Wednesday 3 November 2010

15th-22nd May - A week in the Lakes

This week I've been in the Lake District with Thom and Chris, staying with my long-suffering godmother in Whitehaven. With only one day of rain, we managed to get a whole lot of climbing done. Not bad considering that Thom and Chris had only trad climbed a couple of times before in the Peak and had never done any multi-pitch.

On the first day we wanted a crag that would give us lots of easy and non-threatening routes which we could split into pitches and practice multi-pitch techniques, so we headed for Shepherd's Crag. We climbed Brown Slabs (Diff), Brown Slabs Arete (Diff), Brown Slabs Direct (VDiff) and the classic of the crag Little Chamonix (VDiff) and aside from a brief trip off route making Thom's first lead a little more exciting than intended, all went smoothly.

With this in mind, we thought we'd head to Wallowbarrow the next day and up the ante slightly, climbing Wall and Corner (VDiff) and Thomas (Severe). A lovely crag with a great outlook and much quieter than yesterday!

The following day with a great forecast, we fancied hitting a mountain crag and decided to head to Dow Crag. Unfortunately the weather wasn't quite as nice as we had hoped and we ended up bailing after the first pitch of Murray's Route (Severe) in the rain before heading up a slightly damp Giant's Crawl (Diff) and taking a wander round onto Coniston Old Man. We got a stunning sunset though, so no complaints here about the route change!

After easy climbing for the first few days, we were keen to push the grade a little, and headed to Hare Crag - a small granite outcrop in Eskdale. We started off soloing slab routes in hot sunshine, climbing The Rib (Diff), Easy Slab (VDiff), Birch Tree Groove (VDiff), Pleasant Slab (Severe), Plaque Route (VS4a), Celebration (VS4b) and Hirsute Slab (HVS4c). Thom was keen to get on a lead of something a bit harder and headed up the excellently named (and good value at the grade!) Fireball XL5 (MVS4b), and we put a top-rope up on The Brazilian (HVS5a) and The Groove (E15b) just next to it. Chris finished up with a lead of Jugged Hare (HS4b) which turned out to be a nice slab route again to finish the day.

My godmother Judy had the following day off work, so we all went for a wander around Ennerdale and then to the wall in Keswick where she got her first taste of climbing and Chris & Thom played on the steepest bits they could find.

Whilst Chris headed home and with rain on the cards, Thom and I spent the 20th on a ghyll scramble on the upper Esk. This gets grade 2 in the guidebook, but we suspect that this may be for lower water levels as it was quite tricky in places!

On the 21st we met up with Guy at Raven Crag and climbed The Original Route (Severe 4a), Mendes (VS4c) and Bilberry Buttress (VS4c) before heading to the Mountain Festival to see Andy Cave speak.

On the last day we decided to head full circle and pick off another couple of routes we fancied at Shepherd's Crag - Jackdaw Ridge (Diff) and Donkey's Ears (Severe 4a) which has a brilliant hand traverse and a really noisy nest of birds in the back of a deep crack which nearly made me fall off said hand traverse! Then it was back to the Mountain Festival to see Andy Kirkpatrick talk (hilarious, seriously can't recommend him enough) before the long drive back north.

A great week, good company, some quality routes and loads of sunshine. Win!

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