When climbing holidays don’t go to plan: Anna Taylor blogs
The back end of summer was a wet one. feeling the frustration of UK climbers up and down the country – we feel your pain! It’s not just us punters who get let down by the weather, it affects the pros too. Anna writes her second installation of her summer diary, spent in France and then back home to some familiar gritstone.
Anna’s Summer ’19 climbing diary part two:
Fontainebleau
We’d planned a trip to Europe for the end of August, the idea being that we would head to Fontainebleau for a couple of days before heading to Chamonix or northern Spain for some big multi-pitch adventures. Unfortunately, this just wasn’t to be. While the weather in Font was beautiful, it was deteriorating fast everywhere else, and it really wasn’t worth the fuel to travel to Chamonix or Spain.
The bad luck seemed to continue, as I picked up a cold virus and felt rubbish most of the time, despite the warm temperatures. Three days in, Ben accidentally sliced the end of his finger open with our cooking knife. After a morning of me having to drive frantically to the nearest supermarket (I’d never driven on the other side of the road before) and purchase a large amount of first aid supplies, I patched him up, but it was clear that I was going to be the only one climbing for the remainder of our trip.
Deciding to stick it out for a few more days, I tried to get into the Font bouldering style. It was weird, sometimes flashing 7a felt fine, but sometimes 6b’s felt impossible after half an hour of trying. I did some cool problems, including the infamous La Marie Rose, the super hard and slippy 6a, which was even harder and slippier in the boiling sun.
We returned early from Europe, pretty disappointed that the weather had turned on us, but we had a nice couple of days in North Wales on the way home to compensate, while we planned what we wanted to do next.
The beginning of the Grit season
Now in the early days of Autumn, summer is beginning to fade away as we head towards the winter months.
I’m going to be away all November on an expedition to South America, but until then, I’ve got one thing on my mind, Gritstone!
Ben and I kicked off the season with a couple of slab climbs at the Roaches on the 3rd of September. We started off with the classic Track Of The Cat, on the Roaches Skyline. I’d never been up there before but i’m certainly glad I went, as the clean cut slabs of flawless gritstone were a perfect way to reacquaint with the bold and friction based climbing style.
Track Of The Cat is an E5 that climbs a faint groove, then traverses onto a slab, which is easy up until a big slot where you can stuff a large cam to protect yourself on the scary top section.
After the slot there’s a couple of smeary moves, then a big lunge up to a juggy break just below the top. I didn’t like the look of the starting groove, as it looked a bit green, so opted for a direct (and way more fun) start, by throwing my heel by my head and rocking over onto the slab. I’m sure it’s been done many times before as it’s not particularly hard, but it certainly makes me wonder why on earth the route starts on the left when the direct is so obvious!
After Track Of The Cat, Ben and I walked out to the Nth Cloud, where we’d heard about a cool E6 called Judge Dread. I onsighted it on a top-rope, and found it thin and bold, but also right up my street. There was just enough gear for me to not feel that scared, so I was quickly on the sharp end, and found myself really enjoying the precise and crimpy moves on the top section of the route. I should probably have tried to flash this one, but have made a rule with myself to not onsight or flash any potentially dangerous grit routes until after November, as I think those are the one’s i’d most likely end up injured on. The rain followed Ben after his lead so we quickly bailed and headed for a supermarket cafe for lunch and coffee.
As the weather has been more than unpredictable this year, I’m going to concentrate on grit for now. I didn’t get as much done in the Lakes as I’d wanted to this summer, as everyone else by the looks of it, but I checked out a few routes for when it gets warm again. Until then, there’s plenty of hard stuff on the smaller crags to concentrate on. We did have a sneaky look at a slightly harder route when we were at the Roaches, so if all goes well, there will hopefully be more on that soon!
Exciting times ahead in South America, catch you on the other side.
Anna
