18th May 2012
Fox Promontory
Reveille – HS 4b – Second
The Muzzle – HVS 4c – Lead
I dont know how many times I looked at the photo of The Muzzle in the Rockfax guide and thought that I’d like to try it.
So with cracking weather and the right tide plus no swell, the opportunity presented itself. Chris, Tom and Dave accompanied me on what was my first visit to the crag. I’ve walked past it plenty of times and it always looked spectacular. The north face is dark, but once you’re down there it looses some of it’s menace. The lines are obvious and there are plenty of the them.
With Tom and Dave getting on the steep and exposed Vixen’s Crack, Chris and I set up for Reveille. This climb rises leftwards across the main face to finish up a steep narrow slab next to a crack. There are a couple of tricky sections; the start is quite bold and needs thought on protection and then comes the best part, a very balancy traverse at about mid height. It’s great, but you need to keep your nerve when there are few holds. Brilliant fun and a top climb.
Unfortunately the tide pushed up fairly quickly so we had to abandon the attempt on The Curtain Raiser, what looked like a top route following a vein of crystals. So it was onto the nose to have a go at the two classic routes there. Or so we thought.
There was one fly in the ointment. The Whisker, the VS on the right of the promontory facing in, turned out to be in the hands of the guls and cormorants. The slab round the arete looking like a snow field with the amount of guano on it.
So we all had a go at the Muzzle with Chris clocking up his second HVS lead. The Muzzle is as good as it looks. The crack is strenuous but has positive holds and plenty of pro. The move out under the overhang is a bit more scary. It’s a case of move out and keep going into open fresh air. The holds are there but you have to look and keeping your feet on the rock is interesting. At one point I managed to leaver off my only grip just snatching another hold before I did some air time.
The day added up to another brilliant adventure on Cornish Rock, with Dave and Tom recording another route together. We spent a while snoozing in the sunshine before sauntering off back to the van. We will be back at FP shortly I am sure.
