Present! - Dan O'Brien (M), Ian Crook (M), James Hall (G) Alex Greenney (G)

Bouldering Meets in Winter - A Cautionary Tale...

To cut a long story short, the weather has been rubbish since Christmas...  I'm sure some of you will have noticed.  Cratcliffe, on the 3rd January, was a complete wash-out so we agreed via Scribble to meet at the new bouldering centre in Trafford Park called the Depot.  In terms of scale, the place has about 20-times the wall-area for bouldering compared to AWCC or MCC and about three times the wall-space of Rock-Over.  It's huge.  The quality of the route-setting was very good and the chocolate brownies on sale from the cafe excellent.

We spent around 4-hours there and didn't really scratch the surface.

The excellent and quick-drying venue of Cratcliffe Tor is the choice for the first meet of the year.

It shares a hill-top with Robin Hood’s Stride and is home to some of the Peak District’s best bouldering.  The irresistible combination of largely flat landings and sunny aspect make this an excellent choice for a (likely) chilly January Sunday.  I’ll be there from 10:30am and will start around the lower slabs on Robin Hood’s Stride (in try bouldering style this is the first boulders you get to…)  After we’ve had our fill of RHS then we’ll wander over to the Cratcliffe hilltop and while-away the afternoon until its time to head to the pub.

This is an ideal place to experience gritstone bouldering with a significant number of the problems in the lower and middle grades.  For the hard-core amongst us there is also some much harder stuff to attempt/walk-past.

I expect to see a good turnout as you will all have had a couple of days to get over the new-year hangover… So come on; wrap up warm, don your beanie and down jacket, fill the thermos and lets start the year in style!