Nova HS 4b, Lawrencefield, Peak District

Date of climb: Sunday 2nd August 2009

This was our second trip to Lawrencefield, and it didn’t start too well. We got all the way down to the crag and I realised that I had left the guidebook in the car – doh! I had to run all the way back to the surprise view car park.

We started on the Gingerbread Slab, David kicked things off with a pretty easy V Diff called Snail Crack, which we had climbed on our previous visit. I decided the raise the stakes and go for a HS called Nova.

Nova is a really cool climbing route which requires a variety of techniques to reach the top. The first couple of moves are pretty straight-forward, then it gets interesting as you try to work your way over to an upward crack. One of the moves had David stumped for about 10 minutes as he came up second (it probably didn’t help that I was chuckling at him from the top). There’s a couple of small but comfy ledges on which you can stand to place gear, and the route is pretty well protected all the way up. I found the crux move to be the second to last one on the final crack, I had to jam my fingers as I placed some gear to protect me over the top. The awkward stance combined with faffing around to find the appropriate piece of kit had my arm (and heart pumping).

In summary, I can recommend this as a very rewarding climbing route for all you HS leaders out there. I can also highly recommend the fantastic 3 Tree Climb (HS) over at the Great Harry area. I’ll cover that in more detail soon.

Let me know how you get on.