Thursday 7th , Saturday 9th June. It’s been nearly a year since my last trip down to Yorkshire limestone when I visited Kilnsey to try a very wet Subculture. In the late nineties I was more motivated to visit this area to try the many cutting edge routes at Malham and Kilnsey. At Malham I tried Magnetic Fields, Power Ranger and Transform, at Kilnsey I tried Dalliance and Full Tilt. I made progress on these routes, but never enough to go for a proper redpoint. My desire to do these routes hasn’t changed, rather they now have to compete with my many hard projects in Scotland that some would say are of far higher quality.
On Thursday I headed back down to Yorkshire with Craig Henderson. Firstly we stopped by the Hollywood Bowl to look at a few of Steve Dunning’s new routes from last year. The extension to Kleptomania caught my eye, from the floor at least it looked like the hardest move was in the steep middle section. I guess I’ll find out. We arrived at Kilnsey around 11am after a 7am start, no where near as early as some of my winter climbing starts. Psyched to get started I unpacked my bag to find I’d forgot my harness. Not so easily discouraged I convinced Craig a harness tied from one end of a rope would do for belaying. Craig kindly lent me his for leading. I warmed up on the Directissma which was much better than I remembered it from years back and nicely pumpy.
Gareth Parry attempting True North.
My plan for the day was to try Full Tilt, the first half of True North. Last year I watched Gareth Parry nearly do this falling on the lip. I was especially interested to try his ’shorties’ sequence above the third bolt section that bypassed the impossibly massive reach. Full Tilt was first climbed by Nic Sellars taking in half of Kilnsey’s spectacular North Buttress. Later Tony Mitchell competed the route in its entirety and called it True North. I can understand why Sellars didn’t persist to climb such a stunning line. I’d heard Scot’s based Alan Cassidy and Rob Sutton were making excellent progress toward climbing the route. Malcolm Smith even squeezed in a quick ascent. This was reason enough to try the route to see what these guys are doing.
I dogged up the route to try the section above the third bolt. This turned out to be much more technical than I expected. The sequence moving right was fairly simple. However, this ended in a horrible move slapping left using a small condition dependant sloping pinch with the right hand. I managed to do this once by the end of the day. Time ran out and I couldn’t quite figure out the move above the jug moving right.
Kilnsey chums, Michael, Sophie and Sam.
On Friday I returned with Ian Moody, Sam Clarke, Michael Mullins and girlfriend Sophie, quite a achievement on reducing our carbon footprint. After a late start for the young ones we arrived after twelve to some very humid weather. As it was to hot for making any decent links on Full Tilt so I quickly tried Northern Exposure. I was surprised to find so many good holds on the start of this 12m F8b+. No surprise then that the section above the last bolt was nails, involving a V10 section making a long reach for a small pinch then a heinously high rock over off a quarter joint edge. I couldn’t work out the lower move and fingers weren’t strong enough for the rock over ,so I lowered disappointed. Perhaps the route is still worth a try on a cold day when other routes are wet. In the meantime Sam and others set about redpointing Subculture. I had to keep my temptation at bay to try it myself.
Sam Clarke on the crux of Subculture, Kilnsey, Yorkshire.
Back on Full Tilt I finally figured out the top section and made the link to the lower off. However, I still struggled on the crux middle section and couldn’t make the move again.
Undeterred I pulled the rope and went for a redpoint. Puffing away I managed to make it up to the crux, but had absolutely nothing left to make the crux move. Next time I reckon I’ll try a rock over to move at the undercut more directly to see if that works.
