Blackstone Edge Revisit

Dry days- 169
Days of rain- 157

Bit of a delay in blogging, apologies!!

On Sunday a team of us went to Blackstone Edge. This was due to the re-write for the new Brick, as well as the topo I had done for the Edge 3 years ago. Gordon and Bruce (Goodwin) hda kindly agreed to join R-Man, myself and the Ginnster to look at what I had documented and what was done in the last 40 years.

It was foggy/ cloudy at the White House. We wandered into the small quarry, then on to the crag end. The cloud dropped into an inversion and left us basking in the sun. Unfortunately this didn't last, and we soon ended up back in the cloud. We looked at the Back Edge, I showed Bruce all the stuff we'd done before- much of which he said he'd never seen climbed.

After this we headed to teh Trig Area, much of what BeardyBeast and I had done before were old problems, as expected. Wandering along to the Hueco Block area we again found much of what was old and rediscovered matched up. Interestingly, Bruce knew that what we had referred to as Ape Hour and Nik's Traverse were done years ago by Nick Conway. Heading further right most stuff matched again.

R-Man and I had a look at Ape Hour. I was getting fingers on the top some goes, but getting nowhere on others. The drifting mist probably didn't help. R-Man used a typically R-Man technique and beasted it. A couple of his friends arrived from the Peak, whilst The Ginnster and myself wandered over to the right and did some of the good easier problems. There's a foul mantel that we tried as a dyno, big move and one to get back to.

After this I had one more go on Ape Hour but discovered my skin was ruined. We wandered past the Trig Point to the Crag Boulders. The Ginnster failed to cruch the Double Arete/ Blackstone Best. R-Man and Gareth.PB.info had a look at BeardyBeast's Fridge Hugger, but PastyKid and I had to head off. Later I found out they had done it, and the shamelessly stolen video is below. Seems to be a consensus of 7b+/7c.

Keen for a re-visit sometime, still lots of work to do.






R-Man and Gareth.PB.info on Fridge Hugger: