I'm a little hesitant to put this in Rocktalk as it's quite unimportant, and don't mind at all if this post is moved elsewhere, but does anyone know what route this is?
The photo is of me climbing in 1989 and I would have been 12. I think it's in Derbyshire as I remember that we went to Chatsworth House on the same day. I didn't start climbing until 1999 when I moved to Edinburgh and joined the University Mountaineering club, but I always knew it was something that I wanted to do. We did a lot of hill walking as a family but this was the only time we ever went climbing. The guy in the yellow hat is my father. It was my Uncle who was the climber and he is belaying at the top of the cliff.
Thank you so much. I've googled Button Wall and it absolutely matches up. Although I didn't take up climbing until 10 years later, I think this day played a pivotal part in my life. Since 1999 climbing has been an ever present hobby and for the last 5 years or so has probably become my only hobby. It's nice to know a time and a place where my interest in climbing started.
Well done - better than me !
I knew it was that end of Stanage, somewhere around Mantlepiece Butress - something about the colour or the width of the breaks perhaps - but couldn't quite place it.
I soloed that route on a very hot day in July 95, when I went and soloed an awful lot of easy routes on Stanage. I think it was my second visit to the crag. I was "in training" just before heading off to India where, as it turned out, the mountaineering was a total washout but I did meet the missus. And if I hadn't I wouldn't have then met you a decade later in Helsinki and started climbing with you, in which case we wouldn't need to be having another go at the Stanage VS Challenge this summer! You can nip up it solo as we go past. How's that for Karma or something?
