[Fiend]

What is the UKB massive's thoughts on this elusive crag?? Went up there today with a team of whiney little bitches good mates, and there was a distinctly mixed response to the crag. It was a glorious day and the crag was in good condition but there was a general disapproval of the amount of highballs (apart from a few of us who got stuck in and relished it), and the seeming overratedness and undergradedness of the main bouldering on the far left.

Any thoughts and anything obvious we missed??

[butters]

Speaking as one of the whiney little bitches - I have no great issue with a 30+ minute walk in and a bit of bog trotting but put simply it was a bad choice as far as I was concerned. I don't highball and I don't climb at any great grade (low Font 6's) but that said I don't expect to have the world revolve around my special lack of talent and so I am quite prepared to go off and do stuff on my own. To do that though I would like to have the choice of a few decent problems\lines to go at with a half decent landing - something that Callerhues has a distinct lack of in my opinion.

It is a nice crag, stunning views and the like but it is a crag that is ideally suited to a team who are comfortable highballing and can cope with problems that are possibly a bit harder than the grade given in the guide a fair way off the deck - something I am patently not.

[Fiend]

I know Butters, I'm not dissing Team Bitch, it's a pity you didn't enjoy it as the guide did seem to show plenty to go at.

I'm just wondering what other people who have been have made of it....and is the guide off the mark....

[butters]

Didn't read it as dissing mate - I just missed off a  after the "Speaking as one of the whiney little bitches" comment which altered the tone of my reply in a way I didn't intend.

Anyway that's enough from me - I will let the topic get back on track

[Paul B]

I think I popped up here last year for the first time and had similar mixed thoughts.

The left hand end wasn't as good as its hyped to be.

Crouching the Mahogany is fantastic, the slabs on the obvious shielf similarily. Dans 7c+ thing (the name involves eyes) looked fantastic but was soaking wet.

The rest of the routes/problems are quite fun highballs/solo's depending on which guidebook you believe to be appropriate. One particularly good arete rounded off at the top leaving you unnervingly high with a singly chickenhead on an elephants rear to top out on, exciting stuff at a lowly grade.

It was quite dirty when we went up there yet I was reluctant to brush anything as even a lapis made things look distinctly yellow when used lightly.

[Bonjoy]

I’ve never been but would love to. From viewing the guide though I’ve always had it pegged as a brilliant highballing venue with some scrappy lowballing on the wings. No offence intended to your mates but if they expected anything other than this they need to improve their guide interpreting skills. To be fair this can be a complex art requiring copious reading between lines and scrutiny of topo shots.
To put it another way, don’t go to a hat shop if you need to buy a paint brush 

[SA Chris]

It's a place I have always fancied too. Is it worth taking a rack to? Callerhues Crack looks great.

[duncan]

I know we are supposed to disaprove of UKC but the logbook description for Callerhues says:

"A very bold sort of crag. The routes tend to be hard, but short. Home of the VS 6a (and the 6a bit is a sandbag)"

Fairly clear about what you are letting yourself in for isn't it?  And it's Northumberland fergoodnessake, the last refuge of the noble sand-bag.  A great spot as long as you go prepared for Font 5+s that are really E3s in disguise.

[Fiend]

Chris definitely take a rack, Callerhues Crack is a great route and totally fair at the grade. Soft even! There are plenty of other leadable mid-grade routes that pack quite a punch on funky rock.

Paul, I am with you, the wing stuff is not as good as hyped. Like Air is meant to be amazing but is pretty....arbitrary. Bonjoy the guide doesn't really imply it's scrappy I don't think.

[SA Chris]

A soft touch, in Northumberland, stranger things have happened I guess?

[Bonjoy]

Chris definitely take a rack, Callerhues Crack is a great route and totally fair at the grade. Soft even! There are plenty of other leadable mid-grade routes that pack quite a punch on funky rock.

Paul, I am with you, the wing stuff is not as good as hyped. Like Air is meant to be amazing but is pretty....arbitrary. Bonjoy the guide doesn't really imply it's scrappy I don't think.

I’ve never been to Callerhues but that was my estimation of it. I can’t recall the wording in the guides but if it doesn’t suggest the low bouldering is scrappy then I must have surmised this by looking at the photos, knowing the crag is primarily regarded as a highball venue, knowing that remote slabby sandstone tends not to make great bouldering and reading between the lines of the guide descriptions.
Like I said guide descriptions often need a fair degree of interpretation. Writers enthusing about a local favourite crag are apt not to mention the downsides. What is not said is often as enlightening as what is said.

[Fiend]

A soft touch, in Northumberland, stranger things have happened I guess?

Well there are quite a few in the new-ish guide!! The grades are complete fucking bollox. At Back Bowden there is a perfectly safe E2 5b that should have gone down to E1, a piece of piss E3 6a that has gone up to E4 6a but it actually E2 5c. Then again at Callerhues there is a VS 5a which is now rightly E1 5c, another VS 5a which is rightly E2 5c, a VS 4c which is rightly HVS 5b. For god's sake go by the Rockfax guide not the Northumberland one. I'm not a fan of Rockfax in general but in this case the definitive guides are such cobblers that they are doing a necessary job...

[Duncan Disorderly]

As another of the whiney little bitches I'm going to have my two peneth... Bitch.

Firstly you had a guide, many of us didn't. This was a poor choice of crag for a mixed ability group with not a lot of time on their hands with no real desire for highballing\sandbagging.
You and Jus seemed hell-bent on Callerhues and sung it's praises so a bunch of us just went along with your psyche thinking as you'd BEEN THERE BEFORE there'd be something for everyone.
Now, I'm not adverse to highballs when in the right frame of mind (i.e not when 3 months into training for bolted limestone) and did enjoy what I did but it was far from the day I expected; and having members of the party with more metal in their ankles than bone should have rung some alarm bells IMO.
The other issue I have was with the time it took to get there... 1.5 hrs then another 30-40 minute bog tramp. Not really a crag for those with a limited amount of time and as you'd BEEN THERE BEFORE you could have at least let someone know before we set of from Belford! (the guide doesn't do the scale  of the place justice unfortunately, although it does describe the route well ).
I agree with Bonjoy here, we should have all read the guide and planned better so there's a lesson here but intimating on here that your mates are whining little bitches for going along with your plan which ostensibly wasted a perfect day for most of them is a bit out of order IMO...

So now that's out of the way. Regarding your question I think the highballs I didn't get on looked ace and the rock on the main part of the crag was great but the general bouldering was limited... It's a fucking long way from Belford too!

:D

[webbo]

I remember going there about 3 guidebooks ago.Ended up up having to put the rope on for twenty foot vs's for the first time in many a year.Given I get the fear on the comp wall at the works now a days I won't be rushing back.

[Fiend]

Duncan:

1. As I said to Tim, I had only been there once, several years ago, to do routes. All of what I knew about the bouldering was what was said in the guide, which as Paul says, seems to overrated the bouldering. Not my fault.

2. It was as much Jus's idea as mine. He was suggesting it a lot over the weekend, and he was excited about going there - I was ready to go along with Shaftoe until he mentioned it again on Sunday morning. The difference being, because he's more of a popular guy in the group, he gets left alone and I get the stick for it. I noticed that throughout the day and it tends to stick in my mind.

3. This thread isn't to do with our group it's to do with other people's experiences.

[Paul B]

which as Paul says, seems to overrated the bouldering. Not my fault.

I better add that I thought 'Softly Softly' was an awesome problem as was 'H8'. It was 'Air' and 'On the Mark' which I thought were a bit average.
It is what it is as Bonjoy suggests.

(isn't it a Variable chapter?)

[jdal]

I tend to agree about Callerhues grading in the def guide, but re Rockfax, how come they upgraded 2nd Born? I didn't anyone had publicly owned up to a repeat, never mind a grade change. Or maybe they think the FA couldn't grade things for toffee and unless they know differently, up everything by 1? 

[T_B]

I've been there once a couple of Easters ago. I used a rope most of the day, though did some of the obvious highbally things. Where would have been better at this time of year? A lot of the more esoteric or higher crags around those parts might still be dirty and/or baltic. It's not a pure bouldering venue, but then hasn't everyone been to Kyloe In etc a billion times before. We thought the position/aspect was awesome and the fact that there was no one else there.

But then if you didn't bother looking at a guidebook and thought it was a bouldering venue, then I can see how you were disappointed. I guess that's a disadvantage of being a pure boulderer...

[Duncan Disorderly]

The other issue I have was with the time it took to get there... 1.5 hrs then another 30-40 minute bog tramp. Not really a crag for those with a limited amount of time and as you'd BEEN THERE BEFORE you could have at least let someone know before we set of from Belford! (the guide doesn't do the scale  of the place justice unfortunately, although it does describe the route well ).

1. I'll give it to you that you may not have known how good the bouldering might have been but I can't believe you didn't know the above... You did however know that some of us had to leave early to get back for our kids. Fuck me, Back Bowden was 5 minutes away, we drove past half of bloody Northumberland to get to Callerhues!

2. Did you see me singling you out? - The only reason I'm even posting on this is your flippant whiney bitch comment on t'interweb, if Jus'd done the same I'd be saying exactly the same thing to him.

3. You want people's experience of the crag, this is mine.. And for the record I didn't have a bad day, I just think it was a poor choice.

:D
 

[carlisle slapper]

Callerhues is best looked at as a slipstones-esque venue, it is best enjoyed if you have got a decent head on you and like to solo/highball alot, that said there's probably no better place in the country, landings wise, to learn this, with most routes having big grassy landings, or stuff like Ned Kelly having a big soft bog. Air and on the mark are nice small problems, worth doing if you're there, like sulky little boys at slipstones (air is reasonably comparative to this) i certainly wouldn't drive an hour and a half to only try them though. It is a pretty neglected crag though so it is the type of place that developers/ insociable types will appreciate far more than people looking for a ready chalked "circuit" I'd say you'd want to be bouldering 7b to get the most out of it, and that it'd be a very good assumption that things below 7a which are "fillers in" will be  neglected due to the fact that only a handful of people visit a year, i.e. not convenience bouldering.

of all the decent problems at Callehues they are all big and reasonably blank/pocketed (intimidating). I'd recommend Garleigh if people want decent low easy boulder problems, near a road. or Rothley or Shaftoe.

Did you park at the farm or in the layby at the keepers cottage? as the layby is only 20mins walk in and dry if you walk up to the left of the end of the crag.

[SA Chris]

All I can say is I'm sure this kind of scenario gets played out a dozen times every weekend across the UK;

Why the fuck did we walk all the way up here and it's wet?

Why are we back bouldering here again with all these crowds?

So we abseiled down and all the routea are too hard?

....well it looked great in the guidebook.

 

[Norton Sharley]

3. This thread isn't to do with our group it's to do with other people's experiences.

No, keep going, it is really quite entertaining.

[Fiend]

Okay thanks for the posts and feedback.

[Jaspersharpe]

3. This thread isn't to do with our group it's to do with other people's experiences.

No, keep going, it is really quite entertaining.

  

[gme]

Great crag, great place, great rock and above all great ROUTES.

Does an 8m or 9m route become a boulder problem just because ou have a load of mats at the bottom, its still 8m or 9m high, its a bit safer but still a route in my mind.

Crouching the mahogany is totally class, never managed to do it as there was only so many times you could jump off onto a beer towel before you gave up.

And i agree with jas your fight is the most entertaining thing i have read on here for ages so keep up with the bitchin.

[slackline]

2. It was as much Jus's idea as mine. He was suggesting it a lot over the weekend, and he was excited about going there - I was ready to go along with Shaftoe until he mentioned it again on Sunday morning. The difference being, because he's more of a popular guy in the group, he gets left alone and I get the stick for it. I noticed that throughout the day and it tends to stick in my mind.

Could this be the crux? 

[Falling Down]

<pulls up a seat> 
 

[shark]

What has the class learned from the exercise about team dynamics and decision making today?   

[Duncan Disorderly]

Err...

• Don't listen to Sloper - good lesson for all this one
• Don't listen to Fiend or Jus
• Read the fucking manual

[butters]

Err...

• Don't listen to Sloper - good lesson for all this one
• Don't listen to Fiend or Jus
• Read the fucking manual

To be fair to Matt and Jus for a brief moment Sloper wasn't there so someone had to fill the ample void that he usually occupies. All things considered they did pretty well really on that front. 

[Jaspersharpe]

What has the class learned from the exercise about team dynamics and decision making today?   

Fiend is a bully?