Posts Tagged ‘monsoon’

Barbecue Summer

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Scugdale in the rainIt was raining when we optimistically left Wetherby, and was still raining when we rather less optimistically arrived at Scugdale. After 10 minutes sitting in the car, Davids Kay and Dickinson arrived. Everyone else was either on holiday or had chosen not to ignore the weather forecast.

It stopped raining so we dashed to the crag and looked for something to climb.

A strong westerly wind meant that it was all surprisingly dry, apart from the north-facing buttresses, which were not-so-surprisingly green and slimy. We picked one of the few remaining sub-VS routes that I'd not done before: Hybrid, which starts up one route, makes an exposed traverse round the corner on surprising holds, and finishes up another route. It was raining lightly by the time I got to the top, and raining a little less lightly by the time Carmen joined me.

When we reached the bottom again, the rain was bouncing off the ground. Carmen briefly considered a deep water solo of Razor Rib, but a tsunami warning had just been issued so we swam back down the hill to the car and sailed home.

Routes climbed:
Hybrid (HS 4b)
Blaeberry Buttress
Blaeberry Buttress Direct
Blaeberry Crack
er, that's it.

Wet Rock

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

…A title clearly needed to follow on from Classic Rock, Hard Rock etc.

Trying to outwit the rain had worked pretty successfully so far this week, with our expedition to Brimham on wednesday and Stu's sport climbing extravaganza on saturday, but today (sunday) it broke down. Forecast said much the same as saturday (light showers on and off) so me, clare, debra H and Rob trotted off down the york wall where Debra got some leads in, Clare floated up everything with no apparent effort, Rob scampered up 6cs and much fun was had at my expense as I attempted to use the clip drop technique to desensitise my completely out of proportion fear of falling on bolts. As the day went on we kept nipping outside to check the weather, the predicted rain had failed to appear and it was in fact a warm spring day. Eventually I begged and pleaded to be allowed to divert to Brimham, we all reconvened back at Debras, checked the rainfall radar and calculated (ok, I calculated) that the approaching rain band would have passed when we arrived, so off we set. Ominously, as we got closer, the clouds appeared to be moving in the opposite direction to the expected one, but I had faith. We found a route for Debra to lead, and off she set- just in time for the raindrops to start. Debra succesfully finished her route in pouring rain, Rob decided his planned ascent of Lancet Crack was no longer a goer and we fled back to the car in a tropical downpour. Arrived back home in time to find a mail from Debra headed" what we didnt see on the radar" and a link to the updated radar showing the thundrously dark storm following hot on the heels of the innocuous rain band we had seen first.