantern for night bouldering sessions :

• You will also need a head torch
• They get hot
• Dont put them where the exhaust gases can only escape past where you are climbing - i.e. at the back of Ben's roof. It goes dark at about 1940 at the moment. After work peak action is now becoming the stuff of lantern only missions, and really it should be reasonable - certainly its colder, but there was absolutely no breeze last night and conditions didnt feel as good as they should have done.

Both Ed Robinson and chap who I'm sure is called Simon did Ben's Roof by headtorch but I kept standing on the wrong thing and being unable to bear the skin pain so didnt. Was nice to be out but I shouldnt really have gone - felt knackered.

Oh, and... the tor has major patches of seepage. The RHS is soaked, massive patches of seepage on Revelations, right of pinches wall etc etc.

A leafy gent

According to the mighty met office - the soothsayer of hopes and dreams, yesterday should have been the best day of the week. We should have basked in sunshine but instead, as usual, we awoke to drizzle. Packed the monster off to work and started the hunt to see which of my friends were keen. Ed had arranged to go tradding (but ended up at the Tor), Dylan had to work, Jim went with Keith and Adam to the Churnet, Paul Bennetts dad has the familys enthusiasm and is off to Stanage (but ends up turning back) and Katherine Schirrmacher has given rubicon up as a bad job, but Jules Littlefair's keen.

The morning of work passes quickly and soon I'm Rubicon bound plotting whether its possible to buy wellies on the way. It has to be flooded surely? Jules and Stu went the previous day and it was soaked with condensation... and flooded. Thankfully it is possible to buy wellies at Calver crossroads, and through a quirk of fate, the wellies I end up with (£11.99) are the same colour as my little Arcteryx jacket - khaki green. I have a yellow moon t-shirt on and brown patagonia pants. The combined affect of which is that I look like a forest ranger. I am delighted with my new purchase and cannot wait to test them in the swamp beneath the crag. I am not disappointed. Its fully flooded :
But with our wellies we are undeterred and soon dropping stuff off on the island beneath the sissy. I'd come to get on Beluga, but its more than 6" deep beneath caviar and the two pallets we could make a platform out of will not keep a pad dry. Zeke looks drier than it has done, but if Jules is going on the Sissy, and has a sequence, I will probably get more out of going on that. I haven't been on it in about 5 or 6 years, and then I didn't get anywhere, so that sounds like fun.

Checking out the rest of the crag, I am suprised to see that there is water beneath Kudos. I dont remember it ever being this bad before :
Which is bad, but I have some confidence that can still disappear - more worrying is this patch of seepage starting above the press :
But again, if the weather improves, that could dry out without getting too much worse.

Jules puts the clips in the Sissy and shows me the way. I spend an age working out foot sequences and the like and it feels dirty hard. She has a redpoint and looks pretty composed, apparently doing the match move and then slipping off moving right. It comes to my turn and with my new sequence committed to memory I actually look to be in with a chance. The match stops me - it feels so hard, but thankfully Jules notices I am attempting to pull on the rubbish bit of the hold rather than sharing the finger jug. I change my sequence and try again - the match feels ok! I push on to the top but am a bit scared on the final jump. I try this a bit more and whilst the move is ok I'm wimping out - I dont know what it is I expect to happen to me - i'm right next to the bolt! I come down, Jules has another redpoint, making progress - the match is better but she's off again. I'm now also into redpointing territory, but I'm trying with the 4th clipped. You'd always do the route with the third clipped, because you can climb down from there, I wouldnt take the tick with the 4th clipped, because the fourth clip is quite hard and probably adds something. My thinking was that I wanted to have a go at the climbing today and see whether I could do it at all. Anyway, I pull on again. The sequence is further refined and I take all the holds just so. I pass the match with beans to spare and rumble rightwards to set up for the jump. I can feel my arms are a bit pumped, I set up for the pop, pull up, then sag back, pull up sag back - 'Take!'. Gaylord. So basically, i just diddled myself out of climbing it continuously because I was worried about what turns out to be a nice clean fall. I'm quite cross with myself. I do the move, clip the 5th and then strip it back to the 3rd for jules RP.

She gets back to the match but falls, this time with two split tips. We're both getting anihilated and on my next go I feel knackered too. Ah well, its all progress. A familiar face called Sam turns up and has a quick go before we scoot off home - he's into redpointing territory too. On the way home we discuss that you can either train to get so strong that you will never fall off, or you can learn to fall off and get more done. Classic Littlefair wisdom, and I recognise thats why I didn't go for it. I didn't want to run it out when I wasn't 100% I could hold the holds. This is what always stopped me on the Freemonster. The moves felt piss but I would get pumped and stop before I had to try.

Its funny how you can look at a climb and feel complete antipathy, then actually attempt it and not be able to wait to get back there.

The second coming

Another good board session last night. Started at the Foundry as Dylan was running late, then met up with Cheekbones Mason, Dylan and Garry and later on Harry Pennels and strong thin southerner Alex. Nothing of note went down from me anyway, although it was interesting to climb at the Foundry and then move back to the board. Clearly, the level of the problems at the board is much higher than at the wall. It would perhaps be interesting to go to the foundry board and then up there. Strong southern thin man crushed the top of the board green tape problem, most impressively flashing the hard press move I can't do at all, but failing to do the first move I find easy. I kept nearly doing 'our jade' but the footholds changed more often than a route on Peak lime, so I might actually be further than I thought away. Its hard to tell whether i was climbing well or not. The blue project remained beyond me and I felt it was further from reach than Saturday, so perhaps I wasn't.

 

In other board related news, we now have a date for the removal of the boards from the School, however, its not a date I can assist with which is rubbish. Hopefully enough others will be able to help, but I wonder whether they will... Once moved, they wont be going straight back up again, at least not in so far as I understand anyway, which is a shame. But, perhaps although I cant help take them down, I can help resurrect them. I like to see myself not as the dismantler of boards but as their resurrector!

 

I'm hopefully going out tomorrow, but I dont know what the weather thinks its doing. Its foul at the moment, but forecast to be ok tomorrow. Really want to get back to Beluga. Open to other suggestions...

Rainway track

Shane Meadows (he of 'This is england' fame) has a new film out. Its called 'Somers Town', and may well slip under your radar, but you shouldn't let it - Its too good to be missed. Thomas Turgoose is in it again and delivers another excellent performance. That was Friday.

Saturday saw more action on Sheffield's hottest new training facility. There's already a couple of plums ripe for picking, but my ham fisted plum harvesting technique caused them to roll away down the furrow of incompetence.

We should have been away camping this weekend but rain stopped play. Instead, the people that were supposed to be camping came to Sheffield and we went to a pub. I am sick of the rain. I feel a sense of wanting to rush out whenever it stops. Although I've had a fair summer and got out a good bit, I dont feel I've done any sitting out at night, or barbecues or any of that sort of stuff. And its rubbish. I'm ready for winter in one sense - it being cooler, grit etc but I dont feel I've seen the sun this year. Granted, there have been moments, but they feel like they were short and sporadic.

 

Anyway, with minor non-debilitating hang over, she and I set off down Cheedale. We got to the end of the railway track but found the stepping stones submerged, and whilst further progress would have been possible with wellies, we didn't have any so we turned back. As last weekend, as soon as we got to Calver the heavens opened. I made a roast, and that was that.

Board whore

I'm writing this with the lights on and the sound of the rain beating down on the roof outside. Its cold, everything is soaked and even the most hardy of animals will be staying in. The MetOffice have issued a severe weather warning, James Foley is coming over and I expect the purveyors of indoor pursuits will be wealthy this weekend.

Last night, as the sunshine lighting S3 gave way to darkness, 5 bare chested hulks flexed their muscles only feet away from dozens of drug ravaged prostitutes. Neither were aware of the others presence. Both groups ply their trade handling hard wood and both have a predisposition to becoming heavilly dependant on dietary supplementation but remain thin to the point of emaciation.

There's something special about the exclusivity of training on a board, opposed to even the best of boards at a climbing wall. Perhaps its that proportionally there's less traffic at a private facility and holds are cleaner, but more likely its that the base level gets set higher. This was what was so good about the school. Were you to take a representative sample from the general climbing populous, I would expect 2-5% to be able to do any of the warm ups. To a commercial climbing climbing wall, to build such a facility, which 95% of folk couldn't use - would be folly.

Perhaps also, its that board sessions encourage beasts - you get a concentration of psyche in a small area, and this helps everyone to push on. I knew last night was going to be a special session. Through the evening we had Dylan and Garry, Ed Robinson and Keith and even The Dark Knight Ed Brown cycled down on his lightweight track optimised velocipede. I was tired, I ached and I had bad skin, but I was psyched and I tried hard. Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant.

Dangerous Done...

My good friend the very Reverend Father Doyle wrote to me yesterday suggesting that I loved rubicon more than he loved the Mighty Orme, which brought me round to thinking that perhaps rubicon is the orme of the peak. Reviled by most but adored by those that do like it and boasting a wide variety of some of the hardest climbing an area has to offer. There's history, old school ticks, and the areas first 8a. LPT has the countrys first, and Rubicon has the Peaks. Cofe may have written that it should be turned into a laser quest, but I think even he has a soft spot for the place. I do love it, its short, favours the crimp and is only half an hour from home.

Rock Warrior Jon 'M Bison' Fullwood wrote about Rubicon on his excellent but oft neglected blog, eulogising a damp summer but some good ticks and memories. Much has transpired on those white walls and their shattered crimps this year; I finished Tsunami, Variable did his Bigger Belly thing, Andy established barracuda, Jon - Beluga, rebolting, wads flashing 8a's and even the evil Sir egg nearly did a route. Its funny how a crag can grow and wane in popularity, Rubicon should always be popular - bouldering is fashionable, its short - so boulderers can get on well there, its close to the road and theres hard things to do.

Yesterday I finished the Dangerous brothers, and Ed Brown did tribes. Although we were supposed to be going out in the afternoon, the weather in the morning was so nice I couldnt contain myself, and so we changed, which, with hindsight was a mistake. By 10am the sun was on the wall and when it was out it was bloody hot. I really had to struggle where on Saturday, even in superhumidity it felt more feasible. Temps were bon mind - 10/12 degrees in the car, but I reckon more like 18/19 in the sun. Strangely for Ed and I, we both redpointed and were left having to think of new goals to focus ourselves. Certainly, its not like me to get the deed done with time to spare! Went on Beluga, but had post climatic stress disorder and struggled on caviar start. I think in this case it was because I know I need to be fully on it to get anywhere with that one, so post something else was never going to happen. Ed had a great flash attempt on DB, getting to the crimp but then exploding back from that position with a squeal, exclaiming that the move was impossible.

Adam Lincoln and Aaron Deakin arrive and apologise for bringing the rain with them, far from needing to apologise, conditions get loads better, but I have to go and do some work.

So, thats that. I hope to climb tonight with Keith and Dylan at the board, then rest up ready for the weekend. I imagine there might be chance of saturday morning club?