Will, Clare and me ignored the lowering dark clouds and york races gridlock on tuesday evening to head up to Scugdale.
Once suitably DEETed up against the ravening midges we headed up to Barkers Crags and bloddering mats were deployed into battle position. It was a little hard to find our way between buttresses underneath the Jurassic bracken, but two buttresses were visited and much fun was had. Barkers Crags get less traffic than Scot Crags and as a result we found the grades a little more unpredictable, and for some strange reason a rule of thumb seemed to be that the V Diffs felt harder than the severes. The landings were also quite a lot less reassuring than Scot Crags – less flat turf, more pointy rocky bits. In particular the top out on Pedestal Wall felt quite hairy for a V Diff – at 7 metres you really dont want to be doing unprotected mantleshelfs.
Clare giving it some elegant layback action
Will had been there before and took great delight in pointing out problems which he already had wired – I spent some time scratching my head over the initial moves on Breakout (VS 4b). Will then gave a masterclass in his new technique, the Undyno, which consists of repeatedly and dramaticly failing to latch the key hold on an overhang (see pic below).
Will demonstrating the Undyno
The light all evening was dramatic. A parting between two layers of clouds was spotlighting the hills and vale of york with a golden glow as we arrived, and as the light faded the effect grew progressively more molten. Every so often a top out would be followed by an exclamation about the spectacular sunset.
Finally it was undeniably dark and we headed downhill, speculating about whether Simon and carmen were still climbing – little did we know the crafty devils had skived off for the evening and were sitting at home sipping wine.