Giveaway Project of the Month - March

Things are looking up in North Wales, The sun is shining and the clocks have gone forward. The winter's seepage is slowing and the summer's seepage has yet to begin. Not been out much yet but I managed twice in a month which is a 100 percent improvement. Local giveaway's are in the pipeline, but for today we're back on St Mary's in the shadows of the twin otters.

This is Runway Buttress, predictably at the end of the islands airport runway. Its about 15 meters high and has some evil jamming traverses. Only one route so far; "Just like Jackie Chan" an HVS that bounces up the left arete. The Project in question is the central arete which I top roped back in the day to the flared break. It involves a cool 6a dyno and felt about E2 to the break. With a brush it should then push through the bulge via the rounded flake. Really class line.

Enjoy

Once were young

A younger hairier more naive version of myself on the first ascent of the Excoriator. This was one of the first handful of new routes I'd done In the Isles of Scilly. It was here I was bitten by the new routing bug, and here that I learnt that long sleeve tops were useful for off widths.
Its basically a highball on a large marble shapped 30ft boulder between the lighthouse and the giants castle at Peninnis. The ear shaped flake starts at shoulder height and requires tenuous laybacking until the flake fats up to sloper hell and a rockover onto scissored armbars begins the squirming. I think being unaware of bouldering nuance at the time I just reckoned it HVS 5c.
The thing that makes St Mary's special is the rock is so scoured by the elements that the lines are often laid bare and glaring at you. relegating you to the position of a slightly sticky kid in a sweet shop.
That's not to say that the lichen and occasional scrattly patina doesn't lend spice to the ground up experience..

Giveaway Project of The Month - February

It was with  warm fuzzy feelings of reminiscence that I saw that Climber ran an article on the Isles of Scilly. Between 98 and 2002 I spent quite a lot of time out there, as my main climbing partner at the time got the job of Island bobby. Much fun was had, and with so few established routes, you could pretty much new route all day. We eventually recorded this info in the black folder mentioned in the article. This was when Mat was busy and at a loose end, I photo'd all the rocks on St Mary's, and printed a double copy, one for the island, one for me.

As its a bit wet at the moment, and I certainly am longing for spring, I thought I'd do a few giveaway's and posts involving the remarkable rocks of St Mary's.

Today's Giveaway; This is the inlet side of Peninnis head. The massive overhang is the unclimbed Monks Cowl. This is a fairly well known LGP that, due to the access to the Island remains just that.There's also the fact that if you fall off, you'd be choppered back to the mainland, and all your stuff would be stuck out on the island....




























However, this months giveaway refers to the top left rocks that look like the dragon from Neverending story. I attempted to climb this and protected it by lassoing the nose with a rope, anchoring it down either side with Cam's and tensioning the rope with a alpine butterfly on the ledge as a runner. I got this Idea from a photo of Ben Bransby in some mag, doing the same thing. Thus preserving my onsight ethic I boasted at the time. I made it direct to the ledge, clipped the butterfly and pushed on up the right arete to try to gain the offwidth runnel above. Unfortunately, due to my ground up approach, I hadn't scrubbed the scrattle off the rock (these weird shapes are due to salt water and wind erosion of the granite) The feeling of bearhugging marbles above a boingy runner on a sloping ledge was not pleasant, and I retreated back to the nose. From here I climbed up a bit of the diff chimney to the right, placed gear, and traversed back into the offwidth runnel to finish.
A bodge basically.
So anyone visiting and climbing on the Island is very welcome to put things right. I suggest an abb and scrub first though.

Enjoy