Back in April we headed down to the Peak District in England for four days of climbing with our friend Laurie who was over from San Francisco for a wedding. We enjoyed summer-like weather the entire time. It was magic. We stayed in an excellent self-catering cottage in Longnor which was ten minutes from the Roaches. We climbed at Stanage Popular on day 1. Day 2 and 3 were spent at the Roaches. While our ticklist was good, it was only good. I had more ambitious routes on my wish list, but alas, I found the climbing quite challenging and wasn’t able to get the kind of momentum I needed for pushing the grade. I’m sure that suited my partners well enough as the semi-hard climbing I did do, proved to be, hard.
There was one route that I must go back for. The Sloth (HVS 5a ***) is 15 meters of easy climbing capped by an intimidating 3 meter roof. A friend of mine summed it up nicely by saying it looks like E3 but climbs like VS. The day we were there, the crag was heaving with people. A bit of a shock for us spoiled climbers in the north east of Scotland. It was reminiscent of a sunny summer day in Squamish, queueing for routes in the Little Smoke Bluffs. I, along with a hundred other spectators, watched a woman lead it effortlessly, although I refrained from yelling unnecessary advice and encouragement. She was pretty happy to have done it and rightly so. Her partner was unable to second it. Another suitor stepped in and failed as well. Others yelled for their spot in line. It became clear that the mighty Sloth was going to be a circus of top-roping for the rest of the afternoon. We’d already had ropes dragged over us, had people cross our lines and refuse to make room on large belay ledges we left the crag in disgust in search of quieter areas. Ah England. It’s not the band I hate, it’s the fans.
A nice evening in our cottage with a bottle of wine and a nice meal followed by an ass-whoopin’ at bananagrams smoothed out my foul mood and we went back on day two, but we avoided the popular areas and I dialed down my expectations. We had a fantastic day! The highlight was going up Via Dolorosa (VS 4c***) with 3 people. We split it into 3 pitches and all were excellent. Despite being right on the main thoroughfare we felt buffered from the hordes by the time we got to pitch two. It felt like proper adventure climbing. By the end of the day we managed a respectable number of routes and were proud to talk Laurie into leading on gear for the first time. She ended the day with her third gear lead on a run out slab to a tricky-to-protect upper wall. Bravo Laurie!
