Horseshoe (Furness) Quarry

Horseshoe quarry is a limestone sport climbing venue near Stoney Middleton in the peak district. It has recently been acquired by the BMC and has over 260 routes, making it one of the biggest venues for sport climbs in the UK. Having visited the venue 3 times, once running a university club trip there the first thing you realise is that the grade range F4-F5+ are much harder than your average indoor climbing centre. This being my first venue for climbing outdoors you soon realise how much further apart the bolts are, resulting in some scary run-outs for the uninitiate. I always maintain that the best way to start climbing outdoors is through sport climbing, as it requires not too much extra gear or knowledge from leading at your local centre.

Putting up routes on the Slabs

One issue with this venue, particularly on the easy climbs, is due to the softer nature of limestone, some of the quarry can be a little bit flakey, and in the course of my climbing, I have managed to dislodge some scarily big pieces of rock (my belayer was not pleased at all). On the plus side there is very little seepage and the quarry turns into a bit of a sun-trap, meaning that if you stick to the lower tiers there is enough shelter to turn a cold day into pleasant conditions for climbing. The resin bolts that are placed at the lower off of each route makes building anchors, either with equalised slings or two quick-draws with screw-gates attached, super easy. The size of the quarry also means that a group of 16ish people also makes very little impact as it would on traditional protected gritstone edges in the area, although the fact that someone has lead every climb you want to put up a route on, makes getting a group climbing a very slow process and a very tiring one (There were only two of us out of 16 that could lead and we had to both put up and strip the routes).

Horseshoe is a superb venue for getting out onto real rock despite the harder nature of the grades however I have since moved onto Trad climbing and find this a much more satisfying pursuit, despite horseshoe being an excellent sport climbing venue.

Going up to strip the routes