Great bouldering conditions in the Lakes 21/12/10

The last week has been a busy one, and whilst many in the Lakes took advantage of the recent big freeze, bouldering conditions were still going good.

Sunday evening, after a day in the Keswick store, I was asked to help out with some route setting for the new Kendal bouldering rooms. Being reasonably local to the wall, the plan was to set some challenging problems, and work on them later in the week; I think there's a good circuit of problems up for everybody to try.

Snowy arrival at Carrock Fell

Monday was spent at Carrock Fell; returning to finish Nightrider (7c+). I'd had a short session earlier the other week in proper snowy conditions. After a leisurely warm up on a few surrounding problems, I managed Nightrider just as soon as I'd refined my sequence. This has to be one of the best looking lines at Carrock Fell, and climbs really well.

Nightrider (7c+)

With my sequence sorted I quickly dispatched The Hasselholf Variation (7c), following a similar line to Nightrider before rocking high onto the slab at half way.

I finished off the session with Old Spice, 7a (a new addition to the fell by Greg Chapman) then Hi Karate, a short but involved 7b.

Monday evening was back at Kendal wall tweaking the routes from the previous evening.

After a hugh dump of snow on Friday evening, I returned to Carrock Fell on Saturday to dish out some beta for friends on Nightrider, although temperatures were far from perfect; likely to have reached around -8'c on the largely shadowed side of the fell.

Even cooler temperatures on Sunday, Carrock was off the agenda so we visited the notoriously sunny Lancashire, more specifically the Shelterstone atTrowbarroww quarry.

The snowy top in-situ on the Shelterstone was brushed and dried before several topouts included Vitruvian man rh and Texas hold'em.

Vitruvian Man rh (7c)

Again, a relatively new addition to the stone by Nick Clement, Vitruvian Man rh breaks away from the first move of the original, aided by some footwork trickery to gain a high sidepull high on the face. A quality problem which saw three ascent in the space of around 10 minutes.

Back to Monday evening down Kendal wall again, the circuit of problems has almost been completed, a few more days work at it'll be done.

Ben Freeman