I was in London in early August, and I hired a guide with Head On Out to climb in the
Peak District!1 This was slightly unhinged – the ride is 3-3.5h, and the total day was ~15h. I woke up at 5am UK time which was 1am NYC time, after my first night in the UK. It was absolutely amazing and I would do it again. Shoutout to Ula for being an amazing guide!

We climbed 7 routes:

I learned quite a few things, which I will now document in excruciating detail.

Language:

There were fewer things here than I thought, but:

  • A cliff is a rock wall by the sea, a rock wall on land is a crag
  • It’s bee-LAY, not buh-LEH
  • I’m still confused on where walking through nature is called a “hike” vs a “walk”. I think it’s not universal?

There’s probably more I missed!

British Trad Grades

If you watch British Trad Climbing videos with pro climbers, you’ll see these climbs where some lunatic is holding onto nothing but friction and crystals, 40’ up, 20’ above their last piece which happens to be 2 skyhooks taped to the rock, looking at a for-sure deck, and just going for it. Maybe, they whip, and their belayer gives them the best belay you’ve ever seen (certainly not an Ondra belay), and gives them a soft deck onto a boulder pad.

You might come away from this thinking that all British trad climbing, or at least Gritstone climbing, is dangerous runouts with no holds. But fear not! There are plenty of well protected climbs, and the trad grading system there has a unique and fascinating system that is meant to encompass the full difficulty of the climb, including both the mental and physical challenge of climbing the route. While Stanage has plenty of opportunities to find yourself wondering what the LD50 of a fall onto grass or stone or your friend is, it also offers plenty of opportunities to climb things that are probably safe to fall on too.

The British trad grade has two parts – an “adjective” and a “technical grade”. The “adjective” will be something like “Hard Severe” (abbreviated HS), then followed by a technical grade, like “4a”. The technical grade is not the French sport grade, even though it’s notated the same way. If you want something that feels safe, a climb where the technical grade is at the upper end of the adjectival grade’s range. If you want a mental challenge, go the opposite direction. As is the case in every grading system, grades are made-up, subjective, and local.

I comfortably climb 5.6PG, and have sent up to 5.9G, in the Gunks. The hardest I lead was HS 4b, which I found to be well within my abilities; it roughly translates to 5.6, which I think seems right.

First, some things that are truly amazing about Stanage Popular!

  • The approach is nothing! You can basically belay from your car! Okay, not quite, but the approach is a chill 10m walk.
  • There is an amazing variety of classic, well-protected trad climbs at an easy grade. If you go somewhere like Indian Creek, you won’t find many classics below 5.10, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a climb below 5.8. Not so with Stanage Popular!
  • The easy climbs were quite steep for the grade! In many crags, the easiest climbs have substantial ledge-fall risk. I felt this was less true with the climbs we did.
  • The grades are a little sandbagged, at least looking at the conversion chart. Not for everyone, but being a Gunkie I take pride in climbing on sandbags.
  • While the crag was busy, it wasn’t overcrowded. There were lots of people around but plenty of classic climbs; enough to share!
  • Gritstone is super grippy! It’s among the best friction I’ve experienced.3
  • The Peak District is a place with a ton of climbing and non-climbing history.
  • The Peak District is apparently the type of area where you frequently meet famous climbers, though we did not meet any.
  • It’s also the type of area where someone who’s been climbing there for 50 years warms up, free solo, on the route next to you.

There were some things I didn’t love

  • The walls are pretty short; roughly 40 feet. Upside: you don’t have to carry much gear up.
  • I found that the climbs were not very sustained. Most climbs had just 1-2 distinct crux moves.
  • While it didn’t seem like the classics had loose rocks that would be pulled down by climbers, many sections provided pro only in hollow sounding cracks. Eek. Remember to place nuts not cams when the rock is questionable!

Some just generally interesting things:

  • The Eastern Grit guidebook quality scale is a 0-3 star scale, unlike the Mountain Project 0-4 star scale. Some 3 star climbs are marked “Top 50 Classic”. I have no idea if there are only 50 such climbs.
  • My Gunks-tuned route reading deceived me – don’t believe the horizontals! They’re usually rounded, making them slopey and too flaring for pro. Every so often they’re good though, sometimes hiding great buckets!
  • We got lucky with a beautiful dry day4, but the British Isles are famously rainy. Local climbers need to be well versed in climbing on wet rock, or accept they’ll rarely get to climb.
  • Apparently the peak district is a popular hiking spot too. We saw a lot of people out for a stroll on top of the cliff, including some folks there for a birthday party

Climbing technical skills

The Brits only use tube-style devices5 for trad climbing. My guide prohibited me from using an ABD, and no one at the crag one using an ABD. I think this actually makes a lot of sense based on the climbing I saw.

For belaying the leader, the typical protection is more marginal than I’ve seen at other crags. The protection on the climbs we chose was certainly ample (G/PG), but many of the cam placements were shallow or flaring. Nuts and hexes often provided more secure options. As far as I know, gritsone is not soft like US desert sandstone, but there are many hollow flakes that provide the only protection options. I think because of this, the Brits believe that any force reduction is worthwhile, and therefore insist on tube-style devices.

In many instructional videos from the UK, I had seen people belaying from the top with an indirect belay, and always wondered why the UK was so dedicated to indirect belay. US and Canadian climbing guides have taught me to use direct belay. The exception is when the anchor is marginal, in which case the indirect belay is the right tool. So why do the Brits use indirect belay by default? Well, after trying to build some anchors, I can confirm most of the anchors are marginal: there are zero trees to anchor off of, and many of the best anchor options end up being questionable boulders. With the indirect belay, the friction of your body against the grippy rock reduces the forces on the anchor, and the use of a tube-style device allows slippage for even more force reduction.

Things I learned about England

I was a little surprised by how big England is. Maybe I shouldn’t have been! I thought surely all of England is like a 2 hour drive from London. Nay.

I learned that Sheffield is quite close to the Peak District. Sheffield was home to Mousehole Forge, which manufactured some great anvils way back when.6 Is anything left? I would love to see where they were manufactured!

Bad news for anyone who is beloved by biting insects: the midges aren’t isolated to Scotland. They’re in England and Wales too. Yuck. They didn’t seem as bad as the Scottish midges I’ve experienced before. But I still had many bites to contend with the next day. Apparently “Smidge” is actually decently effective at dealing with midges. I wish I’d put more on. Anthisan was available at a pharmacy for sweet, sweet itch relief.

What’s next?

Ula said that the sea cliffs in Wales have some of the best climbing in the UK. Maybe on my next UK trip I’ll have to head there. Plus apparently south Wales has no midges, which sounds epic.

Footnotes

  1. They provide an awesome service! Car pickup in London, transport to the crag, 1-1 instruction with a guide. ↩

  2. Amazingly, every other route we did was on Mountain Project. I had to get my ticks in, so I got to submit my first route to Mountain Project. ↩

  3. England is facing one of its biggest droughts in recent history. The whole countryside is straw-colored where it should be grassy-green ↩

  4. The Powerlinez’s granitic gneiss is even grippier, but it’s so grippy it tears all your skin off. ↩

  5. Like the Black Diamond ATC or Petzl Reverso ↩

  6. My second anvil (first “real” anvil) was a Mousehole. Sadly it was stolen in 2020. ↩