Southstone rock: a local cliff for local climbers

If you don't live in Worcestershire and climb the following is likely to be of very little interest. You have been warned!

Frost crystals on the walk up to Southstone

Southstone Rock (pdf of the guide available here for a quid) has a bit of a shitty reputation even amongst local climbers - it is definitely not somewhere you would recommend climbers travel to visit, but it is a geographic oddity - flowstone limestone popping up in an odd place. It has also always been a spooky place as well - deep in dark wood, with strange religious or perhaps even occult paraphernalia left in one of the caves when I first went there some decades back. A place where an older England; of fear and superstition, brutality and ignorance, feels not so far away. The next steep stream system down the valley is called "the Hell Hole" according to the OS map.

Southstone's main face and the left-hand subsidiary buttress

Anyway I walked past the cliff yesterday and was surprised to see that tree clearance had taken away much of the 'deep, dark woods' feel, and a lot more light will now be falling on the cliff.

The main face containing the crag 'classic', Madonna's Groove, HVS 5a

The rock is still its old swiss-cheese-am-I-really-brave-enough-to-put-my-hand-into-that-deep-pocket?-self that Southstone veterans will appreciate, but at least when some previously unknown-to-science deadly spider bites you, you can fall off and lay there gasping for your last breath in warm sunshine rather than the deep, forest shadows. So that is nice...

A far left buttress with obvious overhanging bouldering potential

Years ago I soloed and recorded a bunch of micro routes there, normally climbing up to where I could grab some kind of tree at the top, stick a sling around it and then abseil back down. Re-visiting the cliff now, most of these now look to my contemporary eye as obvious, easy, highball boulder problems. There are also many buttresses that are not particularly high that look to offer huge amounts of bouldering potential.

The back wall in the 'canyon' - potential short sports routes using natural threads

So I reckon any adventurous boulderers in the West Midlands, looking for first ascents, could do a lot worse than bring their pads, brushes and some sturdy gardening equipment to Southstone in the spring time.

Extreme weather warning!

I'm in England and there is an inch or so of snow, so of course all blogs posts will be delayed. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and completely unnecessary Wire references.

Happy Christmas Y'all!

When the North East wind doth blow there shall be a wee bit of snow and bloody Baltic temperatures!

Back in da' rather bucolic hood.

Ramblin' wid my homies.

Yo! Omar comin'! OMAR COMIN'!!!

Finland, NATO and terrorists

I spent a lot of time at the start of week commenting on the Stockholm terrorist attack to the Finnish media. Of course they all ask the unanswerable questions like "will there be a terrorist attack here?" For various reasons my answer has evolved to "not likely, but you can't say that it is impossible"; so it was quite surprising to hear the Finnish president say mid-week that it is only a matter of time before there is a terrorist attack in Finland. But by the end of the week, YLE reports the government doesn't agree with the President and is saying that the risk of terrorism is low, although they note that:

"...the embassies of large Nato members may become terrorist targets"

Which is odd, considering that whole not-being-a-NATO-member-saves-you-from-the-terrible-terrorists thing doesn't seem to be working so well for Sweden currently.

Gaiter-haters

All you gaiter-haters out there - yo! You know who you are! With your little elastic boot straps on your softshells - thinking you look sooooo dope, sooooo fly. Well you don't, cuz'. You look like you've got wet feet, fool. So to all my nylon lower legged homies out there - still rockin' it old school - this one is for you. You know what time it is - dry feet time!

Sore shoulders

But some good climbing today. Thanks to Diana and Toni for coming out; Diana for belaying and Toni for getting photos for an upcoming review. Below is some geezer in posh coat quite scared on his first steep bit of ice of the winter!

Glass houses, stones and all that.

Republican Congressman Peter King is very very angry, and thinks that Wikileaks should be classified as terrorists. It's worth listening to Mr King as he knows a lot about terrorists, after all for many years he vocally supported one terrorist group and was involved in one of its overseas support organisations that according to the the US and UK government channelled money to that terrorist group for weapons. In fact, Mr. King has been "paling around with terrorists" -drinking in pubs with them for example- probably more than any other US politicians, so should know a thing or two about them.

Tracks in the snow

Some pictures taken on brief stroll on snowshoes this afternoon in my local area.

Getting the snowshoes out for the first time this year.

The snow isn't actually that deep but the snowshoes helps limit how much goes into your boots.

Low winter sun, - 15 at lunchtime.

Snow in the birch scrub.

The first skiers have been out but not much base yet.

It would be nice if these were Lynx tracks but it was probably just a fox.

Hopperty-hop. Hare tracks.

I wasn't quite sure what had been digging in the snow here, perhaps a dog or a fox looking for a mouse under the snow?

Is it everywhere in the world that farmers feel they have right to chuck all their broken machinery into the corner of fields and leave it there?

First Ice

 The frost that started last week, carried on all this week - with many parts of Finland recording some of the coldest November weather for decades and in a few cases, a century. On Tuesday the wind to whipped up and brought more snow, but it was still pretty cold and the snow was light and feathery meaning a blizzard all day as the wind blasted it about. The trams were all in a total mess after a crash so I ended up having to walk the last coupled of kms to work.

The height of the storm corresponded with the office Christmas party that evening. This turned walking from the restaurant to the bar afterwards into something of an epic Arctic style expedition. Helsinki normally looks pretty and seasonal in the snow, but that night it just looked wild.

Waiting for the bus home was character building. Fortunately Helsinki buses are pretty good at running to timetable so as long as you know when the last one leaves, you can minimise your time standing outside at the stop!

But by the end of the week the winds had died away, the sky cleared and the temperature dropped further.

Friday morning dawn (which means 8.30 at this time of the year!)

 So once the weekend arrived it was time to go ice climbing. I climbed with Sari, the two Janis and Ville. We started off trying Nuuksionpää. The easy left hand line was OK and I led it placing a few screws. There was less ice on the upper section than normal, so that was less pleasant climbing not very safe frozen vegetation rather than ice.

Placing my first ice screw of the winter 10/11!

Jani tries the main wall.

The main wall at Nuuksionpää isn't well formed yet (see the photo of Jani climbing). Jani tried leading it, but there was no protection possible yet. We all top-roped a couple of lines though.

Ville at Kauhala

After that we drove round to Kauhala. The left-hand fall was climbable and I felt the ice was thick enough to happily solo it a couple of times. The others put a rope down it and did a couple of different lines.

Heels down Sari!

 I was climbing in the Climbing Technology Nupste crampons that I'm reviewing for UKClimbing. They aren't really designed as a steep ice crampon, more of an all-round mountaineering crampon. You have to really push your heels down to get the secondary points to engage, but actually that makes you focus on your feet in a positive way. So, with that in mind, Sari then had to put up with me continually reminding her to keep her heels down to get her crampons to engage better. I'm sure I would make a really tedious instructor... sorry mate!

A chilly stroll home