It’s Wednesday. Wednesday is indoor climbing at The Foundry day. Except, the weather is lovely and The Foundry is going to be boiling. So instead we conspired to go out.

Rivelin Edge is a £9 taxi fare from my house, I speed home, packed my bag and orders a taxi. It was about 7:30 by the time we got to the edge, and rather conveniently, the taxi driver offered to pick us up to take us back at 9:30. (Turns out he is was a climber too, Sheffield is like that!). That gave us 2 hours, probably enough time to get 2 leads in! Quickly checking Eastern Grit, we decided to trek up to Birch Buttress, a 10 metre or so buttress on the far left of the edge.

Once we got set up, I started up Birch Crack, a VDiff which warned of needing large gear. It was ok, although there was quite a scary move about half the way up over a chockstone in the crack. At that point, as I probably should have expected, I had nothing big enough to protect anything higher! The set up for the belay was pretty simple though and my partner followed quickly afterwards.

Next up was Birch Buttress, a rather gorgeous looking slab, with a simple looking arete to finish up. The slab was nice and simple (managed to get 3 bits of gear into it) but the first big step of the arete was nervier than expected! I eventually got my act together and finish up. Again my partner cruised up with a grin. That was definitely her sort of climb… and mine too!

We then checked the time and it was 8:45, so we started packing up to head back down. It’s amazing how long a climb takes, time just flies! We were back at the road by 9:15 for our pick up and back at home by 9:45.

In another “small world” moment, I discovered the taxi driver used to own the pizza takeaway at the bottom of my road and had a copy of my bands first album due to knowing the our guitarist! Sheffield!!

(Photo from Rivelin Edge from Subterranean Tourist Board‘s Flickr photostream.)