Attempted on 18th May 2024
A little background, the VS challenge is a climbing challenge of 36 VS routes from one side of Stanage to the other, about 4km long. The 36 routes are all from the 1989 Stanage guidebook. My friend and me are both around E2 climbers, my friend had done most of the VS’s before which proved a massive bonus. I on the other hand had done bout 8 of the routes before! Should have recce’d more!
We started climbing at about 7:30 at the far North of Stanange. We had a small rack of cams, wires, and 4 quickdraws. Worked out well. We started out wearing crack gloves and had them on all day, life-saving shit right there! The first climb was Crab Crawl Arete, an easy start.
In the end, we managed to do 31, ran out of daylight, plus energy, strength, and the will to live! I like the sunshine, but not when you’re trying to do a challenge.
The climbs we got done
- Crab Crawl Arete – Easy climbing
- First Sister – Easy CLimbing
- Cosmic Crack – Easy Climbing
- Inaccessible Crack – Easy climbing and very nice
- High Neb Buttress – Easy climbing and very nice
- Titanic – Easy climbing and very nice
- Central Buttress – Easy Climbing
- Counts Crack – This is a very nice crack climb, worth doing
- Fern Crack – This was bird banned, replaced with Sauls Arete
- Wall End Slab – This was bird banned, replaced with Wall End Flake Crack, lovely climb
- Fairy Steps – Easy Climbing
- Seesaw – Easy Climbing
- Valhalla – Easy climbing and very nice
- Pegasus Wall – Easy climbing and very nice
- Paradise Wall – Easy climbing and very nice
- Wall Buttres – This is a HVS, it’s easy when you know how, but awkward!
- Cleft Wing – Go practice this one, just powerful moves!
- Cleft Wing Super Direct – Go practice this one, just powerful moves!
- The Punk – This is a lovely hand traverse
- The Nose – Lovely strange VS climbing, every hold is a jug
- Step-ladder Crack – Worth a practice, knowing the moves makes this easy
- Hell Crack – Its fucking hell, not much else to say
- The Louisiana Rib – Classic Stanage climbing, very nice
- Mississippi Buttress Direct – Again, a great classic
- Via Roof Route – This is a bit brutal for a VS challenge, thrutchy
- Twin Chimmneys Buttress – Nice climbing
- Robin Hoods Cave Innominate – one move at the bottom, the rest is lovely
- Rubber Band – Nice traverse
- Ellis’s Eliminate – Always a nice climb
- Inverted V – Good climbing, easy
- Narrow Buttress – Good climbing, easy
We only had 5 easy ones left, Hargreaves Original, Centarl Trinity, Via Media, Gargoyle Buttress, and Heather Wall.
I’m not sure what we could have changed, start climbing earlier for sure, hope that it’s cloudy. But just saving 2-4 mins on each climb is an extra 1-2 hours. Me knowing more of the routes instead of on-sighting would have helped. It meant I was trying to read the route before the climb and on the climb, takes longer.
Good day out though, definitely worth a go, and 31 climbs in a day from one side of Stanage to the other is still a big day without completing the challenge. I’ll have another crack next year.
If anyone is fancying a go, reccy the routes and the downclimbs back to the routes, you’ll save time!
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