Climbing on Grit

A joy of living where I do is Gritstone, or simply Grit. Grit is fantastic rock for us climbers. Its coarse surface gives wonderful friction and its lack of handholds and footholds demands imagination and good technique to envisage a way up, balance and momentum are key.

And the quintessential gritstone crag is Stanage Edge, close to Sheffield on the eastern border of the Peak District. For those lucky enough to live close by, climbing on summer evenings facing the setting sun is one of life's greatest pleasures.
Stanage Edge is home to more than 1500 different climbs along it's 4 miles length. None of them are high as the crag rarely gets above 20 metres. They're packed in a few metres apart wherever a visionary climber has spotted an unclimbed line. These days there are few lines left unclimbed with the potential for new routes and most those are at the hardest end of the range of climbing difficulty.
I've always wanted to put my name to a new climbing route, to be the first to spot and climb a line and to name it. A few weeks ago I noticed a few metres of what looked like lovely climbing up the top few metres of of a buttress next to where I was belaying for Jill. The rock below this was 'occupied' by another harder route but it looked possible to reach the nice finish via a traversing line below an overhang. Like the finish this traverse wasn't mentioned in the climbing guidebook. So that was around 10 metres of potential unclimbed route. I could reach the start of this climbing using the start of an existing route.
This all looked worthwhile. Instead of climbing existing guidebook routes next time we went out it was pioneering. My friends all stood back to leave me the opportunity to be the first. I took a while over the existing start and then spent a while longer fixing protection for myself in case of a fall. Stepping out onto the unclimbed line felt exciting and steepish; my weight was on my arms and again I took too long fixing more protection. I got into a steep groove where a high step took me up below the finishing section but my arm muscles had turned to jelly and I fell off, caught by my rope and belayer.
A week later I was back and this time, with foreknowledge, the route felt like a breeze. In a short 15 minutes I was at the top. My first ascent was followed by my friends. It's difficult to be objective but it feels as though it's a good addition to Stanage's climbs. It only remains for me to get it added to the next published guidebook.
And I get to name it. It was climbed on an evening when we were socialising in the name of Fidel Sciamanna. It's called "Fidel's Curry Night".

Blackden Brook

One of the consequences of working away from the UK for weeks at a time is that I end up appreciating home so much more. If I ever took it for granted I don't any more. After getting back from Italy I was determined to get out onto the Dark Peak moors to walk and climb.
One of the first opportunities came with the visit to Derbyshire of my friends Simon and Jan - we always try to get out for a day when they're up from Ipswich. This time I was going to take them to the Upper Derwent moors, using the weekend bus service that shuttles up alongside the Derwent and Howden Reservoirs on summer weekends. However, it turns out there's an interval of a few weeks in May during which the roa is closed to private cars but there's not yet a bus provided. So we thought again.
It was many years since I'd walked up onto the north side of Kinder taking Blackden Brook from the Snake Road. That's decided then.

Simon at the start

Blackden Brook is a deep V that heads up south away from the road. It's quite a long valley curving gently away until it rises steeply from under the rim of Kinder's northern rim. The small path seems to have little footfall and is hardly eroded. Once alongside the brook itself the path is narrow, sometimes jumping the brook, sometimes on flat sediments and often on the steep valley sides a few metres above the stream.

The valley narrows

It's not a path to fall off and there are places where the walking involves the use of the hands. We wandered along in the May sunshine and saw no-one, just a succession of pretty pools and tumbling waterfalls, hemmed in by the valley.

The climb up to the Plateau

Towards the end you start to climb and the valley floor steepens and becomes bouldery. The path hardly matters here as you scramble over and between lumps of brown gritstone gaining height rapidly now to reach the Kinder Rim path.

Looking north from the Rim

Immediately on gaining this point we saw other groups of walkers for the first time. The rest of the walk was on more familiar ground for me; along the rim westwards to Fairbrook then north to Fairbrook Naze, the steep ridge running down towards the Snake Inn on the A57. The plateau has changed over the last few years as the project to reduce the erosion starts to change the environment. Largely gone are the plain chocolate peat banks flanking the streams which created tufted islands of heather and bilberry hags. Onto the peat now grows grass, turning the landscape green and pale Naples yellow, a prairie landscape that seems to shimmer in the breeze.

A grassy landscape on the plateau

And so down the naze and back to the road in an hour. I love this landscape of moor and rock. It feels like home.

At the top of Fairbrook Naze