UKC

Went to the new Sheffield wall over the weekend. Surprised there hasn't been much talk about it on here (unless my search function don't work)

My thoughts

It was cold inside

It was good and well worth a visit

The featured wall is very rough I have "Grit" rash to prove it

The roof is a lot harder and longer than it looks from the floor, did the white route along the left (easiest line) and it was brilliant, heel hooking along in space for a long way, quite a feeling of exposure for an indoor route


I enjoyed the featured walls a lot but wondered why they had no grades on, my best guess on the ones I did from left to right

Left edge layback 6a+
Tufa wall 5+
Cracks on right wall 6a
Rightmost groove 6b+

Anyone got any thoughts on them?

Also enjoyed the auto belays, I was with an odd numbered group of people and they meant one of us could fill in waiting time by popping onto one of them, only down side to them was there was no chance to work a route if you fell off you start heading down!

All in all well worth the trip up for us, nice easy access from the motorway, far better for an out of town visitor to get to than either The Edge or Foundry

In reply to NIGBEE: Big post on it a bit further down the forum, though it's pretty dead now:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=565761

My opinions in brief: I liked it, bouldering was a bit naff though.

In reply to NIGBEE:
I know what you mean about the featured prow, I almost wished I'd taped up for the jamming cracks.

My opinion in brief: Very impressed overall, but a tad underwhelmed by the route setting. (Mostly on a par with the Foundry at it's worst, not in the same league as the Foundry at it's best.)

In reply to Kieran_John:

Ah no "awesome" in the title, missed that, cheers

In reply to NIGBEE: I thought the boulder area was short of a slab or two but otherwise a good day out, I imagine it's going to be very cold in there over winter though!

In reply to NIGBEE:

My wife and I went down a couple of weekends ago and really liked it. I thought it was the best indoor wall I've been to in the UK. We only spent a day there but of the routes I climbed I thought the setting was pretty good and the walls were of course very impressive.

I had the opposite experience on the roof. I only did the green which was perhaps the second easiest line, but I thought it felt much more straight forward then I expected and the grade felt very soft compared to the only other wall where I've climbed lines of a similar length and steepness (Helsinki).

It's an hours drive for us, but I imagine we'll head there occasionally as it is significantly better than our local walls for roped climbing. I didn't do anything on the featured walls, but really enjoyed the slabs adjacent to them.