York Alpine Club Blog

Peri's mission to visit Almscliff proved a big success on Saturday. Five climbers attended all with various targets to be dealt with.

Earlybirds Peri and Crofty made the first assault leaving York at 9.30 (OK, not so earlybirds). Arriving a lot later at the cliff, due to stops for provisions, routefinding errors (don't ask), tractors, horses and Uncle Tom Cobbledy etc.

Peri made a start with a gentle warm up on Pinnacle Flake Climb, before running over to her project, the Crack of Dooooom. Well with a minimum of faffing at the start and a well executed reversal from the crux for a good bridging rest below, she finally ticked it. Well done Peri.

Peri atop Crack of Doom and very happy.

I now had to make a decision whether to try Constipation Crack or Eastern Exit, these being the last VS 5a climbs for me to do at Almscliff. Having looked at Constipation Crack from the ground for as long as I can remember, I choose Eastern Exit. This is basically a LH finish to Franklands Green Crack from its final niche. I found it quite thought provoking and very exposed. A tough number, but now ticked.

While we were climbing this, Kirk and Skenders arrived, Kirk sporting his straw trilby replete with jaunty feather in it. A distinguished look it has too. They launched up The Nose, which Peri led after them, but not before she deserted me to second Zig Zag Direct to recover someones gear for them.

I unfortunately had only one climb left at which to try, the climb I had been putting off for years. Constipation Crack takes an offwidth hanging crack, I did not even dare to try to boulder the first move, as the climbing is so precarious. The landing is a jagged pile of boulders. However, once attempting a lead, you can place a large cam at full stretch. This gave me the confidence to pull onto the climb and start locking my legs, knees, shoulders etc into the crack. I was struggling like crazy when I gained a chockstone I had spotted from the ground, to my surprise it was a rattler and had a Carling Black Label lager can jangling  behind it. This took my attention away from the fear of falling and made the situation seem rather comical, so I pressed on, soon reaching the good horizontal at the top of the offwidth.

Buoyed by the relief of reaching here, tired and with a full body pump, I had the chance to get my first good jam and place another runner. All that remained was a rounded flounder to the top. Here I enjoyed the simple pleasure of being able to lie horizontally, panting and nearly having to vomit. Good fun!?

We decided a break was in order, so went round to watch Kirk and Skenders on Crack of Doom, Skenders had also done Long Chimney while we were busy. Peri decided to warm down on Crack and Wall, which she found tricky. Skenders led Bird's Nest Variation and Kirk finally ticked Stomach Traverse. Dave S turned up to amaze us with some hard bouldering and got a bit nearer being able to do Pebble Wall. We were feeling the efforts of the day by now, so beat a retreat to York.

Skenders on Great Chimney.

All in all a good day, Kirk and Skenders probably carried on for ages, they are both going really well at the moment, Dave was going to go round to do the start to Wall of Horrors, so they may be able to post what else they did after we left.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Crags. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.