Thursday 10th July
So there I was on the phone with Peri, she said "it's the best day of the week let's go outside"…
A friend of hers was working in Rotherham so the initial plan was to head to the Peak district. We started driving down to Sheffield and ran into a few rain showers on the way. As Peri had not driven through the centre of Sheffield for a while I navigated us onto Ringinglow Road and we followed this all the way to Stanage popular end. We started walking up discussing what climbs we wanted to lead April crack, Christmas crack, Hargreaves Original route, Gargoyle buttress…..
So we arrived at the Black Hawk area and I started up Back Hawk traverse left , I took the right most higher crack to make it more interesting. Near the top I started to place a medium size hex but then decide to use a cam instead but as I was looking at what was on my harness the hex slipped and went 12-16 inches down the crack. I couldn't get it back out so I left it for Peri to have a try with her smaller hands. She could not get the hex out and we had to leave it, what we needed was a 2 foot long stick or possibly a very long nut key. As I sat at the top of the climb I could look out to the cement works and watch the rain showers slowly moving towards us, luckily they veered away and we did not get wet.
We walked around back to the bottom of the climbs and Peri wanted to lead Black Hawk Hell crack. We had a look at the approaching weather and decide to wait a few minutes to see what would happen. We had both put on our windproof/waterproof jackets. Peri decided to set off and start leading with a few sprinkles of rain falling. As she got about a third of the way up, to where she needed to rely on some friction moves, the heavens started to slowly open up, she decide to move right onto Black Hawk traverse right and once she had moved up past the off width section she was dry under the capping stone, she moved back left and finished the route. When it came time for me to second it, the water was running down the rock and the green areas were getting very slippery. Any way I made it up safely and as usual as we got back to our rucksacks the rain stopped but everything was dripping so it was end of climbing for today.
So in two day I have more than doubled the number of outdoor trad routes I have led this year, I am now awaiting tomorrows call where Peri will say "it's the best day of the week let's go outside"….. now I wonder what that will bring !!!