Helman Tor

19th November 2011
Problems 5 (6a), 20 (5b) and 21 (6a)

Bouldering is not something I regularly do, but on occasions it makes a good substitute for the climbing wall. Especially when you spend an afternoon looking out over the wooded wetlands created by years of tin mining. It feels like an old landscape, but of course the mining is relatively recent and images of druids and stone age settlements are probably unfounded.

Still its a short step for your mind to imagine that much more ancient races have trod the grassy meadows of Helman Tor. Mind you I’m not sure that the earlier residents would have been slipping on their 5.10’s and creating their own problems on the spectacular boulders. More likely trying to move them and create stone circles! The recent removal of the gorse (which revealed a Bronze age hut circle) also revealed some more boulders. For an alternative view of Helman Tor’s history have a read of this article.

Tom, Kieran and I started on some of the easier problems to get warmed up. Mind you, I dont think any of them are necessarily easy. It depends how confident you are. With one mat between us the landings always seem a bit dodgy and some of the problems are fairly high.

My personal two favorites are the 6a Arete (21) and the smooth ramp (18). The ramp always makes me smile. Innocuous, but every time I jump on it I end up retreating a couple of times before I get established. Always worth climbing though.

The arete was a problem I looked at a few years back but failed miserably on because I went right instead of following the line of the arete. This time I got established at the top, but it took a while before I plucked up courage to mantelshelp over the smooth sloping finale.

We also spent some time on a newly uncovered boulder, the site of ‘In the Gutter’ a really tough problem. I made the traverse but no way could I do the mantelshelf. We did a route using the crack under the overhang. A fingery route which we extended around to the face and a final climb up to the top. Fun, but not hard except on your digits. Maybe 4b. We called it Bluebells, but its probably been done before.

For Kieran and Tom the introduction to boulder problems was an eye opener. As always they look easier than they are, as both quickly discovered. However, they both left with burning fingers from the course granite and lots of challenges to return to.