Chris Parks gets the feeling that some 'Dirty Love...
Description
Garden Party Wall is a 70' tall North Facing buttress just up the hill and Southwest of Sherwood Forest. It is visible from across the river and road from The Bihedral, Happy Hour Crag, and Security Risk, as a vertical ironing board of rock just uphill and west of Sherwood Forest.
The rock is predominantly shaded in the morning, but gets afternoon sun in the summer. The granite is good, and high friction, but only where the rock is clean of lichen flakes and moss. Side-pulls and sloper feet are the general rule on the 4 trad routes there.
If you climb trad here, bring a double set of small stoppers, and maybe a wire brush!
To descend, there is a 2-chain anchor on the north-most point of the wall above the trad routes. This makes a lousy TR anchor, however, as your rope will be run through a funnel to a finger-crack across the edge. Although the rap can be made without getting the rope stuck, TR'ing without that consequence seems unlikely.
The wall sports 5 routes, all of which are dirty and lichened, but all of which could improve with traffic. R. Rossiter's book gives two of the Trad Routes here stars, those being Right Crack (5.10c) and Dirty Love (5.10c). The moves are good, but do you love dirt? You'll have to climb through some on these routes.
In progress:
A. Arete 10a, 1p, gear. B. Dirty Love, 10 R, 1p, 70', gear. C. Right Crack, 10 R, 1p, 70', gear. D. Filthy English Pig Dog, 9, 1p, gear. E. Excalibur, 11+, 1p, bolts & pins. F. Big Men On Paper, 11+, 1p, bolts & gear. G. The Illusionist, 12-, 1p, 66', bolts & gear. H. Topiary, 11+, 1p, 53', bolts. I. Can't Please Everyone, 11-, 1p, 51', bolts.
Getting There
Approach as for Sherwood Forest, coming first to the climbs on that wall. From the right-hand end of Sherwood Forest Crag proceed Southwest on a trail up the hill until the Garden Party Wall appears through the trees. Walk SW below it until you can clearly see a vertical gully of bad rock that bisects the two main buttresses. Approach the cliff at this point, climbing up a slot behind a flake to reach a shelf at the base of the left side for all of the trad routes, or proceed to the right-most arete on the right hand buttress to climb the single bolted line there.
There is actually a third route on this wall, but it is probably best that your site hasn't mentioned it. The arete to the left of Dirty Love is mentioned in the Rossiter book as being 10a. The rock is very crappy and the moves on the route are less than interesting. An infestation of rotten crystals w/in the crack made me very weary of my pro and a big-screen tv size block that shifted with a left hand gaston 3/4 up the route was pretty scary. Just be careful.
if you go to Garden Party Wall please stay right after Sherwood Forest and avoid the wet area on the left. Greg Hand and I put several logs across the old trail and made the trail going right more obvious.
Garden Party Wall
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