York Alpine Club Blog

Wye valley. Day 2. Wintour’s Leap…

All three parties arrive at the crag at different times and/or park in different places but end up  meeting at the foot of the same route – Zelda – a 3 pitch 3 star classic. Carmen has nearly finished the first pitch when we  arrive, so we decide to jump on the route too as there's no real queue. Dave & Peri arrive to join the queue slightly  later, which pretty much wards off any other interested parties. The route goes well, with me forgetting I was on a trad  route due to all the in situ pegs. We'd made the mistake of hauling a load of gear down the crag, so we'd brought half of  it up the route with us to dump back in the car. With this done, and a couple of pies eaten, we head back down for the last route of the day.

Arrive to find Dave & Peri are still on Zelda, having had a wobbler each on the first pitch (their words). After a stern  talking to herself, Peri had another go at getting round the initial nose and was well into the first pitch when we arrive.  After a hunt around the foot of the crag, we finally spot out route, Cheetah. Rob leads up the first pitch and after a bit  of a wander about to get some more crag swag, he arrives at the belay. I follow on up.

I hesitantly set off leading the second pitch. Initial faffing with the gear to avoid rope drag gets me onto the route  proper. I needn’t have worried about being a bit rusty with placing gear, because that was pretty much it as far a gear  went on that pitch! The pitch meanders around a bit, and with very little polish on the rock, route finding is not that  easy. After a few extra meanders of my own I get up to a tree and nice reassuring sling gets slung around it. Almost half  way. The promise of a peg leads onto the wall above, so I head on. After a few meters of climbing, there's no sight of this  peg, or any other gear for that matter, so it's not really that obvious where I'm heading.

For psychological reassurance, I put a friend sticking out of the only bit of a borehole that'd take it, knowing full well  that it won't hold a fall, and carry on climbing. After a few meters more, a mantel onto a ledge, with the rope trying its  best to stop me, leads to the elusive peg, and the first solid bit of gear in 10 meters. Phew! The rest of the pitch goes  in a similar vain the first half – nice climbing with no gear (I wish I hadn't used that micro wire earlier on). The route  goes past (through) a hawthorn bush on the left, and even though it'll add some more rope drag, I have that as my final bit  of gear. A couple of big pulls as the guide describes and I arrive at the belay somewhat relieved.

My guide had it as VS, but the new guide has it as HVS 5a, so I'll claim that as a new trad high point…

meanwhile … Pete and John E went climbing at Shorn Cliff and it was overcrowded , so they went for another MTB ride around Symonds Yat, where John did the decent thing and took the fall on behalf of Pete. Lithos

More Pictures ….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Climbing, Crags, Weekend Meets. 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.