During the unseasonably cold start to December, the ice climbing mecca of the North York Moors came into condition earlier than usual. The only question was: where to go? Landslip, Maiden Spring, Raven's Scar – the list of top quality winter venues goes on and on.
Me, Andy and Matt eventually decided on Cringle Crag – usually the first of the Moors crags to come into condition and sporting lines from grade III ridges to tech 8 mixed test pieces. We managed to get the car as far as the cattle grid halfway up Carlton Bank by having two of us pushing and using a weaving action to wear through the snow. I fear we may also have worn through Matt's clutch.
The views on the walk up Carlton Bank were ridiculous. It looked like an Alpine ski resort after a devastating avalanche. Where the snow plough had been up, the walls of snow either side were higher than the stone wall. Hopes of a bacon sarnie in Lord Stones cafe were dashed when we found the picnic tables had two feet of snow on top. We were also disappointed to see no sign of a trail up to Cringle Moor.
We set out breaking trail, using a combination of crawling, swimming and occasionally stopping to declare: "it's hopeless". Walking along the tops of dry stone walls is not to be recommended, particularly when they have a 6 inch cornice to hide the edge. 3 hours later we made it to the summit of Cringle Moor and peered into the gloom to try and spy the icefalls. For future reference, the first crags which are visible just below the path did not have any worthwhile ice (though they would give some good short mixed challenges).
Eventually we found a small climbable icefall lower down before continuing across the face looking for "Cringle Ridge" (apparently 45m of Grade III – we never found it). On the way however, we came across the small recess containing the Franco Cookson route "Tell Chris Craggs Nowt" on the left. This was full of very solid but somewhat short icefalls (perhaps 4m maximum). We soloed a nice icy corner on the right before setting up a top rope on a steeper fall to the left. This gave good climbing and we spiced things up for Andy by giving him 2 metres of slack for his top rope fall. We finished up snow slopes above, outflanking a genuine Yorkshire cornice on the left.
The quickest way to get to these crags is to walk about 0.5km along the Cleveland way until shortly before the path starts dropping down you descend left.
On the way out we met a soloist who had made use of our tracks and got up in much quicker time. He'd found another small icefall to climb. I believe if there had been a thaw and refreeze the potential for ice would have been much better. As it was, all seepage was frozen into the ground. It's also very difficult to find anything on the face because the crags are so broken. But nonetheless, the novelty of climbing moors ice was achieved!