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Next Peak Rock (ish) question

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So, while enjoying PR I had cause to look in the Stoney guidebook, and it lists Jack Street's great routes at the crag as including something called Sycamore Crack. I've never heard of this route and nor has my guide or the logbook here.

Is that because it fell down, or what? Anyone know? Al?

jcm
 Chris Craggs Global Crag Moderator 02 Feb 2014
In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

It was in the quarry, the Sycamore grew in front of Brown Corner and the route climbed the tree and then the wall left of the corner, probably the upper section on Millionaire Touch.

Don't know when/why the tree was cut down, maybe when the electricity station was built/extended.


Chris
 Mick Ward 02 Feb 2014
In reply to Chris Craggs:

Chris, wasn't it supposed to have had Dutch Elm Disease? Late '70s demise??

Mick
 Chris Craggs Global Crag Moderator 02 Feb 2014
In reply to Mick Ward:

Yes, that rings a bell - meaning it wasn't a sycamore at all!


Chris
 Iain Peters 02 Feb 2014
In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I don't know anything about this route but sycamores are prone to SBD, Sooty Bark Disease which has a similar effect to Dutch Elm Disease. It thrives after long hot summers, when the trees suffer from groundwater levels dropping. Perhaps the drought of '76 may have been the cause?
 Mick Ward 02 Feb 2014
In reply to Chris Craggs:

Didn't Jack Street jump into it? Somebody should have told him it wasn't a sycamore. Honestly, people are just so irresponsible.

Mick
 Mick Ward 02 Feb 2014
In reply to Iain Peters:

Sooty Bark's rather lovely (though disease isn't and probably SBD isn't). But it's a bit like Jam Butty Mines Crack...

Mick
 Chris Craggs Global Crag Moderator 02 Feb 2014
In reply to Mick Ward:

There was also a route called The Hex somewhere round there - long before Hexes came into being! I think they are all listed in Birtles' ancient Stoney guidebook, which I don't have here,


Chris
 jon 02 Feb 2014
In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Pah!
Next...
 Ian Parsons 02 Feb 2014
In reply to Chris Craggs:

Described as the upper wall just right of Jasper, either gained from the tree (trees?) or up the wall using 5 or 6 pegs (now lower section of Millionaire Touch, presumably). From the tree it traversed left for 15 feet and climbed the wall above. Top section of Oliver, maybe? I think that the traverse, Icarus, used the tree as a belay ledge at that level as well.
 Phil Kelly 02 Feb 2014
In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

There are in fact a few routes documented in the Cioch Club logbooks, some of which are not in the guides.

This is what was written by members of the club in the mid 1980s:

May 1965 - Sycamore Crack - Jack Street
A good effort but poor tree spotting - not a sycamore! It died of dutch elm disease on 1983.

 Al Evans 03 Feb 2014
In reply to Phil Kelly:

I remember Sycamore Crack, Jack is much better with Ornithology than he is with Botany. For a time The Hex was considered the hardest route at Stoney. Actually Phil if I had to criticise Peak Rock, I would say Jack Streets contribution to Peak climbing was a bit understated. For instance he did loads of early or second ascents on the top routes on grit and cut down the aid on loads of routes on limestone. I remember one memorable day we nearly succeeded in free climbing Fortress Wall way before the day of Lyme Crime, but Jack wouldn't make a fuss of it because we still used a couple of pegs.
 Graham Hoey 04 Feb 2014
In reply to Al Evans:

I agree with you Al, Boatpushers Wall has been long underated, but if nobody tells us... We did interview Jack (who is obviously too modest) and a lot of the Cioch!

I did try to make amends in an article in Climber about top extremes on limestone last year wher Jack got a good write-up!

cheers
Graham
 Si dH 05 Feb 2014
In reply to Graham Hoey:

If it's any consolation, the history of the Cioch Club and Street (at Stoney) was one of the things I really learnt about for the first time from reading PR...so even if their contribution elsewhere wasn't represented fully, it still gave me as a reader a strong impression of their contribution to Peak climbing as a whole.
One of the things PR did for me was open my eyes to a lot of different activists over the years who made outstanding contributions, and the ways in which they did them...rather than just the small number of 'superstars' for want of a better term - Brown, Whillans, Dawes etc. Brilliant book Graham.
 Mick Ward 05 Feb 2014
In reply to Si dH:

> One of the things PR did for me was open my eyes to a lot of different activists over the years who made outstanding contributions, and the ways in which they did them...rather than just the small number of 'superstars'...

That's exactly what we all aimed at - so thanks! There have always been 'unsung heroes' out there who just got on with the job. That's not to suggest the 'superstars' were blatant self-promoters. Some of them simply did routes which caught the public imagination whereas other routes which didn't catch the public imagination went relatively unknown. The vagaries of fate...

Anyway, glad you liked Peak Rock.

Mick

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