Upper Circle - WCJ
Pragma
Eat The Rich
The Inch Test
Cheedale
Entrée
High Tor
High Torquing
Wil E. Coyote
Pump Out The Squealies
Squeezing Out Sparks
Limelight
Turkey Dip Rocks
Step On It
The Land That Time Forgot
Animal Antics
Long Tor Quarry
Future Primitive
Rubicon
Zeke The Freak
WCJ Cornice
Albattrocitty – Recently done by Neil Bentley. Not using PBF kit, but thought I’d mention the fact it’s been done.
Jon C also mention he intends to do lots more down Cheedale soon, especially at Two Tier.
Not bolt related, but as an outcome of a meeting I had with Henry Folkhard and a guy from the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust last year, a number of Sycamores have been removed at the Embankment down Cheedale. This should hopefully mean that the good routes on the right end of the crag (Barefoot In A Pool Of Sharks, Fishing Without A Licence etc) should actually come into condition this year. There was also talk of removing some Sycamores from below The Nook, a great little crag in desperate need of sorting out (tree clearance and rebolting).
General points
What gets rebolted is largely a function of who is bolting and what they are interested in. Re-bolting is hard, time consuming work and it is therefore not surprising that when people take time and effort to do it they will re-bolt the things they or their friends want to climb. It is conceivable that people might criticise the emphasis of the re-bolting as elitist. All I can say is, if you have routes you want re-bolted, learn to place bolts (contact the BMC and badger them to do a workshop), ask me for the kit and do some bolting. So far the PBF has not done a great deal because we don’t have people with the time, skills and inclination to get bolting. So much so that I have been loath to make any further pleas for donations.
What work we have done has been mostly on relatively hard (upper 7 and 8 ) routes. This is for several reasons:
• Resources, both time and money are very limited.
• The bulk of the PBF funds have come from paypal donations, via email. To a large extend I therefore know who has donated what. A large proportion have been donations from people I have met at one time or another and who are or have been dedicated sport climbers operating in the (relatively) harder grades. I think it only fair that their interests/priorities are served first.
• Gary Gibson does a great job re-equiping the peaks easier routes. In all fairness, unless people come to us with a desire to get involved and use PBF funds on easier routes, if you want to see your money go to re-equiping lower grade routes you may be better off donating to Gary’s fund. This isn't a deliberate policy, it's simply a consequence of who has offered assistance bolting. I'm keen to see routes of all grades re-bolted.
• To a large extent the peak’s best sport routes (using stars in guides as a gauge) are either already fairly recently equipped or in the harder grades. This is partly because over the years Gary and others have put lot’s of work in at crags like Horseshoe, the Embankment, Harpur Hill etc. It is also related to the point below. There is an argument for re-quipping good quality routes before lower quality routes, even if the higher quality route will be less popular due to factors such as location and grade.
• Because many of the peak’s hard steep crags are also it’s dirtiest and wettest, the gear rots faster and the routes are more hassle to re-equip. I would caution anyone to be VERY careful which bolts they trust at the Cheedale Cornice!
Please, if you have time and you know how to bolt, get in touch. The crags are drying off at the moment, now is the time to get involved.
If you don’t know how to bolt but you want to get involved, hassle the BMC for a workshop. Start off by downloading the excellent info on the BMC website here: http://www.thebmc.co.uk/Feature.aspx?id=2411
On a personal note I sometimes feel like an idiot for starting this bolt fund and then not really delivering the good as far as bolts in crags go (although we have raised a reasonable quantity, £1,500 approx, plus successfully bidding for a number of bolts from the BMC for re-equipment of the Cornices). I especially feel bad about accepting the donation of an expensive drill from Neil Foster, which has yet to see much action. I’d like to have the time to set an example by doing more bolting myself. On the other hand I have donated at least as much time as anyone else and a fair bit of money. Really I started this thing as a result of lots of people saying it needed doing. Me and Paul have put in the effort to start this fund, it would now be nice if a few more people threw their hats in the ring. I wish I had the time to do more, but the fact is I don’t, so unless I get some more offers of help the fund is not going to get used properly.
