Pennine Lines w/c 15 July 2024
So in the short term you have to just go with the flow of the dull grey damp days, mix things up with a trip away if you can, and take the little wins when they arrive if you can’t. For a start, the bilberries are out; salvation arriving in the form of tiny droplets of dark sweetness. And where you can’t win, you can always double down on the grimness - the crimpy sharp greasy limestone. Fight fire with fire. If you don’t experience it in terrible conditions then you can’t really appreciate the good days when things cool off. I sometimes think it’s possible to actually climb better in poor conditions anyway, as the weight of expectation is lifted. Or failing that, just count the days till you’re next sat outside a French gite, baking in the sun, like Jerry, semi-ironically serenading the dull British weather. The cycle continues…..
Pennine Lines w/c 8 July 2024
I’m not big on these challenge sort of things in climbing or the outdoors in general, but the great thing about doing the Stanage VSs is it occupies a niche where it’s too hard for casual outdoors folk, no big-mountain appeal, but not fashionable enough to garner any social media traction. Very Severe is not, and never has been, a sexy grade. It’s a grade from back when people climbed in nailed boots with their mum’s washing line tied around their waist. You’ll not find it perennially cropping up in lazily-thrown-together climbing mag “Top 5 British Scrambles / Mountain Ridges / Multipitch Adventures [delete as applicable]” filler articles. The benefit of this is you’re not likely to get stuck behind a group of Royal Marines dragging a grand piano up the routes for charity, neither are you going to find yourself inadvertently stumbling into some fancy-dress clickbait climbing YouTube video by mistake either.
Pennine Lines w/c 24 June 2024
If you’ve ever been stood there belaying your mate on a very slow lead at the end of a day with your hood up, trousers tucked into your socks and hood pulled tight to just a single eye-sized hole then you will be familiar with this feeling of panic and impending doom. I know Scotland makes a claim for having the worst midges but I think pound-for-pound the Peak midges could hold their own against any biting insects globally, at least topping their group comfortably and could easily cause a few upsets in the knockout stage.
Pennine Lines w/c 17 June 2024
For the Climbing Photography groups in particular we were blessed with two really engaged workshop groups, representing a wide range of experience levels; from people who’d started climbing in the 1980s to people who’ve started just this year. Outdoor climbing lifers to those just taking their first steps outdoors after learning the ropes indoors. The same goes for the photography side - some participants had been at it for years but just ticking over as snapshooters, some had success in other genres but now looking to bring it to climbing, and others were just learning their craft for the first time.
Pennine Lines w/c 10 June 2024
Whilst wandering around these deserted crags last week, trying desperately to not allow any fronds of bracken to touch my trousers lest I be covered in ticks, I was reminded what a friend had once said about certain grit problems; that the best ones wouldn’t look out of place dropped onto a plinth in the lobby of a big fancy hotel as pieces of art. Now I don’t know art, but I know what I like, and I like this theory. What nature lacks in artistic intent it makes up for with fortuitous random chaos, helped along by thousands of years of wind and rain. Good things take time to make, nature has played the long game here, making any human art project seem trivial in comparison. The Lanny Bassham block beats half a cow in formaldehyde any day.
Pennine Lines w/c 3 June 2024
Local Guy pulled on and summarily despatched both the long and short versions of Exorcist with apparently remarkable ease, climbed absolutely perfectly with a precision and fluidity that left a lasting impression. If you’ve ever been in Font and experienced an anonymous Bleausard turning up and casually climbing something desperate-looking while you thrash around like a punter, well this was basically that, except he had a Pod pat and a bar towel instead of a pof rag and one of those weird French triple-fold pads, and these were 8as not some gnarly red problems. I didn’t even have chance to grab a photo, just a quick “good effort mate” had to do, and with that Local Guy was off from whence he came, leaving me to puzzle why I didn’t have the hip flexibility to rock over properly in the fading dusk light. I drove home not thinking about the content of the training course, but about just how well Local Guy had climbed those problems.
Pennine Lines w/c 27 May 2024
Why am I plugging this, you may well ask? Well yours truly here will be running climbing photography workshops throughout the day. We’ll look at some technical skills, thought processes and problem solving, lighting and composition, with plenty of hands-on shooting too. If you’ve got an interest in photography but never really managed to make it ‘click’ (pun intended) with climbing, or you’re new to climbing and naturally want to take nice photos of climbing, or just want to raise your climbing photography game a little, this this is for you. Spaces for each session are limited - no passengers - so don’t forget to book. I’ll also have some signed copies of Grit Blocs on sale on the day too, so get involved.
Pennine Lines w/c 20 May 2024
It’s jarring to hear Honnold’s name bandied around at Rubicon especially. You or I would not expect the arching walls of finger-wrecking crimps and glazed footholds, all held in place with industrial epoxies, to really be up Honn Solo’s straße, but soloing speaks to everyone at an elemental level so all such contextual considerations of genre go out of the window. Or maybe the passing walkers are much more knowledgeable on Peak climbing trivia than I give them credit for and are in fact referencing Quentin Fisher’s famous attempts to solo Caviar back in the day? I guess we’ll never know. One thing is clear though; soloing is a great leveller and captures the imagination of climbers and non-climbers in a similar sort of way.
Pennine Lines w/c 13 May 2024
The short-lived aurora craze does provide a neat segue into a short paragraph about Great Roova up at the north end of the Yorkshire gritstone area. This is the home of the problem Aurora, as featured in Grit Blocs, a book that I wrote and may have mentioned once or twice before. As I am always keen to point out Grit Blocs makes no claim to list the 100 best problems, rather than 100 of the best problems, a rather woolier definition. This is no accident, because it can be leveraged to showcase a few out-of-the-way crags as much as for the problems themselves. Certain crags, certain venues, are more about this-hold-then-this-hold-then-this-hold-then-top. It’s about going somewhere new, putting the extra effort in, and dare I say it, forgetting about the grades and just letting the rock dictate the experience. You’ll note it’s not called Reasonable Roova, or Above Average Roova. Aurora is a great problem worthy of the long walk-in, but having a memorable warm breezy afternoon up at Great Roova, just moving on rock, exploring a bit and getting away from the same old crags is what it’s about really.
Pennine Lines w/c 6 May 2024
I’m sure much will be written about Shauna Coxsey’s ascent of The Boss in due course, but for the minute I’ll just point out that I know Shauna had already climbed Font 8b+ as long ago as ten years since, so it’s easy to forget that the ascent pushes the rarefied heights of female gritstone standards forward several grades. Even if by some clerical error The Boss went into a guide at Font 8a+ instead of 8b+ it’d still be the hardest female ascent on gritstone (if anyone knows of any harder-than-8a female ascents on grit let me know). Such leaps are very uncommon, if not unheard of, as climbing and training for climbing matures and the talent pool expands. It may be that the sit-start to Voyager might well turn out to be 8c after holds have broken - who knows - but since there’s nothing currently harder on grit (at least on paper) it puts the top end of female ascents right up there at the top of male grit standards, and I’m not sure that’s ever been the case before, certainly not in living memory.
Pennine Lines w/c 29 april 2024
Being asked for your favourites is actually a tough choice, because there’s just so much good stuff out there on grit. It’s not like being asked for, say, your favourite Bond films. That’s easy because there’s only twenty five official options, and realistically only half a dozen credible answers, not least because you can disregard all the Roger Moor outings and that final Pierce Brosnan one with the invisible car that everyone hates without a second thought. Basically everyone is going to answer Casino Royale, easy. But gritstone is more expansive than the Bond universe. It’s a bewildering complex and interconnected web of characters, themes, styles, history and mythology. So being asked to pick favourite grit problems is actually like being asked what your favourite Wu-Tang Clan (or Wu-affiliated) albums are.
Pennine Lines w/c 22 april 2024
Cool grit conditions are still around for bouldering, it’s comfortable enough for trad, and even after a dreadful winter the Peak limestone is starting to dry up again, slowly but surely. Humidity is rock bottom, the sun burns through with remarkable heat and clarity, casting cool shadows, overnight temps are still low, the the days are long enough. People are out clipping bolts, placing gear, the flowers and wild garlic are out in the limestone dales, the birds are singing, and you can stride confidently off-piste at grit crags not yet blighted by smothering tick-infested bracken. Disposable BBQ silly season hasn’t yet arrived, and you can finish your evening session sat atop a gritstone edge, unlace your rock shoes with tired fingers and watch the sun’s disc ebb away behind the horizon without fear of being eaten alive by midges. Good times.
Pennine Lines w/c 15 april 2024
There’s a saying in climbing, attributed to the late Alex Lowe, that the best climber in the world is the one having the most fun. Not to be misconstrued to mean that, at present, Adam Ondra has more fun than the rest of us (could actually be true to be fair…), it sort of distils into a soundbite the idea that the whole point of this bizarre past-time / sport / existential quest [delete as applicable] is to enjoy what you’re doing. Similarly, since the point of being a climber is to go climbing, to climb ideally as much and as often as you can manage, the best crag in the world is the one only ten minutes away.
Pennine Lines w/c 8 april 2024
Now of course pads are the norm and guidebooks/grades have caught up, so heel-hooks don’t really make headlines these days; even Will Bosi’s live-streamed dalliance with a heel on Burden Of Dreams barely made a ripple. Limited heel-hook skirmishes are still being fought by hardliners on certain problems of course, typically ones that straddled the eras. It’s given rise to phenomena of “crap classics”, like The Green Traverse at Stanage for example. Basically there’s a few old problems out there who’s status - and often grade - is derived from the way they were always climbed in the pre-heel pre-pads days, but aren’t actually that good or even make that much sense when done the easiest way with heels, and it makes little financial sense for any guidebook writer to deprive 1000s of Londoners of their only 7a tick. The Green Traverse, (ignoring the lowball Full Green start) is a lovely flowing set of moves where good clean footwork is essential to keep pressure on the marginal footholds all the way, but if you heel-hook it’s just a sort of awkward inelegant drape. Easiest isn’t necessarily better. Once you’ve done it the old school way you won’t go back. Hand on heart, it’s a nicer sequence without, trust me.
Pennine Lines w/c 1 april 2024
I’m happy to avoid busy places like the plague; it’s quite simply not what I got into climbing for. I stumbled into a busy bookshop in a very rainy Alnwick today and it was so packed I turned around and stood outside in the rain instead, so the thought of turning up to a rammed Isatis or Cuvier makes my stomach turn. In fact it was only by accident I ended up in Llanberis Pass this weekend (long story…) - thankfully to find a good climbing scene despite the constant traffic chaos. But it’s easy for me to say “just don’t go there” having already been to some of these places decades ago. If you’re new to climbing and you’ve read all the guides and the articles and seen all the videos then naturally you’re going to want to go to Sabots, to Raven Tor, or Stanage Plantation, and Easter weekend is the only time you can your mates have got the time off work to go, then that’s when you’re going to have to go.
Pennine Lines w/c 25 March 2024
The other thing I have to get used to recognising at this time of year is the Pennine Lines birthday, being exactly one year since I launched this whole thing. So firstly a huge thanks to everyone who’s signed up for the weekly email and supported this, everyone who’s bought prints, or ordered Grit Blocs, or just mentioned at the crag that they liked something I’d written or messaged me to that effect. It means a lot to me, and as long as people are supporting this I’ll keep doing it - as anyone who’s climbed with me on Remergence buttress will testify I am nothing if not consistent.
Pennine Lines w/c 18 March 2024
Gorple in particular is somewhere that I don’t really have a specific reason to go back to, other than it just having a lovely feel about it, and I suppose that’s enough. Not everything in climbing needs to be project oriented, it’s good to put some time aside for the experience. Wild yet domesticated, a long but easy walk, quiet but with a reservoir and a huge shooting cabin right in front of the crag, Gorple is one of those greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts places. It also challenges the often-cited Yorkshire grit stereotype of everything being basic on positive holds, a cliche I think that if it does hold true then its only really applicable to the Wharfedale band of grit (Earl, Ilkey, Caley etc). That wisdom is certainly flipped on its head around the Widdop area, with the grit up at the likes of Gorple, Scout Hut and Clattering Stones really being that archetypal moorland grit with more rounded shapes. The Grit Blocs pick from these parts, Chabal, typifies the weird full-bodied sloper wrestling but there’s plenty more where this came from across the grade spread.
Pennine Lines w/c 11 March 2024
You might expect that, mirroring the recent vinyl boom, print guides might be on for a comeback? As climbing is reaching commercial maturity there are no shortage of brands keen to flog you all manner of high-margin must-haves in an increasingly crowded market; bluetooth recruitment gauges, capybara-hair brushes, anatomical leggings, any number of Japanese artisan chalk formulations blessed by a Shinto priest (absolutely not all from the same quarry in China), even plant-based performance beverages - thankfully consigning those meat-based energy drinks like Bovril Sport to the history books. But yet brands notably aren’t falling over each other to produce beautifully designed, lovingly and painstakingly researched grassroots definitive guidebooks.
Pennine Lines w/c 4 March 2024
One of the things that’s always drawn me to photography, specifically British landscape photography, is the alchemy of creating something out of apparently nothing. Or to put it another way, how it’s possible to craft a composition which allows you to find some sort of beauty out of a scene or location that you might otherwise walk right past without giving it another thought. Any idiot can take a passable photo of an epic location in amazing light, but the greater challenge is in creating order within the frame from the chaos of the world around us, to allow it to be understood and appreciated.
Pennine Lines w/c 26 February 2024
Because of course if there’s a problem with sunrises it’s that they aren’t very user friendly. This is not like getting your kicks from on-demand streaming, there’s not an app to hook you up with a willing local sunrise any time of day or night. They’re too early most of the year, and when they’re not that early they’re freezing cold and hence in direct competition with a warm bed. Putting a thick quilt on a comfy bed is like taking voluntary redundancy from winter sunrise photography. Gotta sleep shivering under a thin sheet with an achingly full bladder really to force yourself to get up. Monumental levels of motivation are often required. Not all heroes wear capes etc.