Snowballing - Katy Whittaker

Well so far January and February have been pretty rubbish, mainly due to my lack of climbing and the horrible weather. Just as you finally think the grit is drying out it rains or snows! Booo!

I haven’t been out much because I have had loads of uni work, possibly climbing once or twice a week indoors and if I am lucky once outside, but it hasn’t all been doom and gloom we have had about 6/7 totally perfect grit days in the last month or so, and I managed to get out for a few of them-hurray! There is so much stuff I want to do in the Peak it is hard to decide where to go when you get a perfect day.

The first day of the good weather we ended up at Burbage North. This was shortly after we had had all that snow and the peak was totally unclimbable, well anyway all the rock had dried out but there was still a good few feet of snow underneath a lot of the crags. We started off at Three Blind Mice, the usual starting hand hold was the starting foot hold due to the amount of snow underneath. So we got this ticked (along with the rest of the people from Sheffield.) which felt fine when the ground was a few feet higher, it would be nice to go back and do it now all the snow has gone. Then we moved on to try a project on the slab to the left of Three Blind Mice. It involved a very balancy first move to some slopers, a slap to another set of slopers then a big rock over. I couldn’t do the latter but a few others got it ticked including Dan, Pete and Ryan.

Photos by: Si Wilson

Next we moved onto the curving fin/arete further right called Ai no corrid (pictured above.), the snow flattened the landing out turning it into a cool highball. The last move felt was quite precarious am I’m glad I didn’t barn door! A few went over to try superstition and got fairly close, then it went dark. So I went to the Works to do the comp and try and win some money on the women’s £125 money problem (however many get up get the total amount spilt between them.), think I got about 40 quid, not bad for doing one boulder problem.

Next day I went to plantation along with the hords of others. Silk was in a similar situation to Three Blind Mice, where you could step onto the first hand hold off the snow. It was good though because I could try the top slab as a boulder problem instead of it being a highball. I spent along time trying to work out the best way of doing it, in the end I did a really high step up. Again would be nice to go back now the snow has gone and get the full tick, its such a good route. 

Then we moved round the corner to Weather Report, the snow had slightly raised the landing but somebody had dug out a platform so it was a nice flat landing instead of the usually steep sloping hill that awaits. I flashed it which was cool and although the snow made it a lot safer it still felt a bit scary at the top. Then I spilt at tip over by Shine On, I was totally knackered anyway by this point so I just called it a day.

Third day of beautifulness and I did nothing. Went to Gardoms (for some reason) and got shut down so sacked it to the pub.

Went to Caley at the weekend which was awesome, not climbed there properly before, didn’t do much I spent most of the day falling off  The Secret Seventh and Blockbuster, but I did Ben’s Groove standing, and slapped the last sloper a few times on Secret Seventh. Blockbuster totally beat me though, its nails. I need bigger guns I think!

Katy