Stoney Middleton

Stoney is not included because it’s a great place to climb, but because of its important history. When you first encounter the vertical slickness and finger strength building gloss of Minus 10, the stench of Carl’s Wark and the impossible number of problems revolving around one, glued-on hold in Tom’s Roof, you may wonder why you’re here. But Stoney is the spiritual home of hard Peak bouldering and it played a key role in pushing climbing standards in the 1980s. Thanks to the forefathers of UK bouldering: Proctor, Allen, Moffatt, Stokes and Kirton, we’re left with a crag as rich in history as it is in polish. Back in the late 1970s/early 1980s there were no such things as climbing walls, and training merely consisted of lifting some weights and a doing few pull-ups. Then along came a few climbers who thought that bouldering around on the limestone of Stoney would be good conditioning for the routes they aspired to.Almost every problem at Stoney is an eliminate, which means that despite all the listed problems being hard, there’s good sport to be had at all grades by doing your own thing. Please bear in mind that eliminate grades are much more approximate than normal because there are no alternative sequences to suit different people. So if you’re told not to use that hold, and to do the next bit like this, just remember that this is where training (and modern climbing) was born.The majority of the problems included are old test-piece classics from the 1980s and 1990s, researched and remembered by Andy Harris. To these a few new problems and variations have been added – yes, Minus 10 still has devotees. There’s also the relatively-recently developed Tom’s Cave, further up the road, and not to be confused with Tom’s Roof (although it will be). Nowhere are the conditions as reliable as they are at Stoney. If the grit is dripping and Raven Tor and Rubicon are sopping wet, chances are that Stoney will still be dry. If you’re lucky you might even get to experience the elusive ‘sticky damp’, the most hallowed of all conditions when grades drop and gravity seems to loosen its grip.