Cornelius

Here are a few photos and a short clip of our trip to the Churnet a couple weeks ago. It is such a sweet spot down here and Cornelius in particular is one of the most perfect lines you could wish for. For those of you that don't know about this line, its something that sits somewhere in between a highball boulder and route. Its pretty dam high whatever way you look at it! Originally given E8 6c but now generally thought of as V9, which seems fair. The crag is also situated in what feels like the gardens of Alton Towers!
I do love the Churnet, its very unique with mostly immaculate rock wherever you go. Its certainly a different vibe climbing here and makes for a nice change.

Thanks again to Jon Clark for hanging on a rope all day to get these shots for us. And to Dan for capturing our ascents on video!

Sam pebble pulling above his nest on 'Inaccessible' E5 6a

More hard grit...

Its been a case of back to reality this week, in terms of the weather anyway, and it doesn't look like its gona change much over the coming days! So I thought I'd take a break from training and sulking over the state of things outside and post up a short blog with some cool pictures from last week.

I made a trip over to Shining Cliff about a week ago, its probably one of the closest crags to my house being about a 15/20min drive. This place has had a bit of attention of late from our friend Tom Randall where he made the long awaited FA of 'My Kai' the direct to Seb Grieves route, Gecko Blaster. Another great lump of solid, slightly overhanging gritstone, on small crimps, sidepulls and gastons with a spicey last move... Awesome effort from Tom on this, a frickin BOLDD solo for sure!

 Gecko Blaster, E7 6c

We ended up doing a slight hyrbid of the two routes, joining the direct version lower down rather than at the overlap. It felt to be about french 7c this way, and even though I didn't have a try at the boulder problem start it looks pretty tricky and I can see why Tom suggested hard 8a for the linkup! Keen to return sometime soon. Big thanks to Jon Clark again for coming out and getting some more sweet shots!

 

 Sketchy last move, long way above the ground...

Then a few days later it was back up on the edges joined this time by photographer Mike Hutton. We all had a fantastic day out, sunshine and blue skies for everyone. Why can't it be like this all time! Check out what we got up to below. Cheers Mike for the pics, great work! You can see more of his work here: www.mikehuttonphotography.com

Cool Moon, E7 6c

Spanish Fly, E6 6c below

 

I also bagged another couple of funky routes, that hardly get much attention, back up at Black Rocks. One being Tom de Gays 'Small Things' E6 6c. A wild and unusual sort of line to the left of Golden Days. I guess its slightly eliminate... but not by much and who cares anyway. If you are up around that way, I'd recommend you give it a look as its all squeaky clean now! Then it was a quick trip around onto the front face for 'Camel Hot' a rad exposed arete from the 80's. Its crazy to think of the stuff people were doing back then, much respect to those guys!

Cheers for checkin in ya'll, have a good weekend!

 

Don't play with cams kidzzz!!!