Northumbrian Climbing Guide

Surprisingly for somewhere so accessible the first recorded activity was not until July 1970. Ken Macdonald, John Earl and friends visited the crag and a large number of lines were climbed out in the following months. Climbs included Plonka, Man Friday, Audacity and the hardest route at the time, Sunshine Superman. The following few years saw development come to fruition. In 1973 Bob Hutchinson added Corbeau and in 1974 he swung his way up the powerful Gibbon's Gambol. In 1977 Martin Doyle and Karl Telfer claimed Ranadon and Jeff Lamb snapped up Tenacity on one of his raids east. Bob and Tommy Smith brought the crag into the 1980's with the difficult Ash Wednesday climbed in late 1979. Only two lines have been put up since then. Sam's Route on the North Buttress was squeezed in at the end of the cave in 1989 by Stu Ferguson. The other, an obvious but overlooked or never recorded line, Missed Opportunity, was discovered by a young prospective member Graeme Read on the popular South Buttress in 2001.