The first set of decent rocks we came across were pretty impressive and one high wall in particular was looking really awesome. As has become almost routine for us on these reccies now, a great quality problem unravelled:
^Lee on the start - A burly snatch with the Left hand from here and you're into the stand-up
^ Crux slap for the top. Fast move and very droppable! (or so it was for us anyway!)
Philias Fogg as Lee's coined it (it was misty and foggy when we first turned up) was the best thing we found that day and definitely one of the best problems we've found on the moors so far. It might well have been climbed before - there were some potential signs of wear but perhaps the sit start hasn't been done? Either way, it was great to find it and climb it. I was trying to think of better wall climbing problems that I'd done before anywhere at around the same grade. To be honest I'm still struggling to come up with anything! Every move is good and hard. We reckoned font7a+ from sitting (though neither of us actually linked the sitter before moving on - loooking forward to going back for this) and about 6c+ from standing. There's potential for another harder line/s just left too..... will check it out next visit.
We moved on to the main section of crag. There's a nice aesthetic boulder down the slope from the crag which had some nice lines. It reminded me of Curbar's Trackside boulder, complete with a strawberries look-a-like. After knocking off the easyish and obvious stuff, Lee turned on his vision goggles and came up with a good eliminate problem making the most of the fine arete of this boulder. Essentially climbing the arete from a sit start with hands only pinching the arete/ using holds on the arete. Not into rules on problems (away from the likes of stoney, tor, etc. which I really dig) but this problem gains some really nice movement having imposed the rule and does make the most of a great feature. It also goes from being easy, though still nice, jug yarding to an involved, tenuous and fairly desperate sequence of moves. Again, need to go back and complete the full link on this one! Tricky to grade but it's in the low sevens again somewhere....
Did a few other things around and about including a couple of the HVS routes on the main crag which were pleasant enough. Probably the best other thing we did though was this little bit of knee bar madness Lee found:
^ Lee topping the inspirationally named 'Knee Deep'So, only one problem of Real Quality found but for me that makes it totally worthwhile and all in all yet another cracking day out on the Moors.
Yesterday, a dodgey forecast suggested (as chance would have it) that the Moors offered the best hope of some dry and clement. So, out with Tony H, we headed to Scugdale and met up with York Legend (as I understand) Guido. Nice chilled day, soloing along the crag as you do there, not really stopping until your feet start to hurt. Felt good to get lots of movement in on rock, free from elbow pain. I hadn't climbed on this end (northern part - think it's Barker's crags?) for a few years but I've always enjoyed climbing there - it's hard not to really. Picked up a few new ticks, the best of which was probably Serpent. Took a few exploratory looks and escapes (you can step off onto a boulder behind from the crux) before eventually committing and doing it - by which time the other two were a few butresses ahead. Pretty knackered once we'd worked back to the stone wall, called time and headed off, just beating the rain.
Heading back up to the Moors exploring with Lee tomorrow, hopefully we'll enjoy the same successful routine, finding some quality stuff once again. At the risk of getting greedy, it would be great to find more than one awesome thing in the same vicinity!
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