Angel Share
15th May 2012
Photo by Adam Long
For some reason I failed to mention that a month or so ago I climbed Johnny Dawes’s two amazing slabs; Angel Share and Jumping on a Beetle at Black Rocks.
These we originally climbed as routes and as they have no protection were given pretty high E grades. I wanted to climb these routes ground up with out breaking every bone in my body, so I padded it out- think I had about 8 pads in total.
I have tried to get onto the slab once or twice before but failed to do the hard weird mantle onto a chipped rail start. Some how this session (must have been all the one legged squats I have been doing!) I got up first go. I wasn’t really expecting this and was then faced with climbing Jumping on a Beetle. The first move is the hardest, which is a weird step through once you have trusted your foot you then just carefully climb up some gritty pebbles to the top.
I managed this first go today, so next up was Angel Share. There is literally nothing for your hands on this except a thin seam at the top that is hard to get anything from anyway. So this involved the same mantle start as Jumping and you just had to have an unbelievable amount of trust in feet and pad up the slab.
I think was one of my favourite slabs because you had to think so much about body positioning and weighting your feet correctly, which is what I love and am reasonably good at.
I took quite a few big falls from the top but eventually managed to scrabble my way over the very sloppy top out.
Next up is Velvet Silence the classic of the block…might have to wait till next winter now though.
Contributed by: Katy Whittaker
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