After more rain resulting in another weekend in the shed last week I was busting to get onto some real rock. I tracked for forecast which indicating heading north was the better option. That worked well as Wiggins was home and keen to get back to Boomer Crag, up near Pinjarra, and this time hit the mini-sport routes on the roadside crag there. Friday arrived and with it a change of patterns with the storm front now coming in north of us and we watched the radar indicate Boomer Crag was getting a drenching, which continued into Saturday morning:
On the plus side to the south the radar indicated no rain, so just after 6:30 this morning Wiggins, Steve and I were WhatsApp’ing away to decide on what to do and where to go. Wiggins felt the chance of rain was too high, plus the temperatures were only predicted to be in the low to mid-teens. Steve however was as keen as me to get on rock, and in view of him just having come of his six week bout of cancer treatment a few weeks back we plumped for Castle Rock, due to being both to the south and having a short walk in:
As we drove south and chatted he confessed that his energy levels were going really well, better than expected and the symptoms of his radiotherapy and chemotherapy were not impacting on his ability to “get things done”. So I slipped into conversation that whilst Castle Rock is fun, Moses Rocks would offer a greater range of opportunities at more sensible grades. It took but a heartbeat and Steve jumped on-board with the change of plan. Soon we found ourselves at an empty carpark, we didn’t expect climbers but that meant no surfers were out:
Steve was chomping at the bit to place some trad gear and having a good knowledge of Moses Rocks’ flared, and often shallow and blind, cracks we decided that today we would only use tricams of which Steve has a full set. He set off on the first led, I think he may have thumped me if I had suggested that I start the proceedings of the day! It didn’t take him long to get up Pathetic Sharks, in fact he was in such a rush that he forgot something, but you’ll have to check the above image to work out what it was:
I plumped for some Classic Thrash next, an aptly named steep face. Being in the confines of a narrowing chimney you have to work that bit harder to avoid from finding yourself resting on the opposite wall. Great contrived fun, which made me realise that maybe I had worked harder than I thought at the Thursday night boulder round at Glen’s. My arms held out and I was rewarded with a great belay position. While the rock was damp, at Moses it has to be running with water and salt before you lose the great friction on offer from this granite:
As soon as we had arrived I think Steve had set his sights on the next line. A line of many a nervous a moment and the occasional serious fall. Hathersage is not a climb to be complacent on, and I will openly admit when Steve wanted to jump on it armed only with tricams I was a tad nervous. He started well and soon had four good placements in, doing a bit of yo-yoing to rest his arms as he laced the crack. It was a good strategy as the next move requires you to mantle the shelf from where the upper wall only has small holds and minimal gear that is fiddly:
He mantled the shelf and then kept shuffling rightwards all the way to the arête, a cunning ploy as this avoids the scary, exposed crux sequence on the face. It also provided him with welcome gear opportunities on the neighbouring line of Stanage Youth, which I have to say I was also relieved about. Some might say that he still followed the line and that the routes are way too close together to be independent. Maybe they have a point, but despite these lines being thirty years old this year no one has ever thought to change their description or complain:
As bagged a few routes on the Northern Blocks soaking in the sun and scenery, we saw a jet ski with two people on it bombing about. We made some quips about not seeing the sense in a jet ski, and then one of the people jumped in the water and proceeded to surf. Occasionally we would see the person in the water get a tow from the jet ski, using their surfboard like a mono-ski. They were the only people we saw in the water despite the waves, looking to us, perfect. We left them to it and moved on:
We headed over to Hand’s Up wall, while I was tempted by Kami-kaze Catfish on the Northern Blocks, we both agreed that today we should stick to the less strenuous and more relaxed routes. So at the next area it was an easy choice of the crag classic, Wheely Things. As you’ll notice this is the second image of me. Steve too had his camera and was snapping away at every opportunity, and this time when we got back to Capel he handed me his memory card so I couldn’t sneak the email out without using some of his image of me:
While it may seem that I went a bit off line in the above image, I was only busy taking an image of all the tricams lined up in this beautiful crack. It is certainly more fiddly putting them in compared to a normal cam, especially the larger sizes. These larger ones also tend to walk a bit and you really have to make sure they are set well, while the smaller sizes are easy to set and walk less they can also end up in places from which it is hard to get out. Amazingly there was not on placement today that proved really problematic in getting out:
We had indicated to our better half’s what time we would be back by, and Steve was keen to make sure we stuck to it. However, we were also keen to get another line, which of course meant getting two more in. As you seriously can’t finish a day’s climbing on an odd number of routes! So rather than hit the usual lines Steve plumped for this one, called Many Hands. The rock was now in perfect condition and the rounded holds and flared cracks didn’t faze us at all, in fact this line felt the best of the day:
Neither of us could help but smile as we relished every hold and move, only wishing the route was twice or maybe three times as long. The timepiece had just pass midday and with that the wind picked up, it was still in the right direction to blow the salt spray out to sea way but there was a chill to it meaning we had to don our tops when we were in the shade. It’s a bit weird to be thinking that in the morning we had been procrastinating about rain and cold temperatures, yet here we were climbing (mostly) in the sun and wearing t-shirts:
I ran up one more climb, the slab immediately to the right of Steve’s last line. While some routes at Moses are pretty close it is strange how the slab that Many Hands goes up is only one route, as there are two independent lines that do not share any holds. Despite the guide indicating we repeated a line we are counting them as separate and hence an even number of climbs had been bagged. This last line felt like it went by way too quickly, and soon the last tricam of the day was placed, with Steve learning my belaying techniques to get the best images:
The great thing about Moses Rocks is all the bouldering and mucking about that you can do. Especially at Hand’s Up wall there are heaps of ways to down climb after the routes, here Steve is down climbing Pink Licker. Before we had down climbed Hard Hands, a line that many years back Lisa and I subjected Elseya to her first (and last) outdoor top rope climb. She hated it and was not happy at all, that said she was happy to climb many harder problems without a rope. Some were pretty damn high, high enough for Lisa to need to close her eyes:
We packed up everything bar our shoes, which stayed on our feet. The reason being was that I wanted to play on a little boulder I had seen as we walked in, it just looked too much fun. We dumped our bags at the base and as we stepped up to it we realised just how short it was, regardless we still had to jam our way up the crack. Now hold on you may say, that means you ended on an odd number. So just to make sure we then bouldered up the face to the right, it was a bit spicier and also had a heap more exposure being right on the edge of a big drop:
Finally we took our climbing shoes off and headed out for real. Seeing I was in front I decided to take a slightly more interesting way back to the beach. Lisa is very used to my variant approaches on walks, i.e. avoiding the normal track. As such we found ourselves rock hopping, walking over slimy boulders, traversing above rock pools and finally needing to climb out from the water’s edge to access the track proper, as the last section was completely wave washed and neither of us fancied going for a swim:
Sandbagged 