i’mamountaineer

After a fantastic day on Boxing Day 2011 when I climbed Y Garn in deep snow with a friend, I hoped for similar for the Christmas break in 2012. With warmer weather over Christmas, a plan for a shorter trip to the Peak District was hurriedly discussed late on Christmas day.

The Cobra

I’d been tempted to buy the Peak District Bouldering guide released in May but without that came to find a couple of useful online resources, firstly the fantastic peakbouldering.info website helped to work out a few possibles and then finally this page was great to give topos and photos with routes shown to provide us all we needed for a long morning at Burbage South.

Me on top of The Briquette

We luckily bagged the last of 3 spots at the small car park at the end of Green Drive on the A6187 near the Fox Inn House and set off on the short walk up to the boulders.

Over a few hours we toured almost all of the boulders, completing routes on The Cobra, The Tank, The Whale, The Brick, The Briquette and The Kidney. As the pages online suggested, there’s a great range of lower grade problems with pleasant landings should you slip, which we were fine on with just a single mat.

Pete starting Sitdown Arete on The Tank

Pick of the routes for us that morning was probably sitdown arete on the small rock next to The Tank, a lovely short route with a heel hook taking you perfectly to a small crimp before a dynamic move onto a great hold on top (I struggled for lack of reach, but made it once not as part of the full sequence so will go back to finish one day). As ever with Gritstone bouldering, I rounded the day of in style with the most inelegant and drawn out top out on a route on The Kidney that left us both in tears laughing.

Trying to look cool after a ridiculous drawn out top out on The Kidney

A brilliant morning and a great way to spend a Boxing Day morning out in the fresh air after the copious amounts of food/drink the day before.