|| Cooler but warming || Decent conditions, for now... ||

|| Focus On... ||

Tiny Steps

Reaching up to full stretch, the flat edge of the shelf comes to hand. It’ll have to do. A few swipes back and forth to clear it of dust and we’re set. Fatigue has reduced what in normal circumstances would be instinctive to a set of awkward desperate lurches, each one requiring a few deep breaths and a concerted effort, aware of the need to conserve some strength for what was still to come. In one sense it’s good that there’s nobody here to see this. Two hours to get to this point, all eggs in this basket now. The other hand turns, placed at chest level, arm upended, palm flat and braced ready to push down. A mental note is made to keep the bottom hand in line vertically with the top hand, lest a torque is imparted at the moment of truth to throw me off. A laboured udge brings the opposite foot alongside the bottom hand, along with a wave of pain and nausea. It passes, and I breathe again and weigh up my options a final time. Once I go for it and initiate the push with the bottom hand, the simultaneous pull with the top hand, and what push I can muster from the opposite leg, where am I going to put the other foot? Can I actually put weight through the other leg without blacking out? The thought of having to reverse out of this position now and give up is soul destroying. In too deep now, nagging doubts about whether or not that single solitary screw will hold are pushed aside again.

One final deep breath, an undignified power-scream to pull to standing, a new wave of pain hits harder than before, at least both legs are straight now while I try not to throw up. The screw held. I don’t suppose the previous owner of our house was expecting this to have to do more than stop a few dozen paperbacks from toppling over, but the bookcase held steadfast, and I was upright. They must have put a proper rawlplug in. I glance across the room, shaken and exhausted, now making plans for how to collapse onto the sofa opposite while riding out another wave of pain. If I dropped again onto the hard wood flooring it would all have been for nothing, and I knew it would still be a couple of hours before I would be found. At this point I concluded this was not the early summer project I was expecting to be heading into limestone season with. A “Touching The Void” for the Beastmaker generation.

Spring is usually my favourite climbing time of the year. In fact it’s my favourite time of the year full stop, usually. Lengthening days, the birds singing, the perfect mix of limestone days and gritstone evenings. Expectation hanging heavy in the air, maybe putting a few old projects to bed, with the nagging doubts about last seasons’s failures dulled by the passing months. Or maybe making use of the better weather and longer daylight to head further afield.

This is how spring normally goes, how it’s supposed to go; a waft of wild garlic carried down the dale on the river breeze. Benchmarks repeated, the barometer recalibrated. Good banter at the Tor. Familiar faces, back again. Stone is here with that same weird blue PVC gym mat. Ted edging with glacier-like inevitability towards the belay on Evolution. Wide-eyed and fresh-faced owners of immaculately clean pads spill four-deep out of a hatchback, first time bouldering outside, looking for the easy “V7s”, never to be seen again. A dance as old as time itself.

So I fully expected to be ploughing into limestone season with renewed vigour, soon to be announcing victories on the rock with cryptic hard-to-parse Instagram captions like “an indifferent cacophony of synergies pleads opaque release from a silent exile” and that sort of thing. But it didn’t really pan out like that.

Joy stripped from everything, a numb stasis of tedium, disconnected from the seasons, imagination blanked, brain addled from the chronic throb of raging discomfort. A long protracted siege to just keep turning the page on the calendar. It was worse than aerocap training. If I had wanted this sort of empty yawning void of an existence I’d have taken up sport climbing.

The victories of early summer this year did eventually come, and when they did they were more along the lines of (but not limited to): successfully shuffling across the bedroom carpet on two feet, unaided. This was a euphoric emotionally-charged ordeal the like of which I have rarely experienced. Childbirth perhaps, or imagine you’d just done on a new Pinches Wall eliminate where you use the same holds you’ve used before but with the opposite hands. That’s the level of endorphin release we’re talking about here. Good times. What remains was just the job of putting one foot in front of the other, literally and metaphorically.

Light at the end of the tunnel || The Schoolroom

Anyway, just when I’m thinking of the gentlest way to tell the kids we’re cancelling France this summer and booking somewhere within walking distance of our house, a corner is turned and some degree of normality is gradually clawed back. A triumph of the human spirit, or a lucky prescription for once? Either way, you take the wins when they come. And one thing I’ll say about debilitating health problems is, when they ease up, they genuinely allow you to access that ego-free climbing ideal that we all say we already exist in; where grades are irrelevant and we’re just doing it for the joy of movement. Even if that movement is just some anonymous Moonboard problem, or limping up 20 Foot Crack at Burbage because that’s as far as you can bear to drive, it all counts.

TL;DR - I’ve never before been so appreciative of being able to dump a load of dusty bouldering pads back into the flattened-down rear seats of the car after a session desperately trying to dry permanently seeping holds with bits of bogroll in the time-honoured fashion. Watching the limestone dust eventually settle all over the dashboard, noting that I might have to clean the car this year (whether it needs it or not!). Fingertips feeling like they’ve just been beaten with one of those steak tenderising hammers, mentally calculating how soon I can come back for more of the same.

If you’ve sat through this one, thanks for bearing with me. And I hope this in some way goes to explain the radio silence we’ve been observing here on Pennine Lines in recent weeks. You might think a month or two of chronic pain and being “clinically fed up” would be a great chance to catch up on some reading, or write that book you’ve been putting off, or at least bank a few blog posts. Well it turns out it isn’t. Good intentions are swept aside by a sort of paralysis of creativity which it’s hard to break out of. And to be honest I’ve been putting this one off lest I tempt fate by declaring we’re “back in the game”, but that’s the intention, all being well. Hopefully see you out at the crags again.

|| Rockfax Yorkshire Bouldering ||

The Rockfax Yorkshire Bouldering project is something I’ve still be able to chip away at - and appropriate metaphor perhaps given one of the recent crags added to Rockfax Digital is Caley, alongside Crookrise, just in time to get training now for the grit season. Check them out if you have the app, all the clicks add up and they keep paying for my prescription anti-inflammatories. There’s also a quick Caley destination guide here on UKC. Also keep your eyes peeled for more crags coming online later in the year - next up should be some of the Calderdale areas - including Widdop, Mytholm, Scout and Scout Hut.