“I don’t like this.”

Loose snow breaks away beneath a crampon.

“Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

The gravel underneath offers no purchase.

“Please let me get out of this. I won’t do anything this stupid again, promise.”

Lunge desperately with the single long axe and blessedly, mercifully, the shaft plunges full-length. Feet up, another deep plunge with the axe, spare hand punching numbly into the snow, and at last I’m stood on something reasonably structural and can take notice of something other than imminent death.

First route of the season, a couple of days after a heavy dump of snow. We didn’t really intend to be climbing, weren’t looking for a particular route, but when we walked into the cwm the gully looked reasonably complete and not too steep and so we sandbagged ourselves into climbing it. Which is why I am standing halfway up, slick with cold sweat, hands numb in their sodden fleece mittens, ducking occasional pieces of falling ice, and earnestly wishing for waterproof gloves, a helmet, two axes and all the other comforting paraphanalia that goes with being a climber rather than a slightly mis-placed walker.

Onwards and upwards, trogging up the snow to a frieze of dangling icicles hanging off a little lip. There is water running down the rock behind them, and the ice coating the boulder blocking the gully is clearly not long for this world. I take the safe option and boulder round the side with one of those awkward stick-your-foot-in-your-ear-and-stand-up moves, made even more awkward by having spiky metal on each foot and hence being in danger of nailing my own ear to the rock.

Above, blessedly, the snow is good.

Dan and I top out to the last rays of the setting sun and scamper to the summit. Suddenly the fear and the hot-aches seem entirely worthwhile.

Another adventure has been survived.

Apparently the club hut was 50 at the weekend. Or possibly it was the hut warden. Or possibly the hut warden’s dog. But, whatever it was we were supposed to be celebrating, it was a good excuse for a marquee in the garden, several barrels of beer, music, dancing, general revelry, and a pig looking somewhat surprised to find that someone had not only gutted it but impaled it on a spit as well.

This also meant that, as well as various newbies enticed along by the prospect of beer and pig sandwiches, members of the club who hadn’t been seen for years came crawling out of the woodwork - all those, ahem, ‘mature’ members widely assumed to have long since died, emigrated, or stopped climbing and taken up morris-dancing. The hut was packed to the point where late-comers found their choice of sleeping spots limited to the toilets, the coal-shed or sharing a bench with the beer-barrels, and for once I wasn’t the last person out of bed.

It also meant that, rather than being the fat weak punter tagging along behind the fit and talented, I actually found myself in demand, due to having brought ropes, rack, and enthusiasm and hence being the ideal partner for  people who don’t lead yet, people who last led twenty years ago, people who can’t read maps, and people who can no longer see well enough to read maps. I had a very pleasant amble up a two-pitch Diff - the top pitch being a glorious slab with just enough gear - abbed off another route in pouring rain, persuaded someone to do his first lead in absolutely ages, and went for a long walk round a reservoir with superb views and endless seas of purple heather while explaining the difference between a footpath and a bridleway to two new members whose acquaintence with the delights of OS maps was only minutes old.

And I really wasn’t trying. Normally I tend towards the view that getting off the hill without recourse to a headlamp feels like a waste of daylight, that climbing in the rain is perfectly possible and that there is always time for one more route, but, on this occasion, I was happy to come off the hill early for tea and buns. There was no pressure at all to perform, which just made it all the more relaxing.

So yes, I got virtually nothing done. But it was still - in a relaxed, ambling sort of way - fun.

Saturday. Gloriously sunny weather. Climbing on lovely rough gritstone. No polish. No midges. No crowds. Cake. And, just to cap it all, we did a new route as well.

Yes, we were in the 21st-century Peak District, and no, I wasn’t dreaming.

We were at the Rollick Stones, a shapely little gritstone edge stuck in the side of a hill just outside Glossop. Martin and I were the only team on the crag, primarily there for the purposes of guidebook checking (”bright clothes and big butties, please”) but taking time to not so much savour as revel in gritstone as it used to be.

I bet Froggatt was heaving. Not to mention sweaty, midge-ridden and polished to death. Meanwhile, we had an entire crag to ourselves, and did I mention that we did a new route?

Nothing esoteric, just a pair of twin cracks that no-one seemed to have bothered to climb yet, which, once Martin had walked round the top and booted a couple of loose bits off the top-out, yielded a nice VDiff with a traditional stick-your-foot-in-your-ear-and-stand-up awkward finish.

We celebrated with cake.

We also struggled with, swore at and fell off some clear candidates for an upgrade, did a little cleaning and gardening, and found a gloriously photogenic leaning tower which I soloed, silhouetted on the skyline, smiling happily as the jugs just kept coming.

So, in short, Saturday was glorious. And then, on Sunday, we went to Crowden Great Quarry, which provided something of a contrast. The routes were steep, knackering, longer than usual for gritstone and needed a little care in places, adventure climbing boiled down and condensed into a single pitch, climbers launching themselves skywards to escape the depths of the quarry bottom. Routes were started with a cautious undercurrent of excitement, the eventual outcome still in doubt, and finished with a sense of having done something a little out of the ordinary. Once again, traditional crowded polished grit it wasn’t.

To avoid the polish and sweaty hordes, all we had to do was go a very little off the beaten track, look at a different book and accept a slightly longer walk-in and the exciting possibility of a bit of an adventure. And it really was worth it.

Try it sometime. You might like it. I may even bring cake.