UKC

In Jim Pope's Substack today, he starts his piece with a quote from a 1989 Stanage guide which states:

“Ask any climber in Britain and it is likely that at some point in their lives they will have focused their climbing aspirations on Stanage.” - Geoff Milburn (Stanage 1989 guidebook introduction)

Can this be true? Indeed, was it ever true? I've certainly never had any aspirations that were Stanage-focussed and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one! Have folk always been so myopic? I mean, I've climbed there once and did quite enjoy it but there's way more to UK climbing than Stanage.

Edit: typo.

I would have had to have lived nearby.

Quite enjoyed the odd visit but there were places I enjoyed more closer to me

Yeah, I did once. 

I was living in the south then, and the club meet was staying at North Lees, and we had to compromise and dragged across to Stanage. Climbed something I'm sure. So the aspiration was probably focused there for, what, forty-five minutes ? 

Hoy, Stoer. DOWH. Swanage. Pembroke. Skeleton Ridge. Point 5 or Tower. The Roaches. 

And that's just within the UK. As a climber in Britain, I certainly focused my climbing aspirations on things beyond this island.... 

Myopic ? Too short-sighted for that. I guess it was a guidebook intro. 

It makes a nice run as part of the Nine Edges. 

Y

I think both Jim Pope and Geoff Millburn can be forgiven for a little hyperbole when expressing love for the crag.

And they did say "likely" rather than "certain".

I don't think the quote suggests otherwise. But it does come from a guidebook about Stanage. It's pretty common to find guidebooks singing the praises of the areas they cover. A great guidebook inspires as well as informing.

Yep, noted and agreed (I guess, as I've never heard of Geoff Millburn till Jim's article today). But I'm still left wondering how large a percentage of UK climbers, either now or in the past, have their focus on Stanage. It would undoubtedly be a great asset to have close by and I'm sure if that were the case I'd climb there a lot, but is it because it's simply convenient for so many local climbers that it's developed its hallowed reputation?

Arguably on the day you climbed there your climbing aspirations for the day were focused on Stanage so it may be technically correct?

But yeah, I'm with you - I'm not sure this is, or has ever been true.  

I think the same about Ben Nevis. I climbed there once and quite enjoyed it.

I find Geoff Milburn's comments entirely apposite, but will admit there were times that Yosemite distracted me...

You're a Scot aren't you? For maybe the first 15 years of having one, on my UKC profile under 'anything else I should know' I had the question "Why are UK climbers so obsessed with gritstone?". That was after beginning climbing as a teenager in Worcestershire, moving to Glasgow to study for 4 years (and winter climb) then moving to Finland and climbing there and my first trips to Norway. I guess from just the mags I got the idea that everyone was expected to know Stanage and love grit and the Sheffield-Centric nature of the magazines at least annoyed me.

But I do remember I still bought that weird BMC topo guide to Stanage in Glasgow and when visiting my parents during one summer, went up there and soloed my first twenty or so grit routes! Lots of my Scottish climbing mates have come down here (I'm now a Stanage local) to try gritstone at least once, and I know some who are regular visitors. So I took Jim's point to be everybody has heard of Stanage because it's so famous so probably most UK trad climbers have thought at some point I should visit there and do X route (X depends on how hard you climb! ).

Anyone who aspires to complete the Classic Rock & Hard Rock ticklists has aspirations to climb at Stanage. Obviously there are other places to visit too, but name your single crag with a better set of routes from Mod to E Stupid 

I tend to visit Stanage more than any other crag but that's because it's 15 minutes away and has a good selection of low-mid grades. The only aspiration I have is to get fitter so I can climb some routes there that I've not done before.

I think that Geoff Milburn’s quote was probably true when it was written. Perhaps it is more of a “generational” view and perhaps more in the view of English climbers. Certainly when I started climbing in the early 1970’s Stanage was one of the places to go. That said, Stoney Middleton was at that time considered by many as the centre of Peak District Climbing! How things change……

I don't think it's just about people living near the Peak. I suspect it's the most popular trad destination for most people in London and a large amount of the south east, which may not be the largest area but is a pretty hefty percentage of the population. Sure there are plenty of other crags in the UK but not in significant swathes of the country, and living at a distance tends to mean less familiarity with alternatives. At least, in the three places where I lived in my teens and twenties it was the quintessential crag to travel to - combined with camping at North Lees - and that was a 3-hour or more journey.

Actually, when I was living in London for many years, we much preferred going to North Wales than the Peak because it wasn't much further and infinitely better value when you got there. 

When I was a student in Edinburgh in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I was told Stanage was the best place to rock climb. I went and I loved it. When I had a student holiday job in Leamington spa, I hitched to Stanage every weekend.

I think what appealed was the nice rock and the strong lines of the routes. I'd still say, for user-friendly trad in the V-Diff to HVS grades, it is hard to beat. I'd imagine, for people into hard scary arrets, it must be world class. Careless Talk, Unfamiliar, Archangel -I'll never climb them but I revere them.

I've lived close by now for >20years. My first couple of years here, I went quite a lot but I barely ever go now despite climbing in the Peak a couple of times a week. I had a great time last time I went though.

Just to reiterate, I did enjoy the climbing I did there that one day. Maybe it's because I no longer do trad that the allure it might have once have had, has faded. I can understand the attraction for those operating at the grades mentioned and there are certainly lots of them but from what I could see, the lines were mostly very short.

Does the Millburn quote predate the '89 guide? 

The most popular trad destinations for southeastern climbers I know are in Dorset/Somerset/Avon/Gloucs

Short routes can be awesome though;. both the moves and the line.

I can vividly remember several Stanage routes decades later.

I've also really enjoyed battles with short sport routes in the Peak. 

El Cap etc are worth a look too though if you have time .

Sure! It pains me every day, that I live so far away. Ive only made it to Stanage once in the last two decades.

I certainly aspire to get back and complete Wall End Slab Direct or Crescent Arete, or may just roll up High Neb Buttress in the sunset...

Back in 1989, Stanage was as short as you could go and it still be called climbing. Anything shorter was either cocking about, or a surrogate because you were too scared to lead trad onsight.

The bar has been lowered further since then and its now called bouldering.

True story.

Until the current bans were introduced, Arapiles would have fitted the bill, but that's cheating a bit...
I think you've hit on it though, it has something for pretty much anyone with the ability to accommodate the vast majority of groups which might wind up at the crag together. 

Probably depends which part exactly you're in and what sort of grade (when it comes to trad anyway). We went to Swanage a couple of times but when I was starting out Stanage offered a lot more. 

This seems to depend on where in or around London you live. If you're closer to the M1 then you'll look Peak-wards, if you're closer to the M4 it's south and west. I have mate who now lives in the Peak but lived in London for a decade previously and it seemed he came regularly up here, but always to Stanage! I was amazed he hadn't been to Curbar or Birchen let alone more obscure places like Ravensdale or Alderey. 

Strange but I don't recall you being as sniffy about the region when you wrote your book "The Peak . Past and Present"

Certainly nothing to aspire to at Stanage for a sport climber/bolt clipper, but the bouldering & soloing on offer is excellent.

Some of the most beautiful things come packaged short, but I agree that length is in short supply in the Peak, & for that I will travel. Mountains,  & sea cliffs too, lure me away, but gritstone (& Stanage) is like my favourite record collection/desert island discs. When asked which crag I'd like on my desert island, I chose Stanage. If I could have mountains, I'd take the Dolomites. You can keep the Shakespeare portfolio, but give me the guidebooks instead 😉 

Not worth going to NW anymore. Pete's Eats is rubbish

*I jest, the climbing is amazing.

I've certainly never had that aspiration, indeed I've never really cared much for climbing on gritstone at all after a trip to the Roaches years ago. I think if Stanage was in the arse end of nowhere, its appeal wouldn't be quite so far reaching. There's obviously something about it, people travel thousands of miles sometimes to climb gritstone, which I do find a bit bewildering but it has been well documented in picture and print over the years and has an important role in English climbing history.

Living in the Highlands, there's much more closer by to choose from that I've never felt the need to go south to climb gritstone routes. If I'm ever feeling that way inclined, I tend to go to Reiff which climbs quite similar but has less people, mountains for the backdrop and the sea at your heels.

I've also settled into being a sport climber. The danger aspect of climbing never was my thing anyway. I'm in my later 50s now though and starting to accept that I'm going to be getting worse at climbing. Presumably much worse in a couple of decades. I like climbing in stunning scenery. The Peak has some beautiful sport crags but they tend to just have the more difficult routes. I'm thinking at some stage I'll transition to being a top roper rather than a bolt clipper. That could be a way to get climbing at easier grades in stunning scenery.. Stanage was somewhere I was thinking of.

 To me sport climbing just means climbing that is purely for the movement, unencumbered by considerations of protection.

My whole entire climbing life largely revolved around trying to do the first move on not to be taken away. Properly, no French start. And one day, after a decade or so, I did and was on the rail. My mates dog then decided to walk on to my pad and just look at me ready to get crushed if I fell so I had to jump off. It was indeed taken away. Stanage can now f**k right off. 

Undoubtedly part of Stanage's appeal is it's accessibility. But don't forget that a large number of climbers choose to settle down in places like Sheffield at least partly because of the superb climbing close by.

I think Stanage also has a greater appeal than crags like Avon, Wilton and Harrison's. So there's more to it than proximity to big cities.

Oddly when I lived in London I much preferred going to the grit as it was much better value in terms of actually climbing rather than wandering around in the rain, and that usually meant Stanage one day, and another edge the second day.

Yes the routes are short, but there's an awful lot of good climbing there 

There’s a boulder problem at Stanage Far Right which has a lie down start and a roof which is never more than 1 metre above the deck. When we move back to the Peak in October it’ll be on my tick list for the first Stanage visit.  

it does make me smile that climbing is so broad an activity that it can include something that never gets higher than navel height. 

I can’t believe I’m defending the mighty Stanage. Great rock, lots of it, millions of routes from delicate to brutish, all in the human-scaled landscape of the peak. I’m on a few hundred and feel like it’s barely scratched the surface. Other rocks are available, nobody makes you pick.

Funnily enough I find a VS crack at Stanage when approached with a decent rack, less scary than some 5s and 5+ at places like Harpur Hill or Intake where you have to consistently climb above the bolt to reach the next one. 🙂 I took my biggest fall in years last summer in Goddards Quarry, stick to decently protected trad lines and you never need to get that run out. 

When I wrote my Peak book I was based in Derby (and I still live near Derby). Anyhow, you completely misunderstood my post. When living in London the best climbing for us was the Peak or North Wales (i was never fond of Avon/Dorset Limestone), and of the two - given the long drive to either - I marginally preferred going to Snowdonia. As did most of my climbing friends. But we still went to the Peak sometimes. That’s all I meant.

I don't think it's fair to say Tom "completely misunderstood" your post. Your original post said that North Wales offered "infinitely better value", and you're now claiming he should have inferred a "marginal" preference from that.

Anyway, you've been much much kinder towards Stanage than you were to Ravens Tor in your Peak book ! That's what a real slagging off looks like!

Sounds awesome.  Please give me a shout. Bring your acoustic, I'll bring mine!

I started climbing at Stanage so it was never an aspiration

the aspiration for me was always Gogarth, i’ve since spent a week climbing there, but still aspire to do more.

When I say ‘marginal’ preference I was referring to a whole lot of factors. The drive to the Peak was quite a bit easier, but the climbing in N Wales was (for me at the time - very much into multi-pitch mountain routes) much more appealing. I became keener on gritstone once I’d moved north to Derby and climbed on it a lot more.

Oh, gosh, I’d forgotten about that! One could say I wasn’t really qualified to speak as I wasn’t capable of climbing any of those desperately hard routes.

Take a look at the stats on here, 3 out of top 5 wish list routes are at Stanage. Most routes climbed by a mile at Stanage. Top routes by ascents Stanage, so there must be something going on re aspiration. 

Post reported!!!!! The UKC police will be here shortly

We have a HERETIC in our midst - a questioner of the hallowed grit. Someone start warming the tar and preparing the feathers.

Or considering the heinous nature of the crime do we just go straight to the big wicker man?

Have a like, for someone finally giving the response I'd initially expected! 😁

In reply to fruit:

I've become increasingly convinced that UKC isn't necessarily a true reflection of climbers in general. Very few of the folk I climb with log or post on here, and they're generally better climbers than me. So I don't immediately subscribe to the hypothesis that what's logged or stated on here accurately reflects the greater UK climbing community.

In reply to snoop6060:

Your post about NTBTA did make me smile. And I have to confess, it was one of the problems I 'did' on my only visit to Stanage. But I Frenched it too, so I guess I'll have to go back at some point and do it properly. 😫

UKC has always been Peak-centric as was most of the print media, before all that got going it was N Wales. Like many southern climbers we'd spend our weekends struggling on massively undergraded sun-drenched cliffs (or worse the dreaded Southern Sandstone) and once or twice make the long trek up north to be greeted by rain, midgies, terrible food, damp huts and poxy little cliffs. Seven hours in the back of an Anglia van, four people and a dog and sleeping in a laybye isn't the best preparation for the grit really.

I made it to gritstone once, seemed easy enough before it rained and Peak limestone once. Made the trip (I was applying for university in Nottingham then) to what was widely touted as the UK's hardest route of it's time, Our Father at Stoney, did that and went home. Even Al Evans said that we were climbing 6a trad down south before the Peak (and we know now guys were doing that sort of grade decades before) but the media is what it is Stanage was never something we aspired to, not actually sure I made it there. El Cap certainly was and in the UK it was some test piece in the pass or Gogarth.

I dunno, it's not my favourite crag, but the Stanage VS Challenge was one of the most memorable days(/nights) in nearly 20 years of climbing. There is certainly a great deal of quality climbing at Stanage.

My only acoustic is a Fender Telecaster Acoustasonic, which usually gets furrowed brows and hard stares from acoustic purists

I just Googled that and read a UKC article . It is the first time my trad climbing interest has been piqued in about twenty years. I'm glad I've still got a carrier bag of trad stuff in a cupboard.

The VS Challenge is hard work. I tried it 10 years ago not that long after I moved to the area. We did two thirds of it before the heavens opened and trying more routes became unfeasible, but I was getting tired by then. My mate went back and did it with another friend later, but they were both climbing high 7s/8a around then so had power to burn. They still found it tough though and lost a route beyond High Neb and had to come back to it late in the evening and do it last. I've never onsighted harder than HVS on grit so all the routes were near my limit and I've never really felt fit enough to give it another go. I think I've done all but 2 of the 36 routes by now but there are some notorious ones that aren't really VS!

My attempt: https://lightfromthenorth.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-stanage-vs-challenge-two... 

I climbed Inaccessible Crack Direct (VS 4c) last night - not in the VS Challenge but the non direct line is - there is some great VS climbing on Stanage! 

From a purely selfish standpoint, Stanage is crap, don’t even think of bothering to visit

Nice write up Toby, I think we all know you'll be back to try it again at some point! 😉👍

It's 10 years of living 20 minutes away and I haven't felt any great urge to try again. I only climbed Fairy Steps for the first time this spring. That actually turned out not to be terrifying after all. Maybe See Saw will be similar!

Great write up! But I've heard we really mustn't ever climb on wet gritstone as it severely damages it.

When we did it we (well, mainly I) made some mistakes that turned it into a bigger epic than it should have been, but that also made it even more memorable. Firstly, I was doing all the leading, and I definitely didn't have the reserves that your mates had, I was climbing maybe E3 at a stretch at the time, and not on grit. Secondly, we stashed our food at Plantation, not realising that in terms of climbing that's quite far in, as we started at the Popular end. As a result, after doing The Punk (VS 4c)(which is an utter bastard of a climb in any case) I completely crashed and couldn't move.

My climbing partner run to Plantation and brought it over, I downed a few Lucozades and was then back to normal, but by that point the crowds descended and we had to do a LOT of back and forthing to avoid routes that were busy then come back to them, which added *so* much extra time we had not accounted for. We run out of light after doing Count's Crack (VS 4c), and decided to continue for a bit with torches to see how it goes. The climbing was fine, great fun even, but finding some of the routes in the dark, especially the ones on the Causeway, took longer than it took to climb the first half of the challenge put together. We both topped out the last route at 3:15AM, with one failing headtorch left. I ended up leading all routes but two, my partner lead Cleft Wing (VS 5b) and Count's Crack (VS 4c).

We then had to walk all the way from the end of the crag to my car in Plantation, to find that had /apparently/ been locked in, so we napped in the car. At 6:30 the ranger knocked on my window to wake me up:

"You are aware that I had only closed the gate, not locked it, right?"

I was not aware of that.

I did a full write-up of this for my uni climbing club journal, here it is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-d7ELpOUnIJnw4kYvNasT9yFa7dA9YX0A1fBUkK...

See Saw is fine, when you can find it!! A committing leap on above a long drop (protective with tiny Dragonflies), then steady away

I always thought The Punk (VS 4c) was only worth 4b, but I agree that it's an utter bastard of a climb - one of those that's nice to have done. Top end VS (certainly in Stanage terms) regardless of the technical grade.

I'm disappointed in the prosaic answers on this thread. The facts are that the walls between earth and heaven are thin at some places and cliffs especially, Stanage is one, Gogarth main cliff, Glencoe, Pembroke, I could go on...