Drytooling - White Goods

With a serious lack of winter going on in the UK at the moment, myself and Martin decided to try and cure our cravings of swinging tools by heading down to White Goods just outside of Ruthin for some drytooling. We used the excellent topo that can be found on Ramon's website here, although I believe that it's also covered to a degree in the 1988 Welsh Winter Climbs guidebook by Cicerone. The forecast was poor and it rained all the way from Tarleton to the crag but we knew that despite the possibility of us not actually managing to send many lines we'd be able to suss out the place for a future visit. The description in Ramon's guide is excellent and we found the different sectors without problem.

Martin on Adams.

I've only ever climbed drytooling M-grade climbs once before when I was climbing in Canada, and Martin's only got Scottish winter experience so only having a rough idea of what they equate to or what we were capable of we were quite conservative with our route choice and decided to start on Adams M5 which after a a fairly steep pull off the ground to a ledge follows a crack to a lower off at the top. I led the pitch and really enjoyed it, despite the terrible weather. There was a mixture of hooking and torquing up the crack and some of it required some careful foot work. It felt good to be on some steep technical mixed ground again. Martin then followed me up but by the time he was back down we were both, despite our three figure Gore-Tex jackets soaked to the skin in the torrential rain so we decided to bail.

Martin loving the hooks.

On the way home we had browse in the Snow & Rock on the Wirral before a nice long session at Awesome Walls Liverpool, continuing the theme of the day by using there new drytooling wall as well as some standard climbing. It was quite a way to drive for one route, but it was a lot of fun and had it not of been for the weather I think we would of quite a bit more done. We'll definitely be back, with a better forecast and I'd be keen to have a crack at some of the harder lines.