Arctic Offwidthing

Not to get completely out of order, because there are still like ten days of the France and Spain trip I haven't blogged yet, but yesterday (real time) Nick and I went to Stanage in the Peak District. The day was supposed to be a sunny May day, so even though I took a fleece coat and a rainjacket, I wore capri pants. Mistake!

The second we got out of the car, despite the fact that it was sunny, and it was May, I felt like I was in a hurricane. It was so windy. And it wasn't a warm wind, either. Nick said it would be less windy near the crag, and that was probably true -- but it was just that the hurricane had dropped a category. So I spent most of the day trying to find little holes to dig myself into to stop myself from developing hypothermia. (Nika: "How do I know if hypothermia, Nick?" Nick: "You stop fussing and become very quiet. I'm not too worried yet.") Also, it clouded over for long periods, and even sprinkled raindrops not once, not twice, but three times during the day. Never enough to give me an excuse to go back to the car, though.

Meanwhile, Nick was having great fun doing lots of classic cracks that I was really struggling with, because they were extremely wide. He was able to do a lot of jamming in them, but my feet really were too narrow to jam at all, and I had to do laybacks rather than any sort of hand jams (and I do know how to hand jam, just not fist jam). So I was skidding all over the place trying to follow these slimy, slopey laybacks that he had jammed up on lead. Which wasn't making me any happier.

The "classic" one of these we did was Goliath's Groove, where I had all my problems at once. The crack at the bottom was too big for me to fit in, so I was half-laybacking, half-stemming. Meanwhile, Nick was at the top of the climb in the hurricane and couldn't hear me saying "up rope, keep it tight." This felt like the longest climb in the Peak District, so there was actual rope stretch, too. So when my fingers slipped off of the layback slopers and I fell off I whacked my elbow hard into the rock and burst into tears before I shivered my way up the rest of the stupid climb. So I didn't particularly like that one.

The other classics we did that were actually good were The Right Unconquerable, which I had actually seconded back in the fall (Nick had never led it before, and was nervous about it, but did a great job -- although he took the less-direct finish that was less well protected but didn't have a scary mantle because it was sprinkling when he got there) and Tower Face, which I actually really liked and didn't involve any real crack climbing. I felt like if I wasn't shivering so much Tower Face would be a good one for me to lead, too -- but I was too cold.

The Right Unconquerable would have been tricky for me to lead -- there was a lot more power involved because you had to layback a gigantic flake for a lot of it. But I was proud of myself on the Right Unconquerable because we had run into a CUMC team that was on it before us, and the second couldn't get two nuts out, so I was put on nut-retrieval duty, and I did it! Including the nut that had somehow turned upside down by the time I got to it. I was also perky on that climb because by the time I was doing it the sun had finally come out, for good, and the wind had finally died down.



Eventually we finished up around 7pm -- right when the wind finally started to die down. We had a pub dinner nearby (I had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding!) and then drove back. I warned Nick that I was going to crank the heat, and did, and then when I fell asleep in the car he tried to turn it down but I woke up immediately when I heard him turn the dial and made him turn it back up.

Today is a "bank holiday" in England, so Nick doesn't have to work. He's on mountainbiking adventures at the moment, but we're going punting again this afternoon. But it's still really chilly today -- like 45 Fahrenheit and overcast. But I am going to take a lot of warm clothes punting.