Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Adventure Time part 2

Part 2 of my 'adventure break' was something of mixed success or rather a mixed disaster. Things started well with a return to Ladram Bay with Jon and a mighty new route on the Lost World stack.Realistically it's probably not the best route in the world. In fact it's probably the second worst.It did have a nice finishing mud arete thoughAnd some entertaining gear - this is part of the belay - there was no crack before I placed the warthog.How we laughed...Then after a very long drive we arrived at Beachy Head which amongst the memorials for jumpers is one of the UK's greatest lines - Monster Crack.Having climbed Monster Crack and most of Sunday Sport (Beachy Head's hardest route) I thought I had the hang of the place. But trying to be cautious I thought I'd do the shorter Albino or Vaginof - the two grooves on the far right of this shot (Monster Crack is far left).
After a long time and lots of collapsing brain cells and chalk I failed on both lines - I wasn't happy!
We then failed on the mile long walk out, as the tide was in. To escape we climbed the world's worst route (so bad there are no photos) - 450ft of 70 degree grass topped by 15ft of mud. At least I thought things couldn't possibly get worse...
...unfortunately they could when our planned third day of adventure ended shortly after breakfast when I filled Jon's diesel car up with petrol. It was time to give up before I really got us into trouble.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Ian. As i see you would love to climb in the fantastic sea cliffs of Portugal. We have also good rock, do.

Nice loose adventures!

Paulo Roxo

Lee Harrison said...

Hi Ian,

I do a lot of chalk climbing at this time of year in Dover and Saltdean. I've just read this post and am inspired to pay a visit to Devon. Are the Ladram Bay stacks generally best suited to Dover-style climbing and protection in spite of being Sandstone?

Cheers,
Lee

Ian Parnell said...

Lee, Ladram isn't great for ice axe stuff, - the 'rock' is much more crumbly than chalk and just breaks away in clods. Where it is more solid it's much better as a super adventurous rock climbing spot - having said that the occasional use of an axe axe could be helpful - I think a pitch on The Reddlemen on the main cliff is a full ice axe thing.