Steve MccClure

Ice Climbing In The Peaks

A 7.30am start. We were off down the dale. Turning from the main road towards RavenTor it was just like normal, except now the road was covered with snow and outside was below freezing! Some people apparently had been climbing recently at the Tor, but for me it could wait till later, much later. Today wasn’t about small crimps and polished footholds, it was about hanging on axes and a winter experience.

OK, so its hardly The Alps, or even Scotland, and today I pined for those places even more, but for something half hour from my house this was pretty good! 15 minutes slog through knee deep snow brought us to the abandoned quarry with vertical walls plastered with snow and streaked with ice. My crampons showed their face after many years hiding in the attic and my cold fingers fumbled with the unfamiliarity of it all. Staring up at frozen pathways my excitement grew, fears gladly eliminated by the trees that kindly grew near the edge and happily accepted a toprope.

We climbed four routes, some tricky and some desperate. One involved dry tooling up an overhanging start, hooking on tiny edges while expecting the pick to pop at any moment. The ice above was excellent and I marvelled at the architecture; the appearance of this ice fall so similar to the tufa lines of Europe, except those were formed over thousands of years and this was formed in days, and could disappear over night! Moving over it was similar, reading the material but using it in different ways. Everything was a challenge, physically and mentally. I’m sure as hell glad I wasn’t leading and placing what sketchy gear could be scratched out. But here, for me it didn’t matter. I have no clue how ‘hard’ they were. Grades were irrelevant. It was just great to be a bumbly!

January 13, 2010 10:52 AM

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