Spring Climbing at Wintour’s Leap

Another weekend with a forecast for sun and warm temperatures meant another weekend climbing. Last weekend I headed out sport climbing at Tirpentwys on the Saturday and trad climbing at Wyndcliffe on the Sunday. This weekend after a chilled out Saturday sorting stuff out at home I headed to Wintour’s Leap with Andrew today. We had a brilliant day out in the sun, even in the morning before we were in the sun it wasn’t cold.

We started the day by climbing the classic route “The Angel’s Girdle”, due to having already lead the first pitch Andrew got pitches 1&3 and I was lucky enough to get the two main pitches. The route was great with some fantastic exposure, it was just a shame that we were climbing in the shade, however due to it being a traverse across a very popular section of wall it was necessary to start early. It was lucky that we did as there were about 6 other teams at the crag by the time we finished the route. The route was a bit runout in places inbetween pegs, but the climbing was never difficult, apart from one move on the fourth pitch, this was more than made up for by the quality of the climbing on the route and the fantastic view from the belays.

After abseiling off and having some lunch we headed up to the Middle ledge to climb “The Tap”. After some initial route finding difficulties, we located the start of the route and Andrew made quick work of the route. We think he went a little off route towards the top but the description and I don’t think it made much difference. I was very surprised by the climb, the quality of the climbing was great and the gear wasn’t as bad as I was expecting due to the guide book description, however I wasn’t on the sharp end!

After quickly abseiling back down another teams ropes we were soon at the base of the routes again, and looking for shade in order to hide from the sun! Due to it being early in the season I wasn’t brave enough to commit to a bold E1 called “Notung”, due to this we headed over to the Central Bay, where I climbed “Black Wall”. The climbing was good fun on the route and it was much steeper than the other routes we had been climbing which was a bit of a shock to the arms. Low down there was gear if you looked for it but high up gear somewhat ran out, thankfully I realised this was about to happen and managed to lace the route at a weakness with a few threads and a few hexes. Despite all the gear the next few moves felt very bold, the final move was exhilarating as the gear was well below my feet and full commitment was needed. Once I finally summed up the courage to make the move, I was relieved to find a good hold which just left a balancey mantle to get to the end of the hard climbing.

It was a great day out climbing, and now I am starting to feel more current on rock again after a frustrating winter. I am now really looking forward to the summer climbing season with the associated camping trips around the country.