climbing is weird
by uzwi
I told R we were doing so well I was thinking of trying to find a way back into writing about it. I forgot that with climbing you don’t need to do that. You only have to wait. We went to Froggatt. Sunday morning, around ten. A fine drizzle in drifting patches, with proper rain forecast, had kept the car parks empty. We found the crag empty too. Soon, people would start driving over from Stanage, which was piss wet through. For now everything was eerily silent and belonged to us. Not an experience you expect in the Peak District in June. The rock was bone dry, with lots of friction; we’d gone to do really easy routes but after an early success, got tempted by Sunset Crack. R floated up; while my memories of the 1985/95 decade, when routes like that were still a soft touch, earned me the quiet, careful slap I deserved: I stayed aboard but only just. I felt every year of my age. Gritstone is always in charge, even in the lower grades. Gritstone decides what you’ll feel, what kind of fun you’ll have, what kind of lesson comes along with it. That’s why some like it & some don’t. When we got down we found, on the warm shelf of rock under the start, this tiny dead thing.
Apart from being dead it was still in perfect condition. It was laid out with two foxglove bells, something yellow & a couple of bits of greenery (which R moved to take the picture). Had it been there all along? Or had it been put there while we climbed? Neither, or even both, was his opinion. Some kind of different physics was in operation. I’m not quarrelling with that because he’s the physicist. On the way back we went to Brookside Buttress–which, unfrequented and unpolished, with turf still growing on the easy way down, sitting in a mossy gully next to its own little water feature, is the perfect Gothic crag–and did a route neither of us had ever been on. What more can you ask?
photo: Richard AL Jones
the m john harrison blog 
that’s lovely! 🙂
Thanks, 3beeches.
Very pleased to hear you’re out climbing again. I went for my first outdoor bouldering experience at Stanage a few weeks back; they don’t lie, it’s really very different to climbing indoors. PhD woes mean I probably won’t get out there much again this year — no car, no pads, no friends with cars or pads — but next year, who knows? I’ve certainly got the hunger for it… though I think I’d prefer to stick with the physics I’m familiar with, at least for now.
Haven’t climbed for too long. I could feel that in my fingertips.
Hi rukemp. I certainly felt it in mine: Brookside is quite sandpapery.
Paul: Stanage still my favourite spot in the universe. Do you do any roped climbing (inside or out)?
Nah, never tried the roped stuff — doesn’t really call me in the same way, somehow. I don’t actually like heights that much… and all the paraphernalia, and the logistics, and the needing to know and trust in people with cars and ropes and time off at the same time as you, have also conspired to keep me to bouldering. I’d surely like to try roped stuff some day… but it’ll be a day when I’m long done with this &^%$ing PhD thesis, and not before. 🙂
Ah yes, the socio-economic landscape of climbing. Changed hugely in the 60s & &0s, now it’s changing again I guess. I did a lot of indoor when I lived in London–lived literally five minutes away from the Mile End Wall for a bit. But I’ve always preferred to be outside. Best of luck with the PhD!