New Fleswick Trio

Written by Greg Chapman Monday, 08 August 2011 20:15

I have picked off a few more decent lines at St. Bees, again in and around the Fleswick Bay area. The most notable new addition is a direct ascent of the high undercut arête project, on the crag a third of the way along the beach – marked as ‘project 34’ on page 162 of the Lakes Rockfax Bouldering guide. I climbed this a few years back coming in from a ledge to the side of the arête, but always felt this seemed a bit of a copout and didn’t do the line justice. Being somewhat a connoisseur of running or static jump problems, I reckoned it could be done via a well timed spring for the holds at the base of the arête, and this is how I eventually climbed the problem. Whilst gaining the distance to the arête is straightforward enough, actually latching what are awkwardly angled holds is where the real difficulty lies. Once on the arête a number of taxing moves still remain, and getting your toes on to the lip of the roof is probably the overall crux, before a couple more balancy, but more straightforward moves give access to the positive top ledge. To fit in with the sea monster moniker theme, seen in some in the of the best problems on the headland (The Kraken, Godzilla etc.), I have christened this great beast Giganto (after the Marvel comic creature), and it goes at around 7c/V9ish.

Image right: Giganto, 7c/V9.

The next new problem to report is another line marked as a project in the Lakes Rockfax Bouldering guide – ‘project 43’ on page 163. This climbs the left side of the appealing scoop using a short seam of poor horizontal finger edges, just above head height. To start, match the edges and use one of a number of decent footholds to pull on and stab into a deep, generous mono just above the starting holds. Adjust your feet and move up and right to finish at reasonable holds on the ledge. This is Tokamak, and in contrast to the previous climb, is a short sharp 7c/V9.

Image below: JET Fusion, 7b+/V8.

Finally, at the Fleswick Bay Boulders, I climbed the super burly southern end of Begga’s Boulder from sitting. This stood out as an obvious challenge the first time I discovered the circuit, but I had written it off as too hard. This was a misguided first appraisal, as on taking a proper look I found it went down pretty quickly - albeit via some stomach churning brutality - at the relatively amenable grade of 7b+/V8, to leave JET Fusion.

With regards to the shifting level of the beach; this may have some small effect on starting both Tokamak and Giganto, although I have rarely seen the beach altered in level enough to cause too much of an issue, particularly outside the mid winter months. That said, if the beach level was sufficiently high that you could reach the "deep generous mono" on Tokamak, from the ground, it would negate most of the difficulty.