^serpent crux
^awesome prow
And in more recent news, myself and Lee had an epic 10 hour+ day of hiking across and around the eastern slopes of Billsdale, starting from Clay bank car park and questing as far as tripsdale last saturday. The power trudge was punctuated with some bouldering and once again, we found some good stuff. We checked out an awful lot of rock so I'll just give highlights. The first worthwhile looking thing we found was a nicely featured steep little wall, almost certainly unclimbed. We both struggled to warm up on the problems and struggled to get them clean and dry too. However, Lee did better than me and bagged up earthworm jim:
Next worthwhile stop was familiar territory for me- Earthworks rocks. Lee spotted a good line with nice holds just left of the Arch. From a sit start, this problem clims really nicely. Some of my favourite type of movement. I pulled on, left up, right up then, with lots of momentum, power glide to a good pocket/hole. Satisfying. Called it 'holeshot', though possibly climbed before. Not difficult but not easy either, I reckon about 6B+ is fair:
Onto the next area and it proved to be the find of the day. On the far left hand end of Tranmire we spotted an appropiately angled (steepish) and appropiately high arete line. Once we started working the moves the quality became apparant - it was better and harder than I'd guessed, nice. I managed a link from one move in but was finding the first move from the sitter totally despo. Lee was making good progress with the sitter move and before long latched it. What happened next was quite something! Crush mode was truely engaged and Lee climbed one of the best I've ever seen him go, awesome. Hit every hold and body position spot on, no adjustments required. Unfortunately he was robbed of the send due to an unlucky foot pop (had plenty in the tank) as he went for the final jump/throw to the sloping apex of the arete. Unfortunately the camera wasn't rolling for this effort, a shame as it was great to watch. Skin, stamina and thoughts of further discoveries to come meant we moved on with the full sit still to go (Again!) but having done the stand version we named it anyway '42' and reckon it'll go at 7a+ or so from sitting. Got some video of this and the next problem which I'll whack on the bottom of this post once Vimeo eventually sorts its act out. Unfortunately the video doesn't really do justice to this problem - it looks a lot better in the flesh. However, I think you can get a good impression of the moves. Just down the slope from 42, Lee had cleaned up a cool triangular steep face. Cue a mighty flash of 'Pythagorianism':
Nice problem with a good tough pull off the deck.
Along the length of Tranmire and into some blair witch type woods, we were starting to lose it. Lots more rock and some crazy angles but none of it much use. Emerging from the woods thank god and back up on the moor, yet more rock but still nothing of interest. Some truely spectacular views, a bee sting and a very remote feeling section of moor later and we arrived and descended into Tripsdale, a stunning narrow and deep dale with a nice river too. We left middle head crag for another day (it's miles away from anywhere far as I can tell) and trundled down to the now visible Kay Nest crag. I'd seen photos of the giant free standing boulder there before but was still impressed by the size of it up close and personal. I knocked off most of the obvious lines on it which were nice though they just climb like routes really. And that was about it, wasn't much impressed by the rest of the crag. So we started back for Clay bank and eventually got there, totally knackered , just around dusk.
Yet another great day, once again finding a class problem which still awaits polishing off. Have been out again today but that's for part II.
As threatened:
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