Sam's World Of Pain

My prospects of having a good holiday in Spain

2012-01-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

Though it’s been over a year since I last documented it, life has been no less painful. Perhaps people don’t want to read this on a blog, but for a fair wee while I just wasn’t much psyched on climbing. Worse still for blogging, I’ve been rushed off my feet, attempting the transition from thinker about thinking about thinking to thinker about thinking. This requires a lot of thought in itself. Because we often think in words, and the only medium by which I can typically access the thinking about thinking done by others is written, and because my thinking about thinking about thinking typically needs to be written down (so that a bona fide thinker about thinking can have a think about my thinking about thinking about thinking) the idea of writing my blog (in words) just didn’t seem that appealing. But all this, admittedly on-going, thinking, thinking about thinking, and thinking about thinking about thinking (not to mention my occasional thinking about my supervisor’s thinking about my thinking about thinking about thinking) has left me with some thoughts too dark for an academic essay. And so, I thought I’d start writing them down here again.
Now it’s funny the amount of stick you get for losing motivation for climbing. Not least because, while (post Big-Up productions) it often seems that ‘psyche’ is everywhere, PSYCHE—the dispositional mental state—is nowhere to be found. PSYCHE drove Jonny, Jerry and Ben onto the dole and into some pretty grubby living conditions, whereas ‘psyche’ just seems like an excuse to be lazy in all other aspects of life without even committing oneself to any real commitment to climbing. Some ‘psyched’ people even claim they don’t train! I view this as a contradiction in terms.
I got ‘psyched’ again—if that is the right word—(reason no.2 for restarting my blog) after booking tickets to Spain with some friends/arch nemeses and thinking to myself ‘wouldn’t it be great to utterly and completely burn them off?’:

Perhaps I could burn off Eddie? That would mean a lot to me as I live with him and I’d be able to gloat regularly. Perhaps this is even feasible; I’ve seen that boy train and, although he does do a lot of it, he does it like a complete punter—endless bicycle rides and squats at the gym?!?! Better still he’s been on a losing streak recently—he lost the TCA comp, the Irish Lead thingy, even the Edinburgh University bouldering comp…— his footwork is pretty sketchy and I think he’s getting fat. All this being said, however, Eddie has always been a bit better than me—definitely not unbeatably so, but definitely a bit. He was better than me before I took two months off and now things have probably only gotten worse.

Maybe then it would be best to have a backup, so even if I don’t get the better of Eddie at least I won’t have to feel too bad about myself. What about Alex Barrows? I don’t know him so well but what I do know I have been told on good authority (from Eddie) and he sounds like a complete ponce, who is shit at climbing to boot. Although it is slightly disturbing that he has climbed 8c and flashed 8a+ I figure that if you can’t trust your mates, who can you trust? Just to be safe, however, I’ll put him down as a ‘maybe’.
Hopefully it won’t come to this, but as a last resort I suppose I’ll have to settle for burning Mark ‘the pig’ Tomlinson off. Mark is definitely the worst (and most right wing) climber on the trip and so I ought, on grounds of skill and karma, to be able to burn him off. While on the one hand it’ll therefore mean the least to beat him—he is very weak—I’m not very good when the pressure’s on, he’s probably quite good at my weaknesses (last year to combat this I just took a 40meter rope) and he told me that when he flashes 8a this trip it I’m so fat that it won’t even be worth kicking me in the nuts to celebrate. Thus I hereby call on the entire free world, or at least the entire Guardian readership, to back me in at least crushing Mark into the ground.
We’ll have to see how it goes I suppose.

2010-09-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

Just like everyone else I haven’t blogged for a while, probably because I’m swayed by the same fashion trends as everyone else. Blogging was never cool and now it’s not popular. This is a pity because I like it; it’s a lot like talking but without interruption and it provides endless distraction from more important things.
I’m back at Uni now after a fairly climbing heavy summer. It was good. I climbed a real 8b. I was reminded about this, and that I’d like to blog about it, by my course. I’ve not quite put my finger on what it is but I think the appeal Climbing and Philosophy hold are very similar deep down. I don’t mean all that waffle about one finding their self whilst on the sharp end of a scary lead, more something to do with the fascination they both hold with children. From a younger cousin asking me what the opposite of a parrot is to tree climbing. I think both climbing and philosophy are perceived as adult pursuits but really it’s probably children who could make the most of them. Maybe this is some form of overpriced alternative schooling in the making...
Similarly I have some parallels I’ve drawn between the greats in either field, for instance Wittgenstein and Jerry. Wittgenstein was arguably the greatest analytic philosopher of the 20th C (parallel 1). After training as an aeronautical engineer he saw firsthand the conceptual difficulties at the root of mathematics and realised his calling, travelling to work with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge. Getting straight to work on the fundamental problem of post-Cartesian philosophy; seeking to link mind and world. From this his mechanical background was evident in his method of philosophy (parallel 2), Wittgenstein saw the need for a logically perfect language free from ambiguity to unravel the ‘knot’ philosophers had tied themselves in. This was the main thesis of his Tractatus, written whilst held captive as a prisoner of war at the end of WW1. Most critically, after publishing the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus Wittgenstein retired from philosophy, to become a teacher (though his temperament was not suited to this), a gardener and an Architects assistant, having considered himself to have solved all the major philosophical problems (what a Jerry attitude to have- parallel 3) although he did come out of retirement on realising the stir his masterwork had caused. Returning to Cambridge he openly doubted that Russell, his professor, would ever understand his work. What a guy!
Reading about this today made me think of Jerry, and then Buoux 8c, and then the Buoux of the north- Birnam! New rule that’ll never catch on, you have to chant ‘Tabou-zizi’ three times at the rest on Hurly Burly. In fact the day I did it I had ‘HurlyBurly HurlyBurly HurlyBurly HurlyBurly -8bee8bee8bee8bee’ stuck in my head to the tune of the ‘Tabou-zizi’ music in Buoux 8c. Anyway it’s not 8c- new goal to aim for. But which one? Agincourt looks a tweaky logistical nightmare. Wall street looks like filth. I’m not driving to the tor. I guess ‘Powerplay’ it is, though I have no idea how realistic this is.... Another few years of blogging accounted for then. I’m building a campus board in my room right now.

The Lime Bites Back...

2010-08-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday I was meant to go to Orkney for some extreme ledge shuffling but instead I made the mistake of getting emotionally attached to some tiny rocks with tiny holds covered in shiny bolts; much safer, right? Wrong! In the space of 4days I’ve decked out not once but twice whilst out sport climbing.
I always thought it was mere climbing folklore when people blabbed on about micro-fractures and death clips, etc. Indeed I’d been told by people in the know that the first rule of sport climbing is that death clipping doesn’t exist on hard (read overhanging) routes. I’ve never tested this ‘rule’ as it’s become second nature to clip properly but I was quite willing to believe it. As for the micro-fracture myth, well that was totally ridiculous; how could a snap-gate, designed to be able to hold lardy climbers exponential acceleration groundwards through the pinpoint where clip meets bolt get micro fractures being dropped under its own weight, especially from a fairly small height? I’m no physicist but that just seems silly.
Now I don’t know if it was actually a phantom micro crack or just that tape on the draw had slipped round but last Wednesday I snapped a quickdraw! Those of you who are sitting smug in the knowledge that I’m a porker might be more disturbed to find out it snapped just slumping onto it. I’m actually pretty sure anyone’s fall would have snapped that draw, scarier still I was planning on missing the next clip and pushing on to the 5th. That would have been sore if I’d blown it!
Well I’ve been told one ought to ride the horses that buck so on Saturday I returned to Kilnsey to finish of ‘Lapin’. Being a geek, I love lists. My Monday at work was spent on UK Climbing tallying up all the 7’s at Kilnsey that I’d not done (of which there are 21) and all the 8a’s (of which there are 7). Seeing as how I have hard projects to try closer to home I’d decided not to get sucked into another siege down south rather just getting mileage in whenever I go to Yorkshire and work my way through this list. Starting from the right ‘Lapin’ is the first 8a you get to so it seemed an obvious place to start making headway. Also I’d already tried it and I couldn’t give up on the first route of the tick-list! Besides it’s not very hard and other than the slightly dubious nature of some of the holds it climbs really well.
So there I was, back at Kilnsey. A quick dog up and a link from the second bolt to the top and I was ready for a burn. The tricky thing for me on this route wasn’t the climbing but rather the clipping. Karen Magog was there and told me a sneaky way to get the 4 clip in from a crimp. The thing is I clipped the 3rd off that same crimp and the second rule of hard sport climbing is ‘don’t clip all the bolts if you don’t have to’, so now no excuses; one less clip to clip, I’d gotten through the crux last go, the redpoint was on.
I got through the first 2bolts of Myra Hyndley comfortably to the rest, 2 shake outs each arm and a long lock to the crimp, caught it perfectly with my fingers biting right into the back of it (it felt so good I swear I could rip this crimp off the wall!) got my feet up, rope in the mouth, long stretch to clip the 4th and, well you can guess what happened.
2 ground falls in 4 days. Who says sport climbing’s safe?

Climbing for the Enlightened?

2010-06-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

“At 9 o’clock the next morning I sat in Omar (Bakri’s) living room while Omar played with his baby daughter.
‘What’s your daughter’s name?’ I asked him.
‘It is a difficult name for you to understand,’ said Omar.
‘Does it have an English translation?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Omar, ‘it translates into English as “The Black Flag of Islam”.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Your daughter’s name is the Black Flag of Islam?’
‘Yes,’ said Omar.
‘Really?’ I said.
There was a small pause.
‘You see,’ said Omar, ‘why our cultures can never integrate?’
(pp4-5, from ‘A Semi-Detached Ayatollah’ in Them, by Jon Ronson)

Climbers are a funny bunch, the way we split into different clans and slag the others off. I wonder if road cyclists slag downhill bikers off in the way that boulderers and traddies go at one another. I don’t know, maybe they do. I think that climbers behave this way because each sub movement is still struggling to form its own identity. Bouldering and alpinism are essentially completely different sports but they share a common heritage and it wasn’t so long ago that all climbers were all rounders; Jerry did the hardest cracks in Yosemite, won world cups, put up cutting edge sport climbs and boulder problems, soloed, headpointed, onsighted....
This is fine and perhaps a natural progression of the sport but it leads to some confusion over what a ‘good’ climber is. They gym rat is a training monster and is unlikely to be impressed but rather be jaded by his much weaker counterpart ripping it up on the boulders. Meanwhile the weak traddy thinks it’s sad that the training fiend has sacrificed so much to get where he is, and if the said training fiend happens to have the said traddy on a route the common response is ‘well I could’ve done that if I trained as hard as them’. Climber’s become stuck in Kuhnian Paradigms of what ‘good’ is. They’re reluctant to change their method and the moment the traddy starts serious training his excuse for failure looks weak.
Climbing is often seen as a selfish pursuit for personal gain but I think this is a misconception. Getting stronger (either mentally or physically) can be an egotistical wank-fest but genuine improvement comes only through tackling weakness, weaknesses often overlooked by X who surrounds himself with a pier group working from the same paradigm, and I think this embrace of weakness can be linked closely to one’s growth as a person. It’s hypocritical I know that I’m writing about personal growth and the abandonment of ego in a blog of all things, but did you really fail because you lacked strength in an obscure stabiliser muscle or just because you didn’t grit your teeth hard enough?
Last week I went to Pabbay and Mingulay and didn’t climb my hardest grades but really pushed myself. Before I left I really wanted to on-sight the Bonxie and some other E6’s but the truth is that while I’ve done about a dozen or so E5’s I’m not really an E5 climber. Put me on choss, a multi-pitch, or something with complicated ropework and route finding and my grade plummets. Instead the 10 days I spent in the Barra Isles ended up being about intimidating myself everyday on big E3’s and 4’s and I felt a noticeable improvement on big stuff by the end of the trip. I will onsight E6, perhaps even this summer but equally I really want to push it on the stuff that doesn’t suit me; Cougar, Voyage of the Beagle, Titan’s Wall, The Prozac Link, Big John...
It’s funny that on-sighting E6 should be such a big deal for me; I have friends who onsight E5 who only onsight about f6c, on a recent trip to Spain I onsighted 7c, maybe even 7c+ so am I just being a pussy? Well undoubtedly I am a pussy but I think it’s more than that. When you onsight your first 6c it tends to be around about vertical and technical, much like the majority of E4’s and 5’s. The 7c’s in Spain were all massively steep bucket hauls, really fun but with little bearing on your average trad pitch. Secondly the climber who exclusively trad climbs would obviously up his sport grade if he focussed on that for a bit just like how I’d improve my trad grade if I focussed on that, so the 6c-7c climber comparison that I regularly hear regurgitated is kind of a skewed one but watch this space, scaring yourself is good for the soul.

Why I try so hard and am still so shit.

2010-02-27T17:08:00.003-08:00

1. Winter climbing is a funny thing and something I’ve really dismissed in the past. I got Dave Macleod’s new book (which I’d really recommend) for Christmas and since reading it I think it’s put some things into perspective. It got me actively thinking why I like the climbs I do and why there are some classics I don’t. Winter climbs represented everything classic about Scottish climbing and yet were so unpleasant. Basically winter climbing is so popular that I just had to be missing the point somewhere to think it was so rubbish. So when an opportunity presented itself to go mincing for a few days in Wales at the start of the year I decided to go for it.
Staying with a friend at Plas y Brenin certainly made the experience a lot easier to enjoy. I could get up at 8 and it was only a 15 minute drive to Cwm Idwal. To be honest though, the early starts were never really why I hated it. I hated winter climbing because it was so precarious and intimidating. Your sense of what you were holding on to dampened by your axe, the movements grovely and mechanical, and the line of where you were going hidden by snow causing me to irrationally forget that if things weren’t so slippy you could probably send a goat up it.
This is all still true but I think that they highlight the aspects of rock climbing I’m really shit at. And so on realising that winter climbing can be quite fun I’ve decided it would be a good way to work on my weaknesses (paradoxically by embracing weakness itself on III’s and IV’s). I’m now actually really psyched for the white stuff and I think it’s given me a fresh outlook on my climbing. I really do think that all aspects of climbing are amazing and if you don’t enjoy them all you’ve probably not gone at them with the right attitude or are suffering from the pandemic condition ‘fear of failure’. A couple of weeks ago fate dealt me and Charlie the triple lemon (dodgy avalanche risk/ forgotten gear/ an essay to write) and so we ended up going to Birnam for some dry tooling. I never expected to say this but it was actually really fun and ‘the Fast and the Furious’ is now something I’d love to do. That day also made me realise I could be doing much harder winter routes. It’s only really my first winter season but I’d like to get on some V’s now and maybe even something a little harder if the avalanche warning doesn’t stay at danger level 5 forever.
2. I, like most, focus too much on strength in my climbing and not enough on actual movement technique. I really think Dave Mac’s book provides an essential explanation of why Dan can slap his way up surprisingly hard boulder problems despite being the weakest grown man Britain. I’ve been going out winter climbing so much that I’ve not actually touched rock yet this decade which is bad on this front but I have amended my board sessions. I’ve began splitting them in two- first half I just make up boulder problems, making them progressively harder and trying to use the holds and movements I find disproportionately hard. Instead of thinking of this as training with all the connotations this brings with it, I think of it as learning to climb and accordingly (wait for it...) I listen to Baroque music! It’s been widely reported that listening to the pre-classical music of Bach and Vivaldi can improve your focus and ability to learn for exams- why not for climbing too? The second half of the session I hit the fingerboard. There’s no need to think so I ditch the Baroque and hit the techno to get psyched and mainly just because I like it. Perhaps I’ve gone crazy but I think my movements have become more refined and my footwork more precise since doing this. Of course it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation- am I thinking more about the way I move because of the music or am I playing the music because I’m thinking more about how to improve my movement. I guess we’ll never know.
3. Body mass. I feel quite lean these days but I’m still quite heavy. I think we all know I could improve massively by hitting the broccoli. Look what happened to Ross Hunt when he stopped eating. Normally I just go running for this but I think this is the wrong way to go- it leaves me too tired for climbing. I think I just need to eat less.
4. Over the past few years injury has certainly been the most limiting factor for me. I think being in a long distance relationship has really helped this. I train really hard for a couple of weeks then have a few days off. I had a niggle before I went to see Claire last week but then I had a forced week off. On Thursday I started climbing again, felt a bit weak and tweaky, climbed again yesterday and things felt a bit better. Today I felt really strong at the wall and I didn’t even notice my niggle. For me I think a few days off before tweaks get really bad is the way to go for injury prevention, but maximum volume of climbing that doesn’t make an injury worse is the way to go for rehab. In my opinion time off really is time wasted with injuries. I’ve not had to stop for injury in 8months now which is really good for me in recent years.

In summary I need to: -Learn to like being scared/ going for it
- Listen to Baroque music and learn to climb
- Eat less
- Keep seeing Claire and not get injured.

Tick List

2010-02-27T16:49:00.000-08:00

Everyone likes a good list and I think telling people what you’re going to do makes it more likely you’ll do it so here goes:
March- Scottish Winter V (conditions dependent)
Purely Belter, v11 (ha) at Shaftoe and my silly dreamt up link up in the Bowden cave (MOT and weather dependent)
April- 3rd-10th week at Malham: MAGNETIC FIELDS , 8b (no excuses)
12th-20th Font: Salle Gosse, Berezina, etc, try some 8’s (girlfriend dependent- she thinks we’re going to Paris)
May- Exams and training for June
June- Euro trip- either Frankenjura to redpoint Vogeln Verboten (7c+/8a) and Boiling Point (8b) or southern France/ Northern Spain to onsight 7c+/flash 8a
12th-20th Pabbay and Mingulay- Onsight the Bonxie (E6) and do the famous classics

2010-01-09T12:40:00.001-08:00

I’ve been meaning to post something self important saying that Sam’s World of Pain has been on hold for a while due to temporary happiness but before I got round to this Christmas arrived, and with it darkness. I’m starting to realise that this link I’ve made in my head between entertainment and pain is not a commonly held connection and that perhaps I’m a bit messed up. It really shocked me when I made the sudden realization that people actually enjoy the X-factor after those initial episodes characterized by delusional fool’s hopes and dreams being obliterated; that look on their faces as, for perhaps the first time in their life, they realize they just don’t have ‘it’ and will amount to nothing. Oh how I envy you Simon Cowell.
*On another note some difficult questions to ponder on the topic of rights: should people without a mind be treated as vegetables? I would say ‘yes, obviously’ but it seems it is not. And do we give the mentally disabled rights but not the same to capable animals simply because the distinction between man and pig is an easier call than between what is and isn’t a useful human?
Aside from all this I just haven’t been climbing much. I have to work for uni pretty much Monday to Friday and I work at least a day on the weekend, but swapping shifts to visit my girlfriend means I normally work both days or go to visit her, so the last term I’ve only had one day off every three weeks and given the unending shit conditions and bad weather it’s not really enough to get anything done. I had three weeks off at the end of the summer (after missing my flight to France) when the weather was ace but I was a bit low on motivation. I did get out once though to send a bugbear in Yorkshire. I guess all the training for France paid off and despite my protracted siege earlier in the season it turned out in the end that Grooved Arete at Kilnsey is a path and definitely 8a+ and not that illusive 8b. At least I did something though as I’d been working two jobs a day for a month but still forcing myself to train twice a day by getting up early to fingerboard and (literally) running from job 1 to the wall to my parents house for a shower and lift to job 2. Being the bitter, jaded man that I am it now really erks me when I hear those, typically lazy 30something year olds, tell me how they don’t have enough time for getting good at climbing; they obviously want to be good at climbing otherwise they wouldn’t be making excuses for it, they just lack discipline or sufficient motivation. This is perpetuated by the ‘psyched for being psyched’ fashion choice of modern climbers. It seems it’s cool to be ‘psyched’ but not cool to be disciplined, but really in my mind they’re the same thing. The times when I’m psyched are the times when I put climbing ahead of drinking/ socialising/ work/ etc.

Despite never actually getting out climbing I think I’ve actually improved. I think this is down to better injury management and working out better what I want to achieve with my limited time for actually sending stuff, mixing stuff up a bit more and trying to think out of the big grades=finger strength + endurance – weight equation’s paradigm of modern wall climbers. That can’t be all there is to it- Dan McManus was one of the fatest, weakest and most unfit climbers I’ve had the shame of being acquainted with but it gives me the boke to admit he burnt me off more than once.
*also of note I got some closure on a problem I broke a while ago called ‘Pockets Traverse’....maybe V10/font 7c+ now???

ODE TO THE UGLY part 3

2009-09-25T08:17:00.001-07:00

Nightmares and six packs

2009-09-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

The other day I watched ‘The Butterfly Effect’ and it gave me nightmares. The whole film is based around the idea of chaos theory; the idea that subtle changes to the initial conditions of a system could create an exponential increase in error to the point that the system becomes so complex that it appears to behave entirely randomly despite being entirely deterministic. In my dream I went back through time and forced myself to diet for the last 22years and when I got back to the present day my metabolism was so slow that I was so overweight I could only climb VS! I woke up screaming.
Strangely it seemed to spur me on to watch what I eat more. Some might even call it a diet. There seems to be a lot of conflicting advice out there on what to do at the best of times. This is made worse by the lack of climbing specific research. I guess boulderers need loads of protein and not many carbs and at the other end of the spectrum winter climbers need lots of fat and sugar.
I remember Paul Diffley telling me about the treble S diet of Soup, (S)Cereal and Smirnoff. I am drawn to this by its simplicity. No scope for confusion; just avoid anything that isn’t in the list. I am however only about 40% as sociable as I am desperate to burn everyone off and with this in mind I’ve decided to ditch the Smirnoff and replace it with supplements, mainly protein shake and an assortment of vitamin pills.
I’ve only been keeping it up since last Wednesday when I got properly psyched again after a Ryanair induced motivation lull...okay maybe it was a little bit my fault. Anyway I feel lighter already. Maybe I’ll post a little something for the ladies when I’m ripped and learn how to photo-shop out my farmers tan!

It's raining, big up the training!

2009-09-03T16:25:00.001-07:00

In the top right corner of your web browser you might well have a google search bar. I do, and rather unfortunately for someone currently staying with his parents it displays your last search even after you’ve left the computer. Yesterday I left the computer with ‘better sex’ typed in the search bar which was promptly found by my sister and has been the butt of a lot of family jokes ever since. Although it should be noted my parents both seem to agree that what I was doing was admirable, trying to justify this and keep my hard earned reputation as a lotharious machine has been tricky. But I think there are underlying principles which are well worth being reminded of every now and then. I used training as an analogy to try and explain this.
Training isn’t a set list of exercises, it’s the application of a set of principles, namely specificity and overload, to your exercise. Perhaps drawing parallels with the swine flu hysteria of the summer past, this is why we, the sad few, can talk so much about training and still not really know what to do. In other words there isn’t really some-thing to do but rather some-things to think about when we do.
Paradoxically on a philosophical level specificity in your training and overload in your training are at loggerheads. You can only truly train specifically to make that of which you are already capable feel easier as you cannot be both capable of doing something specific and simultaneously not yet be capable of doing it. In other words you can’t train specifically for your project until you’re already capable of doing it. Until you’re capable of your goal route your specific training will always be a compromise; holds will have to be bigger, moves smaller or walls slabbier, at least until someone invents some kind of gravity reduction machine. Training king Rich Simpson said you can’t train until you know what you’re training for but if specificity is prerequisite for the existence of systematic training then even when you work out what you’re training for you can’t train specifically for it and thus can’t train for it at all!
Is there anything practical to be taken from this? Well when you look at the way most people go about becoming a font 9a boulderer in Edinburgh they go about it all wrong. They knock their pan in down the wall for 9 months of the year, getting really strong but not in an entirely specific way, then when they decide based on their form during this unspecific training that they’re on form(?) they go out and try a boulder problem of the desired grade and normally get shut down. A sufficiently strong boulderer could walk out and onsight a 90meter 9a if they were sufficiently over powered that the moves just felt so easy that they could keep doing them all the way to the chain, despite having never trained endurance. But just because it’s possible to onsight 9a through non-specific training doesn’t mean it’s the way to go about doing it. With the same amount of effort directed specifically at the problem, the goal would be reached and exceeded much quicker.

But as we already discussed you can’t train specifically for a futuristic goal. What you can do specifically is consolidate the strength and technique you already have to the point that what once felt at your limit now feels 90% by which point you’ve gotten 10% stronger but you’ve also given you’re tendons and joints a bit of time to get used to the level of force your body can exert through them. I think this is why I’ve had a bad run with injuries. I always want to be pulling harder than I currently am. A healthy ambition perhaps, but not really something to get too carried away with in itself. If you’re injured it doesn’t matter how strong you are.

ODE TO THE UGLY part 2

2009-09-02T03:55:00.001-07:00

My god he's ugly and man is this a shit interview.

ODE TO THE UGLY part 1

2009-07-29T09:37:00.001-07:00

Move aside Sharma you bloody pretty boy. Ondra is the best in the world now. In with the ugly, out with the old. We're an ugly bunch really. It's time to accept this and move on. If we were beautiful we wouldn't need to get away from it all. Uber-Ug Iker Pou gives it gangle:-

Big Sam's Short Haul

2009-06-30T17:23:00.000-07:00

If you’re really into the history of sport climbing there are some venues you have to visit. The Mecca’s we must make a pilgrimage to at least once in our lifetime. Maybe you don’t feel this way, but everyone takes something different from climbing and I’d guess that your indifference over seeing Hubble in the flesh (although probably quite a healthy thing) shows a certain indifference to the sport of climbing’s historical progression. Chimpanzodrome at Saussois, Punks in the Gym at Arapalies, La Rose and Agincourt at Buoux; these are all iconic routes. Iconic in the sense that they capture in some sense the personality and vision of their authors. Maybe that sounds a bit like pretentious gibberish but take for example Ben Moon’s Hubble, for all intents and purposes a shit looking route. Perhaps it is this in itself which goes some way to highlighting Moon’s obsession with pure physical difficulty and perhaps his drive to climb harder than anyone else.
The routes I listed above are also icons of a level of difficulty. They are the benchmarks of difficulty in sport climbing, as opposed to grades. Chimpanzodrome may have been downgraded but it still represented the cutting edge of French sport climbing at one time. Shamefully I have never visited any of the routes I mentioned above. Clearly I’ve spent too much time enjoying the good life on the finest Catalan play-doh and not enough time screwing my fingers into sharp polished pockets.
Anyone who isn’t a complete idiot will have noticed Wall Street and Action Direct missing from my iconic routes selection, perhaps the first 8c and 9a in the world put up by the legendary Wolfgang Gullich. As if authoring the first of two grades as round and fun to say as ATE SEE, mincing about in the Karakorum and breaking his back on Master’s Edge wasn’t enough to seal the deal as legendary, Gullich did what all real legends do- die. L.E.G.E.N.D.
*As an aside, has anyone else noticed ‘legend’ overtaking ‘love’ and ‘random’ as the most overused word in the English language? If we’re honest mate, that boring bastard you go drinking with is hardly legendary and will be forgotten about soon after his death.
AND SO i went to the Frankenjura!
I wasn’t really sure what to expect and I’m still not sure how I felt about it as a climbing area. That makes it sound like I don’t really rate it but that’s not the case, it’s just more musique concrete than easy listening. Also I should stress that 9 days isn’t really enough to really form an opinion on the Frankenjura’s 20,000+ routes (yes I did mean over 20,000 routes which is fairly remarkable when compared with Ceuse’s 350).
My attempt at describing the style of climbing in the Frankenjura, which is very distinct despite devotees saying otherwise:- It feels a bit like climbing routes that are too hard for you, the moves feel desperate and doing a route feels a bit like doing a good link on a long-term project at a proper crag. Rob Mirfin described the climbing as a bit like climbing a route at ceuse but without any of the easy moves. In other words the routes are often short enough that every move can feel desperate even in isolation and so redpoints require you to totally get in the zone and battle blindly without the usual switch from relaxing on the jugs to crushing on the crux, it’s just crush crush crush.
So is it just bouldering with the added inconvenience of having to tie on? I’d say no. Clipping makes them feel like routes even if it’s just strength sapping in the same way it would be to stop constantly on a boulder problem. This maybe sounds a bit of a nuisance but I quite liked it as it leaves you with a greater feeling of the effort you’ve just expended than the same route as a boulder problem would.
Another thing I like about it is the fact that you aren’t going to the same crag everyday. You’re not doing the same walk in over and over. Each crag has a different ambience and outlook and the Frankenjura is a beautiful place. A criticism of the Frankenjura I’d heard before which I thought totally unfounded is the idea that the lines there aren’t impressive. The crags themselves are basically just big boulders and so you get all the wonderful and weird features you get to climb bouldering- striking arêtes and prows are not uncommon which is more than can be said for the vast majority of sport crags where ‘the line’ is simply the line of bolts.
Don’t go to Frankenjura if:- you don’t like pockets (they’re everywhere and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise)
- You like soft grades.
-You like long routes.
-You want climbing in a supermarket. I didn’t really see any crags that were chockablock with awesome routes and it’s quite easy to get lost in the forest looking for crags.
Do go if:- you can do 1-5-9, or at least like routes with hard moves.
- you like routes with history (they aren’t all desperate- fight gravity put up by Kurt Albert as the first 7a in the forest, although it’s allegedly a total sandbag and I avoided it like the plague)
- you get bored of the same crag quickly
-you don’t mind redpointing on your holiday.
Verdict:- More Redpath than McNair but better looking than either of them.

I Love North Yorkshire!

2009-06-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

Everybody slags British sport climbing off all the time but for me at the moment it’s exactly what I want to be playing on. Maybe I’ve gone mad... I think I’d rather have Malham and Kilnsey as my local crags than Ceuse and Terradettes.
The routes in Yorkshire are all just so unique. You’ve done a 7c at the cascade of Ceuse? Which one? Who cares, they’re all the same (except Blanche Fesses which is nails). Don’t get me wrong, when you have a good experience there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the same experience again. The routes at cascade are mind blowingly good. The rock is perfect, the views amazing and the style athletic and pumpy (i.e. great). But unlike Ceuse where there is very little to distinguish between the routes on each sector, take a look at the classic 7c’s at Kilnsey. Nobody gets Comedy, Dominatrix or Biological Need muddled up. These are routes with names rather than numbers (not that there is anything wrong with numbers).
The routes have history, and a reputation for stiff grades, the hold types are more varied than those on continental limestone and the routes have more character. The routes in Yorkshire have moves, and not necessarily desperate ones, but memorable ones.
Weather permitting I want to climb an 8b this year. I’ve mainly been scratching away at Kilnsey but when it cools down a bit I need to get back to Malham to try Magnetic Fields. I had a day on it about a month ago and did all the moves, maybe with a bit of a siege I could do it? This might all seem hypocritical after my spiel about routes with names not grades but doing Magnetic Fields would be more than a grade. John Dunne’s route from 1986 was one of, if not, the first 8b in Britain and put up during the original sport climbing boom. For me that makes it the most exciting to try. As Jerry said, “if you want to know where the sport of climbing was in 1993 you can always go and try Dominator”. This is why keeping it old school is where it’s at. These routes are the benchmarks of their difficulty and time.

2009-05-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

I, like everyone else, haven’t blogged for ages. Don’t really know why. I just forgot and then I had exams. Been climbing loads though and I finally feel on top of my injuries (touch wood), and I think I’m ready for this to be my summer.
So where to begin??? I went to Wales a couple of months ago and did a couple of old school classics, Jerry’s Roof and Bus stop (both v9) and flashed King of Drunks (v6) the same day. I then had a shot at Mr Fantastic, the v12 link up made famous my Mark Katz in Stick It, and in a few tries managed to fall of going up Bus Stop (which now feels like the living end). Was really psyched but sort of feel like it could be climbed on v9 strength with v12 keenness. I’ll hopefully get back in the autumn (ripped, with a boombox and my hair a bit longer) and do it but I don’t think it’ll really make me a v12 boulderer as it has no hard moves.
Also went to Queen’s crag for the first time. The lines here are amazing but they are all quite scary looking. I had a good day ticking all the least scary problems. Almost flashed the amazing Worldline (v8) and did The Power is ON! (v9). Well keen to go back and try Queen Kong on a brave day.

Other than that I rekindled my love hate relationship with the Yorkshireman sit start at Kyloe In. Being a punter I spent about 8 sessions too many getting up the thing, although my ascent was dubious to say the least as I missed out the first move. Basically I hate that first move to the jam; it wrecks my skin and my bum touches the ground from the jam so I ended up just starting there. Admittedly in some people’s books this will totally invalidate my ascent but I sort of feel like I’ll finish it off properly one day as there’s no doubt I’ll be going back to Kyloe at some point.

Also had a very hot day trying the easiest v11 in the world- Purely Belta at Shaftoe. There’s basically no way this is 8a, more like 7b+, and it’s not even a very good problem but I’m still drawn to it, not because it’s that hard but because it gets a big grade. You could argue big grades don’t mean anything, especially when they are so blatantly wrong, but for me they do: they mean some wad, for whatever reason, found the problem relatively difficult and sufficiently difficult to warrant a big grade. Mmmmm grades....
Anyway I’m now very much back in routes mode, albeit very bouldery ones, with a project at kilnsey, a project at malham and a trip to das Frankenjura next month I’ll be sure to keep it old school. Tabou Zizi for now!

My Moffattrocity

2009-02-12T10:56:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I went out, got mashed and then, for the first time in 5 and a half years got so ill I was bed ridden for an entire week. Bad timing as I was meant to be giving a presentation on the Monday and if I was my tutor I think I’d guess I was just skiving. Also and much more importantly that weekend it was the ‘We love Jerry Moffatt’ the facebook groups AGM down in Sheffield. Unfortunately as I was ill it was left up to fellow admin, Ross Hunt to persuade Jerry to join our group. For whatever reason, he failed. Really I think he just pussied out of asking but at least he went. Jerry would love being part of a group in his honour.
From my bed I tried to do my bit, sending friend requests to all the Jerry Moffatts already on facebook. A few days later I received a message from one of them. With baited breath I opened the email entitled ‘who are you’. It read “I dont know you and you are trying to be added as my friend”. For a moment I panicked. The last thing I wanted was to upset Jerry. Luckily, a few moments of further facebook stalking revealed I’d got the wrong one. This raj was from Dumbarton! Phew. Relieved I replied “I'm sorry Jerry, I thought you were the real Jerry Moffatt. Obviously not!” (the) Jerry, if you read this, please join our group.
The week was spent in bed bored and wondering why my signed copy of ‘Revelations’, Jerry’s autobiography, hadn’t arrived. Penny had already gotten hers. What if my pre-ordering had been in vain and I was to receive an unsigned copy?!!?! Unthinkable, I slept through the feeling of apprehension. And then just as I was getting better, just as I was about to start the spirit crushing catch up at uni, just as my life was about to get busy, one signed copy came through my door. Everything was put on hold.
Basically, I really enjoyed reading it, the whole thing. Being a geek I couldn’t wait to read about the first ascents of Revelations, Masters Wall, Liquid Ambar and Dominator but surprisingly, without a doubt the best bit of the book is the section on his comp career. Ultimately it’s just a classic tale of mind over matter. I didn’t realise, but to begin with Jerry was mince at competitions and so hated them. It was only because he’d told everyone he was the best for so long that he felt he had to persist and conquer them. He got some book and worked on his head and became unstoppable. Everyday in his training diary he would write:
“I am the best competition climber in the world. I always succeed. I always flash 8a. My footwork is precise and efficient. I move on rock fast and gracefully. I have plenty of time to work out moves because my recovery is so good. I can de-pump anywhere. I am the strongest, fittest climber in the world.”
...and he was. After one competition Jibe Tribout, obviously pissed at not winning, goes over to Jerry and says “Yes, Jerry, it is true. For the moment you are the best.” Shortly after this Jerry lost interest in competitions.
I suppose to an extent this is just some hippy crap, where the underlying theme is that you can do anything as long as you believe you can. But, much as this pains me to say it, I think it’s true. I remember a few years ago, on one of my first trips to Kilnsey, psyching up to try and flash Comedy. Iain Moody had just cruised 2/3 of the way up it before giving up, claiming he was pumped. I remember thinking ‘Iain’s a lot stronger and better than me, but it would be just like me to burn him off’. Needless to say I fell off at the second bolt. I was pissed off. Maybe that was a bad example. I really believed I was going to cruise it but I didn’t but around that time I had a really good run. I wasn’t really that strong or fit but I was genuinely surprised when I failed on anything. I suppose that doesn’t make me look like a very nice person but ultimately, when you’re at the crag it’s a lot easier to hide being a dick than being a shit climber.
I think people don’t like confidence because it comes across as competitiveness. Really confidence is being sure you can do something others can’t. When everything is competitive this won’t suit you if you’re sub standard. But confidence of any worth relies on others inadequacies so that you can succeed where others fail. Similarly people don’t like driven people because they turn themselves into the confident who believes they can succeed where you failed. In other words, that they’re better than you. At university being a nerd, asking questions and generally taking an interest makes the tutors think you’re a smart one. Seeing as how the tutors can’t be arsed actually marking things, they just make up the marks after skimming through to make sure you went along the right lines, if you’ve told them you’re smart they’ll probably guess an A. In climbing the more you tell people you’re going to succeed, the more people start to believe you. When other people start thinking you’re going to succeed it reinforces the belief in your head that you’re going to succeed. If you believe you’re going to succeed you’re a lot more likely to. I find the same with girls. I go dry for a while, fluke a shag and then go on a roll for a while until something knock my confidence, then it’s back to being dry. Hmmm....

Critically assess the claim “Japanese climbers are better”

2009-01-29T15:42:00.000-08:00

So I was in Fontainebleau over New Year and the weather wasn’t amazing. Therefore we spent much, but not enough, of our time in the shrine to the consumer that is Carrefour (which is worth a trip on its own). On one of my visits, accompanied by my former friends Ross, Penny and Mike I saw a Japanese couple, clearly climbers, whom I predict were climbing machines. As it was cold and they were well wrapped up in down jackets and trousers, which unfortunately concealed their gargantuan veiny forearms and wiry chicken legs. But, as I’m sure most font devotees will testify, it really is obvious when you walk into a Font supermarket who the climbers are. These guys were; that much was beyond doubt. But my crew did seem to be split on speculating just how hard they climbed. Really I think everyone could tell they were machines it’s just they were reluctant to admit to judging a book by its cover.
Forgive my horrific generalizing and positive discrimination but in my four years of travelling Europe climbing I am yet to see any Japanese climbers that are punters. I suppose with Europe being a long way from Japan it’s unlikely that the uncommitted would travel all that way purely to climb. However from talking to people on trips there does seem to be a sense that the average climber in Japan climbs harder. I remember a couple of years back in Ceuse trying to explain to my friend Genki what a ‘VS climber’ was and him assuring me there wasn’t anything like that at home in Japan.
I’ve not been to Japan and I’m not sure how I would really compare the scenes here and there if I had. It’s hard to make an accurate comparison of Japanese climbers compared with other scenes around the world without immersing myself in all these scenes simultaneously. Also it’s pretty subjective what makes for a good climber. In this essay I’m going to concern myself with how physically hard Japanese climbers climb and so will be limiting my study to Japanese bouldering and sport climbing.

In recent years Japanese climbers, despite staying relatively low on the radar, have been pushing the boundaries in rock climbing. Yuji Hirayama’s 2004 ascent of ‘White Zombie’ in Baltzola, Spain, was the world’s first 8c onsight. Also in 2004 came Dai Koyamada’s ‘Wheel of Life’ given V16 and touted as the hardest boulder problem in the world. In total Koyamada’s tick-list contains 10 V15’s and 2 V16’s and according to 8a.spew’s all-time ranking he leads by a considerable margin. Obviously this doesn’t prove anything on a more general level. As Ross said “Jerry Moffatt is obviously the greatest climber ever... should we therefore assume Brits are better?” Of course generally I would say this line of argument seems ridiculous but it would be similarly ridiculous to argue that time and place don’t affect an athlete reaching their potential. Since 2004, it has been the Spanish who have dominated onsight sport climbing, the only exception being American Chris Sharma (who lives in Spain). It seems to me inevitable that different scenes are going to be at different levels. Someone wishing to improve their onsight level is going to be much more successful living in Lleida, surrounded by the best crags, good climate and a strong scene than if they live in Forfar. Japan has got quite a bit going for it in terms of churning out beasts.
I think the only reason why anyone gets good at something is through dedication to it, natural talent being an illusion (naturally less untalented would seem more appropriate). Japanese work ethic is well documented. A survey by Japan's Productivity Centre for Socio-Economic Development recently found that, despite concerns from the older generations, Japan's new corporate recruits were just as committed to their jobs as ever. A survey of 4,000 new recruits found an overwhelming majority of them - 80 per cent - would be prepared to sacrifice a date in favour of work.
“At one factory in northern Japan, workers raise their fists and chant "we must work harder, we must do our best in all things" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3720070.stm)
“At the risk of generalising, there is something about Japanese culture that values dedication. Dedication to work. Dedication to play. Just witness the overworked salaryman sleeping his drunken stupor off, lying on a bench covered in his own vomit, waiting for the morning train, and you will understand what dedication to work and play is. Most boulderers you'll meet will be quite focused too, eh, on bouldering that is. If you want to keep up with them, expect hard sessions among the blocks.” http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=264
In any society you will find incredibly driven people, the Rich Simpsons of this world, but when we are talking about a significantly higher average level, I think this indicates a cultural difference. For instance, there was a boom in standards at Alien Rock 2 when it became socially acceptable to train; when the climbing culture in Edinburgh and quite possibly further afield changed. You might all be shouting at your computer screen right now about how you’ve never finger-boarded, planned your micro-cycles or timed your intervals but really training is a state of mind. Climbing everyday in the mountains, psyched out your mind to improve and constantly daydreaming over how to do so seems to me more like training than going down the wall once a week to do the same circuit of problems.

Britain in general is terrible for this. All the geeks at school, swearing blind they hardly studied for their exams, the trad climbers round my flat to train, claiming the entire time they don’t train! There is something about British culture where it’s not cool to try or aspire to be better in everything. In the same way it seems quite possible and substantiated that there is something about Japanese culture that goes the opposite way and says it’s not cool to not try your hardest.
Another possible reason for a difference in physical standards between two different scenes would be the body type present in those scenes. The topic of diets is often brought up in sport climbing and bouldering circles; you can never be light enough. It might then be interesting to know then that psychologist Futoshi Kobayashi from Northern State University, South Dakota found, from a study of 245 Japanese students, aged between 18 and 32, that the mean weight of a student was 56.7 kg compared with 72.6kg in the 162 Americans he studied (http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServletFilename=/published/emeraldfulltextarticle/pdf/0170370504.pdf). If 1 stone = 6.35029318 kilograms and according to Steve McClure half a stone= a plus grade, with 15.9kg difference that’s over 5 plus grades difference in the average population! Clearly these statistics are in reality pretty meaningless but I would imagine that the average weight of climbers would be lower still everywhere, I say blushing.
Also, in the same article, Kobayashi found that Japanese participants were significantly shorter on average than the Americans interviewed (1.64m to 1.71m). Whilst the excuse ‘I’m too short to do it’ frequently comes up amongst vertically challenged climbers, really when you start looking around you realise that the majority of the best climbers are short. At Alien Rock for example Roddy Mackenzie, Garry Vincent, Marc McQuade, Mike Rudden, etc aren’t exactly tall. Furthermore, the greater the number of short arses there are, the less valid height seems as an excuse for failure. Ultimately it might actually mean that short climbers work there weaknesses more, doing big moves, getting strong through their entire range of movement and turning their short levers to their own advantage.
Ross, Mike and Penny, you might still laugh at the idea that someone who has never been can seriously speculate that Japanese climbers climb harder, but if you aren’t going to go on casual observation at the hard climbing hotspots of the world, statistical evidence on the body types of the Japanese youth or pseudoscientific research on Japanese culture and desire to succeed, I think it would be no less meaningless to go to Japan and casually observe the wads there, all the time unable to compare them to the scene anywhere else without simultaneously observing them...
Shit, that’s four hours I should have been working.

A Wrikle in Time

2008-12-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

It was a dark and stormy night, a little over twenty two years ago, when Dan McManus was born ginger and Welsh. Many have pondered how that cherubic, angel faced baby deteriorated so rapidly into such a salty seadog that as his friend Neil said (several years ago) “looks good for thirty”. It truly is hard to believe that I, of eternal youth, am actually only three months younger than Dan. Why do I look so good for my age whilst Dan already has the face and body of a middle aged man-fish? Some would say that this is because of all the mountain air Dan gets. Or maybe it’s the stress of fourth year and E7’s? I say poppycock. The real reason is down to the amount of sleep we get.
Dan prides himself on only needing 6 hours sleep a night. This I can’t confirm because I get more like 10 and I don’t sleep with him, so for the sake of argument I’ll just have to believe him. Of course there are times when Dan probably sleeps longer but believe me, there are times I’ve slept for a hell of a long time. Like Friday-Saturday when I got too drunk at my girlfriends party and fell asleep at 2am in her bed. I awoke at 1pm feeling terrible with Hannah sleeping on the floor. I got up briefly and ate a sandwich before getting back to bed at about 3 ‘for a nap’ and sleeping through half of my work night out, waking up about 9. I couldn’t face going out with work mates and being around alcohol so I stayed in and went to bed at midnight and slept till 9.30...that’s a lot of sleep! Or today I was meaning to head out bouldering but slept in till midday and then forgot my stuff. Shit. Maybe I do just have sleeping issues? Nah.
Anyway, if we accept these very rough figures for the amount Dan and I sleep as averages, then that means I sleep 4hours more a night than Dan. That might not sound like much but over the course of a year that’s 1,460hours and over 22 years that’s 32,120hours Dan’s been awake that I’ve not. To put this in context there are 8,760 hours in a year so that’s nearly 4 years that Dan has been awake that I’ve been asleep. But if we factor in that my year is actually only 5110hours long (because I’m sleeping the rest), Dan has actually lived 6.29 ‘Sam years’ longer as I don’t think that I could possibly mature in my sleep, at least emotionally because social maturing surely requires social interaction and I don’t generally do that sort of thing when I’m sleeping. However I did allegedly sleep-tell my girlfriend on Saturday morning that I’d give her 8 out of 10 but I don’t remember this and she says she didn’t reply so it hardly counts, does it?
Anyway it’s only 5 Sam days or 4 Dan days till i go to font. The weather hasn’t been so great out there this past autumn but maybe it’ll snow and Ross and I can play authentic ‘Real Thing’ make believe. Bagsy I’m Jerry!

The Palace

2008-12-08T16:54:00.000-08:00

We built a board. It’s really good although the easiest way up it is about font 7a. Basically you need to warm up on the fingerboard, do some one arm deadhangs and pull-ups (although Dan obviously doesn’t) before you’re even nearly ready for the intensity of ‘The Palace’. Some of the holds, such as D13 and Dave, are just tiny and the rest are small. Pretty good as boning minging crimps is without a doubt my weakness (aside from flexibility and dynos and...) if I address it there will be a lot of hard boulder problems and sport routes to go at. We’ve been meaning to build it for ages but never got around to it so I’m glad we finally did. Maybe I’m going to become a monster.
It cost about 150quid to make and is pretty big (2.4metres by 3.6metres) so that’s not bad especially if you live with climbers and can split it (wish me luck getting money out of Dan). My non-climbing flatmate Jonny didn’t find out it was going up (in our living room) until it was actually being erected but took the news surprisingly well. Cheers to Rob and Mike and Tom for helping build it.
Anyway watch these beasts training. They're all totally insane.
What the hell?! Quite incredible- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cGHcWXWFq4Q
Amazing body tension- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=brWODiUWXgE
Scotlands finest- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HdPpjTsbuzI

Slightly less serious. Still Waddage- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OFOHGK-A8OY

Smooth operater- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tVTuWBFA3mk

Social Depravity and The Butcher

2008-11-30T16:28:00.000-08:00

What would the worst rock climb in the world look like? It would probably be a boulder problem.... no wait a boulder problem traverse to ensure the misery is a drawn out affair. It would be low-ball and a contrived eliminate to the point that it was unclear where it began or went. It would be in a horrible place and covered in graffiti. The landing would be uneven, muddy and covered in glass, syringes and condoms. Ach, throw in a bit of fire damage and chipping for good measure. Does that more or less cover it? Well this rock climb actually exists at our very own Dumbarton Rock and I suppose it’s a testament to the relativity of good that Consolidated Traverse gets 4 Stars at Dumbarton...yes FOUR! Perhaps now that Rhapsody has been toppled from its throne as ‘hardest route in the world’ tm, the Dumbarton tourist association will need a new pull factor to reel in holiday makers hoping for sun baked rock and 11 E points (but returning home with neither). How about ‘Dumbarton- home of the world’s most socially depraved rock climb’ for marketable??? After all people are idiots and love a freak show.
Anyway I went to Dumbarton today...it was very cold and misty. I fell off the last move of consolidated extension just like I did two years ago. I’ll try and go back sooner this time to finish it off .
*
In uncharacteristic ‘sam’s world of pain’ style, I actually feel I’m having a good run at the mo. My left hand pocket injury from Feb 2007 is finally better as is my right hand crimp injury from July 2007 and my left hand crimp tweak from August. All these niggles seemed to sort themselves out within about a week of sleeping 10hours a night. I’m going to try and keep up 70hrs of sleep a week but it does limit you socially somewhat. With my finger health came back my psyche levels and I booked a trip to Font over new yr. All my big climbing improvements have revolved around trips to Fontainbleau; either getting psyched to train for an upcoming font trip, improving while I’m in Font or coming home really keen and getting stuck in. It’s funny because I was feeling sort of so-so climbing, then I booked this trip over new year and I guess motivation went up, helping me dig a little deeper and virtually overnight I started feeling on top form.
Last thus, I went Bowden-wards with Penny and Andy Moles and I had a bit of a blinder thanks to Mike Mullins finding sneaky beta the week before on two problems I thought were going to be too hard. Penny and Andy both did Cave LH and got close on Cave Right. I warmed up and managed to do the V Crimps first try of the day after coming close on the Tuesday with Mike. Well chuffed. I then headed over to Back Bowden and after a few goes, caught the jug on Bender (the diagonal crack thing through pockets traverse). Unfortunately I’ve still not learnt to bend (I dyno the last move without the heel hook) but I did do 3 drop knees in a row to get there! I felt like I was back on Martin’s wall at A2 (only it was more hardcore cause I did a dyno-you get shouted off for that on A2’s 10degree board).
Now what happened next was quite funny really. I mean what are you to do when you’ve just ticked two font7c’s? Try a 7c+ of course. Well the extension to ‘Pockets Reverse’ was right there so I thought I should have a play...you never know. Well I didn’t do it but I found a great sequence for the crux drop down from the twin pockets. You reach over for the pocket near the start of the left to right version, put your left foot on that slippy foothold directly beneath it and get a toe hook with your right under the lip of the crag and clamp as hard as you can. I got here from the beginning, squeezed as hard as I could with my legs and...well...snapped the foothold off. Sorry.
In my defence I’ve lost 4 kg and it’s actually made the L-R version miles better (maybe soft 7c+ now). Before you just walked your feet along and twisted. Now you cut loose, kung fu and suck it in. I did the moves but didn’t do it in one. I promise it’s much better now and perhaps less morpho now that there is no L-foot for the tall to push off. The weird thing is that the last time I did two 7c’s in a day was almost exactly a year ago and that day I snapped the hold off another Bowden 7c....Hmmm, oh dear. At least 'the Butcher of Bowden' doesn’t have much left in the northern county crags to go at and break.

Bargain Bin

2008-11-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

Yo.
Gear for sale-
Pair of la sportiva nepal extremes, size 43
info and reviews at http://www.trailspace.com/gear/la-sportiva/nepal-extreme/
Used about 8 times. Perfect condition but too small. rrp £265 new. How about 90quid ono?

Pair of Raichle Mountain Trail Hiking Boots, uk size 12
info at http://www.nevisport.com/storedetail-3-product_id-323098
Used a handful of times. Perfect condition but I've decided to avoid walking in a bid to downsize my legs to the point that they can barely support my gargantuan shoulders and forearms. rrp 139.99 new. How about 40quid?

Pair of DMM Alien ice axes.
http://knradventuregear.com/ice_snowgear/dmmiceaxes/dmmalienbnt.htm
Pretty well used to be honest but still in really good condition. Not too sure of RRP as I can't find anywhere stocking them in the UK. 199 dollars each in America. 60quid for the pair?

Give me a call if you are looking for any of the above on 07816349379
Bo

Who am I!

2008-10-21T12:25:00.001-07:00

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work...' Woody Allen said, "I want to achieve it through not dying."

2008-10-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

Neo-Nazi Jörg Haider dies, a knock for McCain as Sarah Palin is found guilty in Troopergate scandal and three rare white lion cubs are born in South Africa. The 11th October 2008 has been a good day for the world. It’s even sunny. I’m staying in catching up on university work but not before several hours of procrastination. Several hours I could have been out climbing. It’s 10 past 4 and I haven’t started work yet. Maybe I should just give up on ‘real life’? I think if I could somehow guarantee my tendons’ health I would. That said I’m quite enjoying my studies although there is a lot more work than I’m used to. I think I like it because I get to take three subjects at the moment which suits me because I’m not really too interested or disinterested in anything.
I was told the other day by a drunk girl following a bit of a binge that I won’t live forever. I was of course relieved, but it got me thinking about how much longer I’d actually like to go on living for and even, whether or not I’m that interested in living .

It can be hard to pinpoint the date of your future death or predict when you’ll be happy or unhappy with any degree of certainty but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say I can see myself continuing to enjoy life for about 15more years. I think that this will be followed by about a year of misery as I grow ever more dissatisfied with life and then le fin. It does however seem a bit ridiculous to say I have no aspirations to live beyond 37. 37 does seem quite young....well, not that young but I’m only 21. Perhaps the curious thing is actually the way that most people continue to want to go on living for ages.
I think people see a unit of time as a constant but our perception of time does seem to speed up. A year seems a lot shorter now than it did when I was 10. My perception of 15years is shaped on 15 lived years which might therefore be much longer than 15 future years. Maybe 15 more past years will actually take me up to old age and a timely death which I’m sure would make my loved ones a lot happier. But is an exponential descent into old age, hip replacements, flu jabs, global warming, a world of armed robots, intergalactic terrorists capable of hollowing out the moon and filling it with all the worlds water which they’ll then sell back to the world at an extortionate price, etc, etc, really something to celebrate? Wouldn’t it be better to just leave the party with good memories before it fizzles out?*
For someone who isn’t really that fussed about climbing but rather passionate about climbing ever harder things time becomes a drag. Climbing isn’t like Olympic sports where athletes train to a four year goal. Your ability is based on your most recent tick because climbing is largely non athletic (although extremely physical) and people are short sighted. It’s been 8months since I climbed something of personal significance and 14months since I’ve felt like I’m improving, largely due to injuries. Even a couple of years ago, the idea of going 8 months without climbing something harder than I’ve ever climbed before would have been unbearable. I suppose it’s the nature of the beast that the closer you get to your limit the harder it is to progress.
If you imagine a colorful city of ice that’s melting and as it melts the colors run into one another and the more it melts the more complex this becomes. It becomes increasingly hard to reproduce the image this creates accurately.
I think that the closer you push to your limit the more lasting satisfaction you get from it. All this said I’ve hardly climbed lately and I do miss it although it becomes increasingly difficult to reproduce the image I have of it in my head.

*I have been criticized by some of my friends for trivializing suicide but I think the world should change its outlook on this typically depressing subject. I see it as being a bit like social welfare; in an ideal world it would be unnecessary but it is a good thing that it’s there. I wouldn’t like to be committed to living for ever if by some cruel twist of fate I am immortal or indeed to live a lifetimes worth of agony and depression against my will. Perhaps building suicide into such a big thing is to trivialize mental health issues?

ps.I'm not suicidal.

Meta-climbing

2008-10-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

Normally when I sit down at my computer I really do intend to do something productive, for instance uni work. It is however, pretty rare that I actually get around to it before checking my email half a dozen times, going around all the geeky climbing sites a couple of times and then scouring the blogosphere for snippets of wisdom. Today my favourite snippet was on stonecountry.blogspot.com where John Watson suggests that Dave Mac has created a new discipline within British mountaineering that could be described as ‘meta-climbing’. Meta being an area of study related to another subject of study, but going beyond it in some way.
John is clearly talking about Macleod’s entire approach to climbing, moving between disciplines with apparent ease. Whenever he returns to one he seems to up not only his own level but also Scotland’s level in that niche, pretty impressive really.
When Stone Country coined the phrase ‘meta-climbing’ the big news they were reporting was Dave’s recent ascent of Big Long Now(font 8b) in glen nevis. A 50 meter boulder problem! How queer. I can’t remember the last time I did a 50meter pitch on a route let alone a boulder problem. How can this possibly relate to say The Ace at stanage; a three move problem of a ‘similar’ difficulty only nothing’s similar about them. It’s like comparing a world record in long jump with one in middle distance running. It just doesn’t seem to mean anything calling it font anything. For sure a truly desperate link but to see it as a boulder problem seems to me strange. Why not call it a 9a route? I’d imagine it would be of more interest to sport climbers than boulderers. And so, if it’s not of interest to dedicated boulderers, who presumably have the best grip on bouldering grades, then its grade may as well not exist. This seems to draw some parallels to the problems of metaphysics where everyday language is used to attempt to describe a world beyond the limits of possible experience.
In many ways it seems a great pity that many of Macleod’s problems are so out of the way that other world class boulderers and sport climbers are never going to make it there to repeat them. They might be the hardest problems in the world but until glen nevis gets on the world map as a hardcore bouldering venue they seem to me to be of unknown value. Is Dave Graham going to visit when he’s over giving lectures?

"The Market is a Prison" - Lindbolm

2008-09-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

I have a bag...in fact I have 2! The dictionary describes a bag as 'a container made of soft material with an opening at the top, for carrying things' so if you've ever needed to carry anything, ever, especially up a mountain, read on.

I have a brand new, perfect condition, state of the art Berghaus Arete 35l cragging pack in a supremely fine looking 'Blaze' reddy orange. I got it for free and don't need it. It RRPs at 45quid but I'm sure you can get it cheaper so how about 25quid ono. If you have any sense you'll call me right away on 07816349379. Don't be a schmuck-get a bag.

they say...

Berghaus Arete 35 in Blaze Red

Our famous Arete in a new design and with improved features. A versatile sac, big enough for hut to hut routes, designed for cragging and rock routes where you plan to be out for the day.
Specifications
Fusion 2 back system: Close to the back, stable back system with non absorbent thermo moulded back panels
Top lid pocket
Two wand pockets for bottles etc
Ice axe holders
Ergonomically shaped shoulder straps
Reflective print for safety
Multiple webbing attachment points
Gear loops
Grab handle
Bivi draw cord
Rope compression strap
Side compression straps
Top tension straps with 2 take-off points
Hydration reservoir pocket that can hold a 3.0 L pouch (pouch not included)
Height adjustable, removable elasticated chest strap
Emergency whistle integrated in chest strap buckle
SOS safety instructions underneath lid
Hip belt
Bergbuckle
Weight: 1.14 kg

RRP-45quid but I'm sure you can get it cheaper than that so let's say £25 ono?

Wall Life: Alien Rock 2’s very own gossip column!

2008-09-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

As the east coast of Scotland’s premier blogger I’ve decided to appoint myself area correspondent for the hub of hardcore that is Alien 2. Here we go...
First up injured super geek turned world’s sexiest man, Mike Mullins, has finally had a good run. A couple of months back he unofficially broke the dyno world record ironically at the dyno world championships but unfortunately after time had been called. Next year Mike! He followed this up with a successful trip to magic wood in Switzerland culminating in two font8a’s. I reckon he’s one to watch out for especially as he’s now finished uni and is looking to be a climbing bum for a while.
Also fresh back from Switzerland is Sam Bartrum. The main news he had to report to me was “almost doing 1-4-7”. Unfortunately this once benchmark v10 burl-fest has reportedly gotten easier since hold and angle tampering. You’ll get there one day Sam!
Next up the Kampus King- Garry Vincent. Garry has been piloting a new weight loss program; the pills and pastry diet. Each time I see Garry he’s raving about how he’s the lightest he’s ever been but on massive comedown and has just been eating pies from the bakery. I’ve got to say he wasn’t really too healthy looking and he had a bit of a tubby midriff. I suspect he was simply dehydrated. Today however he was back to looking ripped and he told me he sent Sabotage (font8a+) and was falling off the last move of Sanction(font8b). I suppose the moral of all this is take drugs but don’t give up on vitamins!?
In a similar vein Conan Henderson, A2’s own Amy Winehouse, has checked out of rehab and is back to cranking. He even went outside the other day!
And this brings me to one of A2’s deepest mysteries. How the prince of plastic, Mark McQuade, has such a good tan??? There are rumours that he was sighted outside at Dumbarton the other day but we all know that the sun doesn’t shine there!
In other news Niall McNair got married so we won’t be expecting much more from him. You had a good run Niall!
Things at 23 Lutton Place have gone a bit softcore lately. Dan was successful on some new thousand meter boulder problems in Greenland but has since fallen in love and gone soft. Sarah is more stressed than usual as she has exams so isn’t climbing. Who would be a medic? The other hard working clean liver in the flat (Sam Clarke) is experiencing his annual finger injury and is out of the game. Maybe soon those pretenders in Glasgow will be able to genuinely call themselves ‘THE climbing flat’ without a nervous, empty feeling in their stomachs.
Bo

Why did I have to be born in the suburbs?

2008-08-22T15:57:00.001-07:00

8c Onsighting Ninja???

2008-08-19T16:45:00.001-07:00

Just watched 'Game of Death'-awesome mindless violence. Is it just me or is the solid ninja boss man upstairs actually Yuji Hirayama -Greatest free climber of alltime? Pause it at 5minutes 30...it's uncanny.

American Psycho, the military and the future

2008-08-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if ‘Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends’ (surely the best program on TV) was in fact inspired by the American Psycho’s favourite TV program- ‘The Patty Winters Show’. In case you haven’t seen it, each episode focuses on a different, at times uncomfortable, off-beat subculture of the developed world. Mail Order Brides, White Separatism, Gangsta Rap, Neo-Nazism, Swinger Parties, Black Nationalism in Harlem, Professional Wrestling, Male Porn Stars- I just can’t get enough but now that I’ve watched the entire series I need something new. And so it’s a shame that the ‘Patty Winters Show’ doesn’t actually exist. I would love to see the BBC produce a disturbing daily documentary on things like ‘the boy who fell in love with a box of soap’, ‘Dwarf Tossing’, ‘Women with multiple personalities’ and ‘Interview with a cheerio’ but I think it’s unlikely. It might be strange, maybe even sick but it would make such compelling viewing. Anybody got any suggestions for TV programs to fill up my tiny life?
For a wishy-washy liberal pacifist whose’ largely unemployable, I have noticed worrying parallels between my life and that of Patrick Bateman: Bret Easton Ellis’ investment banker character from hell. We both like expensive food and training and feel deeply discontented with the world. We both like off-beat documentaries and lifting weights and while I’m not into ultra-violence we do both have trouble finding meaningful relationships. Hmmmm.....
*
I’m afraid my summer of trad gnarling has been swallowed up by dark clouds and capitalist exploitation. At the moment I’m enduring what my mother refers to as ‘real life’, something I have no interest in pursuing any further. I’m working two jobs full time trying to get back some of the money I blew going on trips to Europe. During the day I deal with the public and sell them outdoor gear they don’t need and at night I deal with the public, selling them cushions for the military. I’ve learnt a lot about myself during the last few weeks of hell. I dislike the general public almost as much as I hate the military and if conscription ever comes back in Britain i’ll be going to jail. I really despair with the world when old ladies are forced to wait standing in the rain so that some bourg toff can be driven in to the Tattoo in a Bentley and escorted to his champagne parlour in the name of a ridiculous tradition. It’s not just the fact that I’m totally opposed to every war Britain has taken part in during my lifetime, it’s the structuring of the army (Marx would/did have a feast) and the glorification of brain-death amongst the riff-raff infantry, who are fed dog biscuits for blindly taking orders not from their intellectual superior but the rich, soldiers who went to privatised schooling.
And so my bests on the sharp end this summer were not really progress at all from the last time i went on a trad bender 2 years ago. I did a couple of E5’s in dubious style and The Sharp End at polney above a couple of mats. Not really very impressive considering it’s well known for being the softest 6 around and that’s probably without mats, but, as trad superstar antihero Ali Robb can be quoted as saying “if it says 6 in the book then its an easy tick”. Stay quiet McNair!
This year, if I shop around through guidebooks I’ve done a route given French 8b (Swimming through a shark attack) a bloc given Font 8a (Sprung) and an E6 without inspection (Sharp End) but of course i’ve not (they've all been/ will be downgraded). I’m still as weak and fat as ever. They do seem like good goals to aim for though. So the very ambitious ticklist (too scared to put a time limit on this) is a Benchmark 8b (Magnetic Fields in Yorks or maybe Stolen in Nevis???). A benchmark 8a bloc, ideally at somewhere like cuvier (maybe Neverland or Cetait Demain) and a proper e6 onsight (something benchmark like Lord of the Flies on the Cromlech???). We’ll see how it pans out. I haven’t actually tried anything on the list I have no idea how realistic it is...feel free to suggest.
Slightly hypocritically I’m off to Magic Wood in two weeks to meet Mike and Sam. It’s funny because whenever I talk to people they’re instantly like “ah, gunning for some 8a’s” which puts loads of pressure on. When you go to font or Buoux or somewhere there isn’t any pressure. If you come back and tell people you only climbed 5b on your trip ‘but it was really hard’ they’ll believe you. If you come back from Magic Wood and tell them you did an 8a they’ll assume it’s easy. In my experience font isn’t actually hard for the grade and famously soft touch areas generally only have the odd soft touch joke problem which was actually downgraded three guidebooks ago. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong and i’ll have loads of big numbers to spraff about on returning.

the next generation

2008-07-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a lot of talk lately about 'the next generation' in climbing. What people actually mean is the current generation of climbers since climbing appears to have gone the way of female gymnastics. But don't despair fellow fogie coulda, woulda, shoulda beens, this is just a passing phase.

BEHOLD THE FUTURE. Outdoor climbing (an unregulated strength sport) is the perfect arena for genetically modified climbers. Take my flat for example:- a bunch of bitter punters. But if you mixed us together we'd be amazing. Dan's blind confidence and my buff arms on sarah's skinny waist, Emily's steely but thin cycling legs and Alison's Huber brother hair. It's not pretty but then neither is Adam Ondra. Don't laugh, I've already got two flat members consent for the operation. It's the future people. Take it or be left behind.

“Thoughts jostled for space inside my crowded brain as I struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life"

2008-07-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

(from Eurotrash by Irvine Welsh)

Okay, I’ve actually got it pretty good. I go climbing loads, work and go to university pretty sparingly, have a roof over my head and too much to eat. My Mum asked the other day “why are you so miserable?... It could be worse”. To which i replied “of course it could be worse. It could always be worse, at least on paper. In practice, if it really was that much worse I probably wouldn’t expect so much from life and my misery levels would remain pretty much the same. Wouldn’t they?” I don’t reckon the third world is as depressed as the developed. Well maybe but either way I was born a half-empty kind of guy also known as a prima-dona.
In June I went to Ceuse in the south of France; The Best Crag in the World tm. I’ve been there four times now and I would have to agree that it really is something really special; miles of unbroken, immaculate limestone, no choss and a huge variety of styles from pumpy slabs on crimps to pumpy roofs on pockets, all guarded by a walk in steep enough to get your aerobic kick: bliss. If you haven’t been, go. Unfortunately I just wasn’t that psyched. Guess I’ve done it to death a bit. It probably didn’t help that it rained for the first 8 days and I’d been on placement for the 6 weeks leading up to my trip which had meant I wasn’t really able to train and was therefore not feeling too fit. By day 12 it got really muggy and I begun ripping a flapper each time I went to the crag. By day 16 I was just fed up and bored so I booked a flight home. Everybody else was on form which, being an evil sadist, made my trip even worse. Yes Donald, Penny and Helena, I wish you’d all blown your 7a flash. Mwah hahaha. Ross Hunt is ripping it up out there too, on-sighting 7c’s and cruising hard 8a’s with veins bulging from his pecs. I must admit I liked him better when he was tubby and weak. Unfortunately he’s a nice guy and I’m yet to find a legitimate reason to ditch him as a friend.
My plan when I got home was to get strong and/or do some classic mountain routes. It was raining quite a lot so I got stuck in to some training which is going okay despite feeling weak. No one-armers, unassisted deadhangs or heavy weights for me. However I had a good day up the Brack in Arrochar last Saturday with flatmate Sarah. It kind of started drizzling as soon as we got there. Luckily, with strength being no match for lank I managed a quick repeat of a v9(hmmm) on the Kennedy Boulder before the rain got too heavy. Then the rain did get heavy which was a pity as it meant I didn’t get to finish off what seemed to be the classic of the area, Mike Tweedley’s awesome Trigger Happy v8. Keen to go back. Good burly problems in the mountains.
On Tuesday I went to Glen Coe with Barney for a couple of days of **** mountain routes. I have done quite a lot of trad at the less adventurous end of the spectrum but I must admit my experience in the mountains is limited to say the least. Day 1 the plan was to do Yo-yo on Aonoch Dubh which looked dry from the road but after a rather unnecessarily treacherous approach involving abseils, sketchy scrambling and much wetness the route was definitely wet. So we scrambled over the top of the hill, walked past Stob Coire nan Lochain and made a beeline for Lady Jane and Solitude but by the time we made it there 8hours after leaving the car, we were totally knackered. Yes that’s right 8hours (we might have taken some wrong turns along the way)! So we decided to save ourselves for the next day which was forecast to be better weather anyway. So on day2 we went to the Etive Slabs. What amazing climbing. No chossy rock here- super solid granite (I didn’t make it as far as the top rock-band). It is so solid in fact, that it has no holds. Very frightening. Barney made a very impressive and bold lead across the friction slab crux. Scary biscuits. Anyway we got 5 pitches up The Pause before the skies turned black and it started to rain. Sod’s law it had cleared up once we made it to the ground.

Hardman of the mountains- Stephen Barnes

I do sometimes wish I still had my focus for one discipline of climbing. I do find it quite frustrating losing strength while in routes mode, etc but not nearly as frustrating as I would trying to boulder OR trad climb OR sport climb OR winter climb year round in Scotland.
To be continued...

The Day I Would Have Decomposed

2008-05-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

Turns out I’m meant to be a trad climber. No joke; the universe has spoken and resistance is futile. The last time I was contacted by the Universe (Wednesday past) I found a Jack Wills(posh designer social science student alpha-yah shop) hat and met John (fat politician from big brother) in the two days running up to my being accepted into a Sociology and Politics degree. Freaky. In a similar vein, this week I’ve acquired a free rack of nuts and found a newish wild country cam (complete with helium biner). The cards have been dealt, the ball is rolling and the poetic justice of cause and effect (not God) is destined to carry me up E12.
*
Meanwhile as fate reared it’s ugly head, I was debating to myself the merits of sport climbing over bouldering±. I’ve heard all the arguments for and against. “If you’re into difficulty, why not just go bouldering? It’s more convenient”. “Routes look cooler”. “Get strong bouldering and you’ll get to look good down the wall”. I always liked Alan Cassidy’s idea that it was down to the amount of perceived effort upon topping out. You can try a 2 move boulder problem a thousand times but when you finally stick the hold, your muscles can instantly relax and you’re left wondering why on earth you fell off so many times. It felt easy when you did it. Compare this with a burn at your limit on a route. When you come off you’re so pumped that you’re incapacitated for the rest of the day. So instead of 10 seconds of maximum effort and 2minutes of recovery time you put in 1000 seconds of maximum effort and need a day or more to recover from it. I agree completely but in the wider scheme of things than just climbing the difference between a good and a great experience is not just down to perceived levels of muscle fatigue. I think amazing experiences (as opposed to good ones) are about turning a traumatic episode into a positive one. Losing my virginity was pretty traumatic as was redpointing my hardest sport route.
Enlightened, now knowing that to have an amazing experience I must first have a traumatic one it makes sense to go trad climbing in search of that supremely traumatic moment to escape from. Luckily this won’t be hard or dangerous as I’m afraid of heights and gear placements.
*
For these reasons, I found myself getting up at 5am on Saturday to head to the Cairngorms. Geoff reckoned that the shelterstone would be too cold and suggested we check out Lochnagar to do Eagle Ridge... a severe! Pah I thought. It had better be cold else we might decompose on route. When we get there I’ll persuade him to do Black Spout Wall instead I thought to myself.
The two hour walk in was pleasant if a tad chilly and the crag looked amazing; a super atmospheric snow choked juggernaut playing shy in the clouds. On reaching the snow slopes we were relieved to find them soft enough to kick steps in with our trainers. Climbing on all fours we made quick progress up the slope before the hot aches kicked in really badly. The English language isn’t complete enough to describe how bad they were as pain like that isn’t normally experienced in the west and when it is it usually isn’t talked about¥. I really couldn’t imagine myself making it through. I wanted to curl up and die, quickly. What was I thinking with this search for trauma. Trauma is unpleasant. It’s not fun. Surely there’s enough trauma to be found training in the psychedelic asphyxiation chamber that is Alien Rock 2. I’m just not looking hard enough. What about the hall of mirrors freak show that is the weights gym? It didn’t matter. No matter how hard I tried I was stuck in the only reality the then present moment could offer-a freezing, dripping Bergschrund prison, my hands being fed to piranhas as my mind became infested with misery. We wanted off the mountain. So off we went, escaping up the severe, leaving my icy grave behind.
We topped out chilly but alive having excelled at route finding (found the true line- a better route than that pesky guidebook suggests). Arriving back at the car was lovely as was our well deserved chippy. Team Girl arrived back several hours later. I’m certain death would have set in if I’d had to spend another 3 hours on that route. Well done not dying Clare, Helena and Steve. Now that I’m home looking back on my day out it wasn’t really that bad although next time I think i’ll look for trauma somewhere warmer.

±People often ask me why I walk everywhere instead of catching the bus. The truth is I ponder these hugely consequential questions which, to most, appear inane. Some call it day dreaming (thinking outlawed by state education) and walking on my own is often the only time I get to wallow in my favourite past time without fear of punishment. Incidentally this is why I lost interest in going to Art College. Having always seen Art as a physical manifestation of my day dreaming it was depressing to discover that it was no different from anything else under capitalist education. Graded for how close you could get your work to a tried and tested idea so unoriginal it might just be commercial. For similar reasons the apparent academic cream of the crop are suckered into studying things like medicine where they are taught not to think and are manufactured into automated response robots who support the free market. And why? To protect a. The minds of a fearful hypochondriac nation and b. capitalist society from dangerous thoughts.
p.s. I do not support a violent revolution.

¥Clearly the English language needs a new word. How about- Kruntchsknorve /crunt-sh-norve/ > noun The worstest pain in the world. Previously indescribable-any other word for pain merely describes a lethargic, barely recognisable, relative of kruntchsknorve.

Pumped: Still recovering a month later.

2008-05-14T04:34:00.000-07:00

I got back from bolt clipping in Spain about a month ago but couldn’t really be bothered blogging for a number of reasons.
A. The ScottishClimbs.com blog aggregator had a pigeon in the turbine and what’s the point in writing something nobody would read?
B. I was actually pretty busy. Hard to believe I know. My days have been spent reforming society and my evenings writing about it.
C. I didn’t really climb that well in Spain... Well I didn’t really climb that badly it just seemed to be a holiday of near misses rather than big successes.
I do find it hard to deal with this. I like doing things when and where I’ve planned. I’m a worse person for this and I’m trying to deal with it but I don’t think the blame lies with me but societies illogical connection between progress and the linear of time. In practice things are rarely a steady progression; we get finger injuries.
Anyway Spain was a rollercoaster of emotions. Passion, tears, highs, lows. The lowest of the low for me was Margalef with it’s razor-pocket-whirling-bloodbath-choss-piles. Footholds snapping with fingers jammed in pockets. I know I maybe have a bit of a bad reputation for snapping holds but here some routes were actually vertical mud (warm ups left of laboritori for example). On the second day we went to the best crag I saw there (can’t remember name) and watched el makino Patxi Usobiaga have a hissy fit trying to onsite an 8b+. First try he pulled on, did a move and both footholds snapped. He lowered off pulled straight back on and the same thing happened. After a quick huff he channelled his monstrous super human rage, pulled back on and campused the first four or five bolts clipping as he went! But that was the highlight of margalef; getting star-struck. How sad?
After a few days we’d had enough of Margalef and Club Leon (its’ social hub) so we decided to go to a proper crag. Teradettes is awesome. The most fun funky climbing I’ve come across. I did the amazing line of the crag El Latido del Miedo (f8a) 3rd try (should have been second go but I slipped off). Actually if you look at it another way I didn’t really deserve to get it on the redpoint that I did. I got through the crux sort of okay and then drew a blank over the remaining 15 or so remaining metres of tufa labyrinth I had ahead. At one point I was laybacking a flared tufa, my grip failing as I desperately tried to find the jugs I remembered being there, when my foot popped, slipped about 6inches down the collonette and stopped on another nubbin, this caused me to barn door and by some miracle I caught a jug i’d been searching for. I got to the rest before the sting in the tail final crux and shouted down to tell Ross how pumped I felt which made my voice squeek. Somehow I manned up and finished it off. Thank god.
Another highlight for me was coming super close to flashing my first 7c+. I feel like I got through all the hard climbing then wilted reaching for the hold that ends it all. Orient is the other line of the crag and probably my favourite route of the trip. I didn’t feel pissed off when I fell because I’d had so much fun trying. I was actually on a total high. Finally getting my endorphin hit after all the poxy routes at Margalef; I was very pumped.
Also of note was meeting borderline anorexic, international pimp, lord of the insult, Italian stallion Dario. Very shortly after meeting me he told me I was a “fat pig...too fat to climb 6b let alone 7b”. I have since begun yo-yo dieting. Despite this he somehow got away with his regular insults and was accepted into the group. There was never a dull moment with Dario about.

Any fitness I had for Spain has since evaporated with writing essays and work placement. I wasn’t climbing very well last week and I’ve just spent 5 days in Glen Etive working not climbing. The weather was amazing which was good and bad. Kind of frustrating but I did do a lot of running in an amazing location scoping out bouldering and routes and although I didn’t find a Mandala or a Biographie I did find some bits and pieces.

El Chorro

2008-03-04T05:25:00.000-08:00

I just got back from my annual pilgrimage to el Chorro a couple of days ago. It was my fourth trip there in as many years and whilst I accept that the climbing is better in some places I totally love it there. You don’t need a car, the sun always shines and the punter atmosphere is more of a laugh than the more serious crags in Europe. Actually the sun doesn’t always shine. I arrived on the back of 10days solid rain but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as my main objective for the trip was in pretty much the only perma-dry crag in el Chorro, Poema de Roca Cave.
The first night I was assured by Team America that absolutely nothing was dry in El Chorro but that they were driving to the nearby Archidona Cave the next day if I wanted a lift. Ever since i first browsed the Rockfax for Andalucia I had wanted to climb here so I jumped at the opportunity.

I have absolutely no idea how a crag like that forms. It looks like a rolling hillside that’s been hit my an asteroid leaving a 50meter high cave. When I first arrived I was a little disappointed by how poxy the do-able routes looked but once you started climbing you quickly realised it was just an optical illusion created by the truly gargantuan 8c’s and 9a’s. Indeed the cave is home to the still unrepeated ‘Orujo’ which was the first route in the world to be given 9a+. Sharma, Ondra, Usobiaga, if you’re reading this, pop round for a repeat. The line is stupendous. It must be 50metres long and steeper than 45degrees the entire way.
I was chuffed with the way I was climbing as I haven’t sport climbed for about 8months and haven’t done any onsighting for over a year. I managed a 7a+ flash, a 7b+ flash, a 7a+ onsight and a 7b+ onsight that day but I was kept in place watching the machine, Malcolm Smith climb. It had been several days on for him yet he flashed more routes that day than the rest of the crag sent despite claiming to be off form. Watching him try to onsight an 8a+ was cool. He got to this undercut i watched others struggle to clip off and shook out for ages. He has the power. I watched another wad nearly send 8c, sketching for longer than you can feasibly sketch without falling and barely making any clips- he was pretty run out at the top!

After the first day I started heading to Poema de Roca to try the amazing Swimming through a Shark Attack(8a+/b) which I had tried a bit last year. As soppy as it sounds STASA was the first route that I ever really wanted to do. I still remember the first time I saw the route with someone on it. I was 16 and it was my first trip to the continent sport climbing and when I saw the guy power shouting across that 20 meter roof on tufas, I was totally convinced that it must be a 9a or something. When I found out it wasn’t I decided I wanted to climb it one day and it’s always been at the back of my mind since. First day up I did all the moves and some short links and left feeling optimistic. Second day the conditions were so damp and muggy I could barely do the moves and decided to give up. But, as I was dogging up the route to get my draws back I found a good knee bar rest before the crux and American rock legend, Timmy Toula (aka TNT) persuaded me to leave my draws up and try again on a better day. Day 3 my goal was to get through crux 3 of 5 to the good rest I’d found on day 2. Attempt 1 was a bit pathetic, getting to the third bolt and having to give up after managing to get the rope wrapped round my leg. Attempt 2 my shoe’s heel came off on crux 3’s heel hook and attempt 3 wearing socks dumby Dave stylee, after I’d given up all hope for the day saw me get through crux 3 into the knee bar rest i’d found the day before. Only the knee bar felt different that day in the cool dry conditions...like hands off so i spent about 3 minutes there instead of the planned 45seconds, totally recovered and got through crux 4 (matching an undercut stalactite at full stretch) getting to another hands off knee-bar rest. It was hanging there, 4meters from the chain that i began to get redpoint nerves. I’d said to all my belayers that this last boulder problem would be trivial but all I could think about was how easy it would be to miss the final slap (again for an undercut at full stretch). Luckily i didn’t and I was psyched out my mind to clip the chain ultimately because the route gets a big grade but to a lesser extent also because it was perhaps the coolest route i’ve ever done. The euphoria was short lived however- stripping 20meter roofs sucks.

I spent the rest of the holiday onsighting. Was chuffed that i seemed be fairly solid onsighting 7b+(maybe they were just soft touches) and frustrated at how solid i was onsighting 7c to the last move. Other stuff that happened- Sarah made me a headband and a hat with curly out ear flaps and a condom top and I trekked up to Makinodromo to try Lourdes but fell asleep and woke up as it was getting dark.
It’s a bit depressing to be home and having to catch up with uni work but it’s only 24 days till I go to Catalunya on an onsight rampage...7c’s beware!!!

Rock Climbing Vs Ice Climbing

2008-02-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

I am writing in response to Chris Moss’s horribly inaccurate and ultimately dangerous Rock Climbing Vs Ice Climbing feature from the Guardian Weekend (February 9th2008, Page 28). The general gist of the piece is a blow by blow comparison of which is a better workout for you, rock or ice? Moss’s conclusion is that ice climbing is “(A)n almost unrivalled exercise in providing a complete workout, pushing every part of your body. Ice is harder so expect even firmer, more defined muscles, less fat and better contours”. What Moss fails to note is how unhealthy ice climbing, at least in Britain, really is. No personal trainer would recommend less sleep, more junk food and spending hours sitting in the cold holding a rope to get more defined muscles. Ice climbing seems to help you justify to yourself eating lots of shit, especially as it feels like dinner time by lunch. Furthermore the whole culture of mountaineering seems to be passionately anti-athletic surrounded by peer pressure to drink more and avoid anything that could be perceived as training. With the obesity epidemic the developed world has on its hands it seems unlikely that ice climbing is any sort of solution.
On the flip side if everyone became a sport climber we’d all have bronzed bodies from climbing in Spain, be borderline anorexic, have a training addiction and a willingness to push ourselves harder without having to worry about a death fall, just pulley injuries. Everyone would be happy and ripped and the season would last more than 4 weeks spread over 3 months.

Got an ice axe...

got a stick-clip.

Day in the County

2008-02-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

Felt absolutely spent yesterday after my epic in glen coe, so much so that I didn't even train.... well I tried to but my back cramped up just hanging off my pull up bar so I decided to have the day off. I got up today feeling well rested and drove to Kyloe In to try the sitstarts. Hitchhikers made my fingers feel like they were going to explode and Yorkshiremen ss just felt hard (but I'll be back) so after an hour or so I headed to Bowden having heard a rumour that the cave pond had been drained. Managed an Andy Earl problem called sprung which originally got v11 but has setled down to a much more do-able v9/10. I was really chuffed and surprised to send sprung for a number of reasons.
A. It’s hard.
B. It should hurt my finger but it didn’t.
C. I’ve been training endurance lately.
On a more personal note, even though I have tried it before sporadically, it felt for me like I sent it in one session. Even though it wasn’t actually in a session, had it been, it would definitely be the hardest problem I had done in a session by a fair margin. I hope all that makes some sense.
Finished by flashing the hard bit of undertow and going home for some weights. Good day.

Crest Route; Stob Coire Nan Lochan

2008-02-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

After accidentally sleeping in(!) until 4.30am on Wednesday it was time to indulge my self-destructive streak once more and head to the mountains. Disappointment at the warm, rainy conditions was short lived and after an hour and half or so bombing it up hill we found ourselves looking at a completely plastered corrie. It was clear that Tony, fresh from success the day before, was psyched for a big tick but after a bit of dilly-dallying we decided it wasn’t a day for ‘hard’ climbing. So Central Grooves and Unicorn were given a miss and we made a beeline for Chimney Route.
I know that I’m maybe not all that qualified to say whether or not things were too plastered, but they were. Everything white looked and felt like if you sneezed it would come crashing down. On the snow slope approach to the chimney Tony and I could feel one another kicking steps. The route looked alright for the likes of Tony... at least it did if he could get passed the first five metres of vertical unformed neve. I’ve got to admit to feeling a little nervous, perched on my shitty, one blindly placed piece, belay atop a snow slope ready to avalanche with a very spiky Tony sketching about above my head, so I was more than happy to bail and go find another route.
After reversing the snow slope we bombed around to Crest Route which I was glad to find real gear on for a belay. And off Tony went, stringing pitches together to save time, we topped out (a first for me!!!) in the dusk. I think that normally the route’s first pitch is meant to be a mere formality but under a thick coating of snow it certainly felt like the crux to a punter like me. The one belay we stopped for on the normally four pitch route, was exciting too. Tony assured me it was fine as long as i stayed low on it but staying crouching on a small sloping ledge while he lead out 60metres was too hard. While I was worrying about whether belaying Tony would be the last thing I ever did, Tom and Anne shouted over from their luxury ice palace of a belay on Ordinary Route to say it was getting late and they were abbing off. Right then I wished I could ab off but topping out was amazing as was bum-sliding back down the corrie. I think I’ve got the winter bug... need to lead a route now.
Anyway once we got back to the car I suddenly felt pretty shagged. I’d organised to go out clubbing when I got home but I desperately needed caffeine so as to not fall asleep at the wheel. No shops till Tyndrum meant pounding techno would have to do but 5 minutes later the CD player cut out and 5 minutes after that the lights died. We called up RAC and it turned out I didn’t have coverage to be towed home and the unpleasant mechanic in Ballachuish didn’t have the fan belt we needed so we were stuck. Very generously, Gaz drove down from Fort William to pick us up and put us up for the night. Thanks Gaz. And the next day when it became clear that the car was going to take most of the day to fix Mike Tweedley generously gave Tom and Anne a lift home so they could revise for their exam the next morning. Cheers Mike. Me and Tony stuck it out in the Glen, walking between tea shops for the day, cheers Tony, and finally made it home Thursday night, 40 hours after leaving the flat and almost 60 hours since washing. Why does it have to have warmed up again???

Fear and Failure Part I

2008-02-02T17:54:00.000-08:00

I’m not really known for being into my winter climbing although I have the build for it. Before this Christmas I had only been out twice and hated it each time. I seemed to go out once each year to make sure it was still shit. The first time I went out with a very enthusiastic but perhaps slightly over ambitious punter who after shouting at me for wanting a rope on to down climb the ‘steep’ bit of easy gully at Aonoch Mor proceeded to fall down it after me. I think he was just a little shaken but apparently the VII we were going to do was out of condition so we did an icy IV instead... well sort of; we got rescued off the top pitch.
The next year I decided to just pair up with another beginner. Me and ginger Jason went up to the norries just after new year. Unfortunately we left Edinburgh very late by mountaineering standards, took a wrong turn driving and were then slowed down by my lack of fitness. We probably made it to the base of goat track gully by about midday. After flapping around on the first pitch (probably normally soloed/walked) and watching all my gear fall out behind me I let Jason lead the crux pitch. When I reached the belay ledge we realised it was getting dark and we didn’t have head torches so we decided to abseil off a conveniently placed boulder to get down. Of course the rope jammed but we were saved by the legend that is Andy Nisbet who soloed up the gully in about 10seconds freeing our rope as he went. We walked back to the car star-struck and deflated.
So perhaps it’s not suprising I didn’t make it out at all last year and just went rock climbing instead. But for some reason I decided to try and get out again this year... although it’s not been easy. First day out had probably the worst driving conditions imaginable. Most of the journey up we travelled about 20mph. We finally made it to the caingorms 5 hours after setting off, walked around getting lost in a blizzard for a couple of hours before retreating to the car for an epic 12 hour drive home due to the A9 getting shut while we were on it. It was horrible. Then a couple of weeks ago I headed out again. This time we made it just passed dunkeld before the car broke. Agghh. Perhaps I’m just not meant to go winter climbing.
I decided to ignore my intuitions and head out again last Wednesday. Tony Stone was psyched to try for the second ascent of a IX called Pick’n’Mix in Coire an Lochain. Given my track record I was an obvious partner. Tony led the first pitch comfortably but it was clear to me that I wouldn’t second it comfortably which made me so nervous I completely forgot how prussiks work. Luckily I didn’t need them and I made it most of the way up the pitch before needing a rest and wasting everyone’s time. Consequently Tony never really got to try the crux second pitch but I’m sure he’ll be back. I had an amazing day and I’m super psyched to get back out. One day I hope to top out a winter route.

Bouldering and xmas

2008-02-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

Not much has happened on the bouldering front since Christmas. I managed one of the old Smith roof eliminates at Bowden which springer showed me ages ago. It was nice to come back to a couple of years later a bit stronger and do it quickly. I think it’s about 7b+ but there is a super low start that might be where it’s meant to start which would be a bit harder. Unfortunately I ripped my fifth flapper of the week trying the low version and I haven’t been back since.
Christmas was good. Having moved out I tend to appreciate time with my family more particularly when I’m getting spoiled. I got some posh tea and series one of battlestar galactic on DVD from my sister and some brilliant books from my Dad- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell is my new bible. Wonderful as all these were my favourite present was a long sleeved, stripy t-shirt from my Mum. I look awesome in it but that’s not what gave the top its X-factor. Despite fitting perfectly around my torso and shoulders it was tight around my forearms... what an ego boost!
Anyway I’m getting into Sport climbing mode now although the fitness isn’t really there yet. In 2 weeks I go to El Chorro for 12 days then I come back for a month and head to Catalunya with Niall for a 2 and a half weeks then come home for 6 weeks and head off to France, Switzerland and Wales for the summer. Yeah!

Font thirty years ago

2008-01-07T16:49:00.000-08:00

2007 wasn’t a very good year for my climbing. 8 months of it were spent injured and an off form jaunt to font and 1 day climbing at Ceuse weren’t enough to satisfy a rock connoisseur with a weak sense of morality like myself. But on December 3rd it was my birthday and I came into some money so I decided to bunk off uni a few days early to go bouldering in Albarracin near Valencia.

Day 1
After a bladder bursting, spine twisting, Mega-Bus journey to London, a turbulent flight to Valencia and a few near misses while Clare ‘The Weakest Link’ Muir remembered how to drive (at the expense of some wing-mirrors) we arrived late in Albarracin. The next day we awoke to perfect blue skies. After a few wrong turns we ended up at sector Arrastradero which was totally awesome with loads of classics of every style and grade.
We warmed up doing a huge circuit of problems up to about v4 and ended up under the Cube Problem-a cool slopey, clampey, 7a. I managed to stand around long enough that Mike and Strong Sam worked out the beta so I could nip in for a flash. Good start to the trip.

After an obligatory foreign boulder holiday lunch of chorizo and cheese we went over to try the classic of the area, El Pais de las Bycicletas. Font 7a but about the height of Bowden and with the crux at the top... I’m maybe exaggerating a bit but it’s no lowball. I don’t think anyone fell off this but we all jumped off several times. After a few tries Mike topped out and encouraged by this I sent it next go.

The day finished for me with a flash of a 7a+ techo (roof) after employing my ‘let everyone else figure it out’ tactics and on a worse note with mike spraining his ankle.

Day 2
A bit of snow fell overnight so we headed to sector techos that was meant to be climbable in all conditions. We warmed up and did the classic Super Mafo Macho(6b) which Clare ‘meat curtains’ Muir got so close to, cruising through the crux and falling with her hand on the finishing jug. Mike did this totally amazing looking 7b slap that me and Sam couldn’t get anywhere near. Next we headed over to try the mentally gymnastic Milano Roof (7b+). By the end of the day Mike and I had fallen with our hands over the finishing jug (Mike on about 5 occasions). Just as we decided to pack it in for the day some Geordie turned up and did Milano starting about 2 feet to the right of us. It turned out this was Milano and we’d been trying some left variation. Oops.

Day 3
The weather had really begun to turn by now. It was REALLY snowy and EVERYTHING was clearly soaked but Clare refused to be beaten and revelled in a day of climbing small sections of boulder problems while everyone else became hypothermic. It wasn’t fun Clare. Afterwards we all, except Clare, agreed it was by far the most miserable day bouldering ever.

Day 4
The Weather was worse still so we headed back to Techos where virtually nothing was dry except Milano. Me and Mike both did it and Sam practically flashed it doing second go. Basically for the 7b+ you do about 2 5c moves to a pretty gnarly slap. Our left hand version was like doing 4 6b or c moves into a harder slap for the jug. Me and Mike both got it and although it’s not in the guide we figured it must be 7c by comparison to the other blocs we did.
Day 5 and 6
It was sooo wet that we even managed to persuade Clare to have a rest day. Instead we sat home and disagreed over politics, religion and abortion... actually we did this everyday and perhaps unsurprisingly the group split the same way on all of these topics.
The next day was no better but being our last day we headed out anyway but we barely climbed anything before giving up and coming home. We were all a bit depressed but Mike took it worst. When Clare and I left for the pub at about midday Mike was already in bed and had demolished a 300g bar of chocolate, a family sized bag of crisps, several beers and was reading comic books (although he gave up as Joe Sacco had made him so disillusioned with life and he just went to sleep). Next time you see Mike don’t expect the Adonis you once knew... it was pretty disgusting.
The rain it raineth on the just,
And also on the unjust fella.
But chiefly on the just, because,
The unjust hath the just’s umbrella.
Lord Justice Bowen

Lippy Reborn

2007-12-25T05:09:00.000-08:00

Like a phoenix rising up from the ashes, Born Lippy has been reborn. Just got an email from springer to say Andy Earl has reclimbed it at font 8a. Sorry if this is old news in cyberspace but i've been out the loop for a couple of weeks living la vida loca in Albarracin; post to follow.

Born Lippy gets sent to hell.... please forgive me.

2007-12-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

I turned 21 on Monday; a depressing affair all round, bar the presents. I got a scarf that makes me look the shit and a t-shirt that says Fresh to Death and has a skull and crossbones on it with toxic looking teeth. Isn’t my little sister a sweetie-pie? Anyway I went down the wall that afternoon and didn’t climb very well. BUT better than climbing well I crimped my way up lots of easy problems and my fingers felt fine. Actually my left hand felt tweakier!!! Happy Birthday.
So anyway I haven’t been out for a few weeks mainly due to crappy weather, marginally more work (that said first year’s a doddle) and because I couldn’t be arsed. I don’t know why I feel guilty about this, no one pays me to climb, but rather than getting up early to go to the same old soggy crag I just felt like lying in and training a bit. A lot of climbers seem think this a bit sad but think how many people exercise purely for exercise’s sake who would think going climbing every week was a bit sad and repetitive. Anyway the training’s going great. I feel dead strong. I can do three one-armers and dead-hang the small rung of the campus board with my left hand for about four seconds. ROCK!!!
Anyway today I got the urge so I headed out to Bowden with Robert. Warmed up with huge circuit of just about everything up to v4 and headed over to lippy. Did the top-out twice then due to a combination of awesome conditions, strength and wind speed blowing me into the rock I sent it first try from the start. Yeah... take that! In fact it felt easy. As soon as I caught the crimp with my left rather than shuffling my heel along, like I normally do, I cut loose and realised I could campus the rest static! Feeling confident from my send and the masses of top-outs I’d done that day I decided to try pulp friction which mantles the lip of lippy. Now I’m not very good at mantles... in fact I’m terrible at mantles. My ghetto booty drags my centre of gravity out as I desperately struggle to lift my horrifically inflexible legs high enough, so really I was wasting my time. After a few tries I was almost getting my weight above the crimp then BANG. I was lying on my back with a sore wrist, covered in sandy splinters of rock... I snapped the crimp off. Sorry. I think Lippy will still go... at about v11?? But I think Pulp Friction might be gone for good. Sorry again.
I couldn’t believe it. I was still quite shaky from falling off and as I lay on my back a hurricane picked up and whipped my other boulder mat into the air and blew it miles away across the field. When we arrived I’d pegged that mat down with Sarah’s toothbrush. When I finally caught up with my mat, Sarah’s brush was gone. Its remains have not been recovered but it is presumed dead after drowning in heather. Sorry Sarah. Note for future reference: The other mat was tied to heather with my shoelaces. It never blew away.
The day was taking a turn for the worse particularly when a deluge of biblical proportions erupted. We retreated to the cave. After fondling Sprung for a bit I decided that I wasn’t going to crimp hard until I go to Spain a week Friday, although I feel like I could. Instead I had a play on Malc’s 8a eliminate from stick it and to my surprise did the moves(all two of them) although I was miles away from linking them but I reckon when I start dead hanging with my right it’ll go. Robert sent cave LH (and he says his crowning achievement is leading HVS) and it stopped raining.
So next we went along to the Transformer cave and with a bit of cunning welsh beta I did Transformer LH second try! Well I’ve tried it loads of times before but sporadically and never really getting anywhere. I guess I sent it just in the nick of time as the deluge kicked off again and this time we retreated to the car. So there you have it, my bittersweet tale of a day in the county bouldering.

Thinking about it it’s funny that Born Lippy got destroyed today. I’d never really tried it before i tweaked my finger and now it’s gone. It’s almost as though it only ever existed to keep me occupied while I had a sore finger. When my finger started to feel better I didn’t need it anymore so I just did it and then perhaps the universe in my head destroyed it. I don’t believe in a supernatural force that governs the universe or any god like figure but I can just about believe that nobody else exists (Je pense, donc je suis) and everything is just a figment of my imagination ; even Born Lippy.

Redpoint Hell/Self Obsession ctnd

2007-11-19T07:39:00.001-08:00

Crappy slideshow of the hard bit of Lippy

133

2007-11-17T15:20:00.001-08:00

Saturday, 17 November 2007. The death toll reaches 1500 after a cyclone bulldozes through Southern Bangladesh, children starve across the third world (and beyond?) and wars are waged. But today I wasn’t thinking about that.... Saturday, 17 November 2007 will always be remembered by me as day 133 of my finger injury. Maybe I’m being a prima dona but it’s hard not to be mellow dramatic when you can’t do the one thing you love..... DEADHANGING. I can actually climb quite hard if I pick my problems and so I’ve been getting out loads. Even went trad-climbing the other day (nearly fell off a hard-severe jamming crack on second, nearly projectile vomited everywhere after my calves swelled up to double their normal size with lactic acid on an HVS but once i got on steep E4’s I got on fine).
I think I always thought I climbed for one set of hugely noble reasons; to stay fit, for the love of the outdoors and see beautiful places and because I loved the movement of rock climbing. Of course these are reasons I climb but now I realise that they aren’t the main ones. I’m not sure I’d keep climbing if I couldn’t ever train again. At the moment I find it hard to get excited about managing things because a part of me just feels (perhaps wrongly) like it would have been easy if i’d been training.
Today I went to Bowden and met the usual crew. Came super close to Born Lippy but was denied. Did it first try from the start of the lip and then flailed till it got dark. sigh

Magic Bus

2007-09-22T15:40:00.001-07:00

font, easter '06.

finger feeling a lot better. played on sprung at bowden today (the crimpiest problem in the world) and it'll go. unfortunately i am a bit fat and weak at the moment so it'll have to wait. Crash dieting here we come. maybe a rematch on monday if i survive paintball tomorow. hmmm

The Justification

2007-09-18T04:04:00.000-07:00

I got a bit trigger happy with the posting of youtube videos on my blog. I’ve probably clogged up scottishclimbs.com’s blog update thing and so rather than say sorry I’m going to pretend it was calculated and that we all have something to learn from each of the videos and maybe we do??? Take Antony and his blind confidence. It’s hard to be objective about myself but most people I go climbing with often assume things will be worse than they are. Perhaps it’s just a safety mechanism so they don’t feel stupid struggling on something or bottling it on a route and if it helps you to relax then that’s great, I always tell my belayer that I’m probably going to fall off before I set off on something tricky and it helps me focus on the climbing and not worry about falling. That said I’m not very keen on people banging on about how rubbish they are right before they send they’re mega-project-x; it’s very British. Just think back to that X-factor with Darius. Everyone hated him because he openly thought he was good enough to win. Now I don’t remember if he did win or not but he did have a reasonably successful pop career so really he was right and he got his dream and so could you, probably (there are a lot of incompetent no-hopers out there who’s dreams are unattainable; you won’t win the lottery).
Iker Pou on Action Direct is a bit more directly relevant to this blog. When I first saw this video of Iker dynoing madly between pockets the thing that struck me (after how annoying the commentary is) was how precise his dynoing must be. Power is clearly a prerequisite but I reckon a lot of smooth movers would really struggle to coordinate themselves to stick their finger into a shallow monodoigt in the deadpoint of a foot off dyno. Need to go to the frankenjura. Flatmate Sarah just came back raving about it and dumped the guidebook on the table- it’s huge and it’s only for frankenjura north. Maybe next summer, if my tendons can hack it.
Pumping Iron is my new favourite film and it would be yours too if you weren’t too proud to admit to liking a body-building docufilm. It’s all about Arnie winning Mr Olympia for the umpteenth time against some stiff competition like the incredible hulk and polished welsh roof, Lou Ferrigno. He seems to like training but what gives him his edge is his head. He’s a dirty competitor who lies and psyches everyone out to get ahead(hence his move into republican politics). The complete athlete in his niche.
Anyway it’s been 73 days since I fucked my finger and it still aint much better. Been climbing a fair bit though. Did 70 routes the other day at Bowden and Kyloe and yesterday I did Prime Time SS at Kyloe Out which is brilliant and very soft at v9 to boot. Get on it. It’s not very fingery and I think the weights have really helped with my body tension. Bit disappointed that yorkshiremen hurt my finger and a bit surprised that hitch-hikers didn’t. Once I’m up to deadhanging I think the sit starts should go pretty quick and then it’ll be 6000 hours deadhanging before there’s anything else to go at on my favourite crag.

Xtra Factor 4, ep 3, Antony

2007-09-17T15:44:00.001-07:00

Spaniard on holiday in germany

2007-09-16T16:30:00.001-07:00

Pumping Iron

2007-09-16T15:50:00.001-07:00

The Darkness Beckons

2007-07-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm nearly through my couple of weeks off for the finger injury, I'm starting to get excited about going climbing again. Everyone seems to disagree with me on this one but i reckon going bouldering is probably the best option as i'll be able to pick the moves i'm doing more easily than on routes. Unfortunately it's mid summer, it's wet; not ideal conditions,and just as i start climbing again I'll be back to work. Not to worry. I'm going to get into my summer night bouldering(might have to get a big group-kyloe could be scary at night)! The video is probably a bad example of how to push your grade as a lot of booze had been consumed and, well, you can't see very much but this IS footage of Matt of Penrith doing his first 7a in font.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face- for ever.” (1984) Part 2

2007-07-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

The next day was spent resting my finger and watching some damn yanks climbing. They were all there. Dave Graham was trying the Biographie Ext. at 9a+. He was getting pretty close and I’m sure he’d do it if he wouldn’t insist on talking the whole time, even mid-crux. Just spraffing shit in several languages all the time. So much so that from about 3pm onwards (when he started trying his route) the overhanging walls of Ceuse would reverberate with echoes of Dave Graham’s whiny voice. One day Nick, Ben and I made the fatal mistake of catching him up on the walk in. All his ‘friends’ had run away and he trapped us behind him. He then proceeded to talk at us. As I didn’t get much of a word in edgeways, after a highly political rant of his, I got the chance to have a ponder. In conclusion I found that the political spectrum is not a linear thing with right at one end and left at the other but rather a circle where right and left meet at their extremes. I’m still undecided whether he was a bit too far left or a bit too far right for me but he was certainly pretty open with people he’d just met.
That afternoon I watched Chris Sharma doing an 8c+ called No Future. He’d done it before and so the film crews weren’t watching. Pretty impressive but something was wrong. Where were the power shouts? I’m sorry to shatter some people’s illusions but Dosage films are the WWF of climbing. Everything is staged. A definite low point came when Josh Lowell (the film maker) shouted down to Chris “could you do that again without your top on?” Something which is real and which I’ll bet you heard here first is Dani Andrada’s girlfriend running away with Chris Sharma ( sorry if you’re reading this Dani).
For all their flaws those guys are actually quite good ambassadors for the sport at least when compared to B-list celebrities like Shawn Diamond (yeah I’d never heard of him either). Don’t be fooled by his Hollywood good looks which disguise an impenetrable heart of solid ice. He is the most elitist prick in the whole world and he just stares blankly at anyone who tries to talk to him of my standing in the hierarchical grade based stratification that exists at crags like Ceuse. I didn't realise he was famous when I did this so I just thought it was quite funny that he was so unfriendly.
Anyway my finger didn’t get better so, after one and a half days climbing in nine I came home. I don’t reckon it’s too bad, I’ll start climbing again in a few days it’s just ceuse isn’t that much fun when you’re injured. By the time you read this. Nick should have done scary classic Femme Blanche 8a+, Ben’s probably done l’ami de tout le monde and Donald will probably have sent 7b after a year of climbing. On my last day he cruised the 7a Ananda on the cascade which involves some serious power endurance for the grade and certainly would not be my recommendation for a first 7a. Dave will probably/hopefully have realised by now that if he can do a 7c it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over graded and Iain Pitcairn will hopefully have done away with Arnaud Petit and stolen his women.
Ps. If anyone knows of any routes/blocs with no pockets for the left hand and no crimps for the right let me know.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face- for ever.” (1984) Part 1

2007-07-14T07:38:00.000-07:00

Every journey has a beginning and mine began on the number seven bus (I just missed the 11). I was on my way to the train station where I caught the train to Newcastle followed by the metro to the airport at which point I met Dave and we caught a plane to the south of France; the sport climbing capital of the world! This all passed in a haze of euphoria and before I knew it things were going wrong.
It began small and gradually got worse. “No train to Gap tonight…. (O)nly as far as Marseille tonight.” ‘Oh well’ we thought ‘it’s only a morning less climbing, we have three weeks’ and off to Marseille we went. Judging by the view from the train station Marseille seemed nice, like a sort of Mediterranean Edinburgh, hilly with a castle type thing. It was late and our bags were too heavy for a walk so we contented ourselves with lazing around in the waiting lounge of the train station. Well we would have but Dave made a horrible miscalculation in the properties of glass windows and failed to walk through one face first. The cataclysmic bang sent the kids inside into hysterics and Dave decided he couldn’t face sitting in the same room as them so we headed back outside. It was getting darker and the beautiful city of twenty minutes ago had transformed into a ghetto with packs of rabid dogs, prostitutes and gangs of scary yobs wandering about. We bottled it and in a fear induced illogic we decided it would be safest to go and hide in the bushes at the end of the road. Surprisingly we managed to get to sleep; I was quite comfy. I was sleeping good until 4.17am when a homeless man tried to steal our bags and simultaneously Dave was attacked by a rat (presumably part of the homeless man’s evil army of the night). After that we decided to stay awake till our train and off to Gap we went.
We arrived at Ceuse in the late afternoon and so decided to head up to sector demi-lune for some easy mileage as we were a little sleepy. Being as ridiculously psyched as I can sometimes get we decided to take the long route, passing all the sectors from the cascade along, mainly so that I could wallow in self obsession and talk about my epic struggles on routes and I suppose also to show Dave around. Any survivor of the Ceuse walk in will tell you how preposterous it is to take the long way anywhere. But we were psyched.

That evening I did the classic 7b, Lapinerie, which I’d fallen off the last move of on a previous visit but which felt more or less like a flash. I also did that nails 6c slab just to the left which I’d always been too scared to try. It was actually quite easy for a slab in France.We headed down for the night and having forgotten a head torch headed to the barn to read a book. As I walked in I was surprised to see the quickly mutating Inverness crew of Ben Lister, Nick Dubhost and Donald Slater. That day Ben had sent the 8a+ Seurs Froids and nick had done his first 8a Carte Blanche. Ben was telling me about a route he was trying called L’ami de tout le monde which was a route I specifically wanted to try so the next day after a morning session at the cascade Ben and I headed over to have a play. The route follows a pretty cool line, so much so that I’d picked it out as one I’d love to do before I even tried it, but I think what makes the route so world class is the funky moves. It’s basically three boulder problems on top of one another each of which finishes with an all out dyno to a jug and then a pumpy finish above. In between Ben and my attempts Yuji Hirayama popped in for an on-sight ascent. Even as 8b goes Ben and I agreed that all the wild precision dead points and slaps would make it desperate to on sight. Yuji however has some sort of divine connection with the rock and seems to know where all the holds are anyway before he even pulls on, pretty mind-blowing. Any way at some point I tweaked my right ring finger trying this route.....

Things looking up

2007-07-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

Good news. My passport came and i'm going to ceuse. Better still my sister bought series 4 of 'The OC'-oh boy!

Dukha

2007-06-26T14:50:00.000-07:00

It’s been I while since I last posted anything on here, basically because I’ve not managed anything. In fact this whole year, with the exception of In Bloom, has been awful for getting up stuff. Today on the phone to Common Ross I realised that the highlights for me have almost entirely been people I consider good failing on stuff I’ve done. Since I stopped improving I’ve been forced to will others off to feel adequate. This would all be fine but I fear these people will/would manage these things given another chance and so unfortunately I’m going to have to get stronger.
Actually I am getting stronger and better it’s just things (mostly) out of my control keep screwing with my plans. For instance I just took 12 days off work. I took the 12 worst days of the year off. Today was nice-yeah it was my first day back. My first day back at my minimum wage job with no perks. Okay, I’m exaggerating. I did get out once! Once in what was meant to be 12 days solid climbing. Oh and that day out was the worst day out of my life. I went to Kilnsey where my project was wet so I got on Grooved Arete, a route I’d said would go quickly after my five minutes on it last year. Yeah well it’s pretty hard. After I gave Ed quick belay on Comedy but he was finding the high crux tricky so I kindly offered to put the clips in for him. I asked a friendly looking twit if I could borrow his stick clip to pull the rope- SOME STICK CLIP!!! It could barely support its own weight and so when I tried to pull the rope I bent his stick, oops. THIRTY QUID!!! Its just a glorified bamboo cane you baboon. Despite swearing to Ed et al that when he called up I’d tell him to get fucked, when he actually called up I just agreed and paid the money. At least he sent me a thank you text. It read “Thanks Sam , no hard feelings, best of luck with comedy when you make your return trip”. Best of luck with comedy??? Cheeky twat
Anyway my endurance training was going great! At least my trip to Ceuse was going to be amazing. Yeah, if I hadn’t forgotten to renew my passport. Not that I have the money anyway. Furthermore girls hate me.

Ceuse of the North

2007-05-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

after my rough weekend my psyche was at an all time low. Just when we thought things couldnt get any worse my elbows started really hurting. I had some time off and was just getting back into it, suffering from a bad case of weakness. What i needed was a new crag or route to get excited about. Well on Sunday passed i went to the anvil in Argyle. We all know what scottish sport crags are like so i probably took longer than i needed to to organise a trip there. On paper the anvil shared a lot of similarities with some good crags. It was far away and had an hours walk in. Well as it turned out the climbing was good too. I practically did the classic of the crag, shadowlands, but fell trying to swim through the seepage at the very top. Sigh. On a more succesful note i managed to flash heavy metal which is a poor mans version of dave redpaths new magnum opus, firepower. Im well psyched for a return visit to try this. Dave pissed it on sunday, day 10 of working it i think which was cool.

3 days off Work!!!

2007-05-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday
-walked half an hour to the train station
-waited for a train
-took a train to falkirk high
-took a bus to other falkirk train station
-took a bus to stirling
-took a bus to cambusbarron
-walked to a dingy quarry
-warmed up on dirty holds
-backed off pretty easy route i'd seconded before
-climbed another dirty route.
-reversed first 7 steps to get home

Sunday
-got the car and drove to pick up mike
-got lost with all the diversions on for some run
-finally headed off to.... DUMBUCK!!!
-tyre explodes on motorway
-wait for ages for RAC. Around this time it begins to rain
-get fixed and head off anyway
-dog up the route i fancied and pull some holds off
-dont fancy it anymore go home and have much more fun at the wall

Monday
-spend 15quid on a train ticket to dumby
-it rains
-go home and go to the wall

Unfortunately i didnt onsight e6 on saturday, redpoint 8b on sunday and climb bloc7c on monday but i had a good time at the wall.

The Queens Ear

2007-05-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

Squeezing a new eliminate into a seemingly worked out crag is a feeling to cherish. "The Queens Ear" takes the compelling ramp and bald arete between yorkshireman and thin hand at kyloe. perhaps i should have called it 'the enterprise' because it takes the raw power of worf, the knowledge of data, the vision of Geordie la Forge (to spot the holds) and the drive of the enterprises factor 9 warp engine. However, after considerable time thinking i decided "the Queens Ear" was a much more fitting name. Reckon its about 7a+ from standing and 7b or 7b+ from sitting. Also it is no more eliminate than classics like yorkshireman (without the mono) and crouching tiger (without the butress to the right)

North Wales

2007-04-24T03:16:00.000-07:00

I went to North Wales with Ali and Dan last week which was fun. On the first day we went to Gogarth. Ali and I were a little over ambitious with our plans for the day. We wanted to do Positron and Citadel, both extreme rock, main wall, E5s, before lunch and go to another crag in the afternoon. We flipped a coin over it and got the lead for positron and ali for citadel.
Ali set off up the start of poisitron confidently stringing the two easier pitches together. While I was belaying the tide was coming in at a startling rate. This coupled with the fact that after pitch one the route overhung the sea considerably, made the climbing pretty intimidating. On second I found myself battling with the first 6a crux, a wet jamming crack, where falling may have left me hanging in space with no prussics. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little psyched out, scared even so when I made it to the belay ledge I was overjoyed to find that ali had missed it and was belaying 10 ft along the crux pitch. This gave me the perfect excuse to pass the lead over to him as it would have been awkward climbing around him and he was pretty un-comfy there anyway. Ali cruised the pitch which was pumpier but less awkward for a wall rat like myself than the smeggy crack on pitch 2. Still I don’t regret giving ali th lead. We then made the epic HVS girdle off the crag to find it was 4.30 and the base of citadel was now in the sea. Instead I led the classic E2 the Strand. I placed most of my gear in the first 3rd of the route and began having to force myself to run it out between placements. I topped out with no gear left. Thankfully there was an in-situ belay.
A couple of day later we went for a short day at the cromlech. Ali warmed up by cruising right wall in the most blistering heat which I made him strip on the ab. I did Left wall which is the best route of its grade I’ve done. I made a special effort to take more gear on this than the strand but once again I managed to top out with no gear left. Monster pitches. Had a quick look at the bouldering and then we headed up the road. Cool place need to go back.

Hard Grit

2007-04-01T15:31:00.000-07:00

Was down the grit for a couple of days this week staying with my mate neil. I was pretty concerned that it would rain and we wouldn't get anything done but it was worse than that- IT WAS SUNNY. First day we went to burbage south in search of the cold. The boulders were in the sun but the routes werent. Warmed up on some classic e2 called zeus (i think) and another called the sord. Then we went for the onsight solo of equilibrium the e10 at burbage. unfortunately for me and my dreams of fame and glory i fell off getting to the ledge which is a route called yoghurt in its own right and the route we were really trying. i gave myself a fright and decided to go bouldering in the sun.

I nearly did a problem called Zaff Schynlhvrlnvl/v;l? but kept greasing off. one for next winter.

The next day the bad weather we were wishing for arrived and we went to the climbing works which is better than grit anyway. Did loads of problems there.

redpoint heaven

2007-04-01T15:11:00.000-07:00

My finger is still buggered on pockets which is crap for my sport climbing aspirations but good for my crimp strength. I've some how gone from needing 10kg assistance to hang a half crimp one handed to being able to do (unconvincing) one armers on the small rung of the campus board at the wall. Thanks to this i managed my bug bear 'in bloom' at dumby which is for me the hardest piece of climbing ive ever done. Later that week i also did crouching tiger ss at kyloe in. On my first day trying it i managed to catch the finishing jug, swing out, swing in and then snap part of the hold off (leaving a razor lip which ripped 6 flappers in a one-er on michael's hand). Whether or not this counts i went back a couple of days later and sent it first try of the day. Feeling tip top but yorshiremen ss and the crack are holding out for the send. Need stronger shoulders!

Font

2007-04-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a rollercoaster of emotions. highs, lows,scares, laughs. I got back from spain and got straight into training for my trip to France. Was climbing rubbish and had been for a while so was a bit down as I often feel climbing is my only reason for continuing with this futile existence. Well i didn’t understand it. i was training hard, not that overweight-maybe i was passed it. I just felt drained all the time. One day through sheer boredom i decided to read the leaflet that comes with my food supplements and to my horror (or relief?) i had been taking this thing called Manganese that has a side effect of causing muscle fatigue. I have since disposed of the offending pills and started reading small print. With Manganese out my system things were looking up and i was psyched for my trip to Fontainbleau near Paris. Perhaps a bit too psyched?
My travelling companion began regularly calling me in a state of distress. "that's another person who says we need a car to get there sam" they'd say. I'd reply "calm down, I’ve been 3 times before and i know what im talking about" By this i meant 'i can't afford to hire a car but we might be able to walk'. To make matters worse we were scheduled for two weeks of solid rain and our planned accomodation was a small cave we may or not be able to find. Un-deterred, on the 10th of January we bounce landed into Paris Beavais airport after being ripped off by our 'cheap flights' new policy on the shape of our bags. We then paid over the odds to get an overcrowded bus to paris. A quick walk with all our stuff and we were at the subway. A quick journey and we reached Paris-Gare du Lyon Station. An hour and a bit later we were in Fontainbleau-things were going pretty smoothly. It wasn't even raining! According to my not to scale map we were only a short stroll from some of the worlds premier climbing venues. As we began to walk there was a crash of thunder and i felt a drop of rain. After a while it was dark and we were stilll walking and it was still raining on and off. After a close encounter with a very friendly old man we gave up lay down on the side of the road and fell asleep.
Thankfully the next day we awoke to blue skies and I even knew where we were. To round things off we made it to the climbing and had perfect weather for the next week. With our stuff safely stashed in the forest we were able to hitch into the local town, Milly la Foret. In fact we were probably hitching about three times a day and so it was inevitable we would meet some characters. A cackling drunk lady who wouldn't let us out. A really hot mum and daughter(apparently "she was too old and she was too young" but i couldn’t tell). A power-sliding homeboy complete with bandana, heavily reclined seats, a pumping sound system and a disregard for safety. When we got out he shook my hand, slapped his chest and help up a fist. "later" i replied in a squeaky voice. We even met a pair as lost as us. In fact by the time i realised they were asking for directions i had already climbed in their car and gestured towards the cave. They reluctantly drove onwards and even more reluctantly stopped when we asked as i clearly had not taken them to the high street.
Evenings in the cave were equally exciting. I invented a new sport called 'French Sticks' or Crack-a-stick as it became known on the street. Basically through a combination of skill, determination and finger strength you and your partner take it in turns to crack bits off a twig. eventually it becomes so small that it becomes un-snapable and the player with the stick at this point loses. It's important to pick a dry stick but dont worry about your twigs girth as variety adds spice to an already spicy game. When we exhausted ourselves playing crack-a-stick we would kick back and make animal noises or have a thumb war.
After being charged more by ryan air my low budget trip became quite an expensive but i enjoyed it although next time i go to font i'll get a car. I returned home to find that my university interviews started that friday so i had 4 days to prepare referees instead of 3 weeks it was stressful but I pulled through and i think they went ok. I felt on the best form of my life climbing but then disaster struck and my finger exploded. I decided i needed a vacation or at least something to take my mid off things. Perhaps something like Series 3 of the OC on DVD. But i was skint and no1 i knew owned a copy. "i know" i thought ill ask my friends on the scottishclimbs.com forum. To this i got replies like "Maybe someone could loan you a sharp implement and you could remove yourself from the genepool?" and my favourite, from the articulate BH, "Would someone please delete this shit". I never thought my fellow climbers could be so cold.
And so this brings me to right here right now.In the last few months what's changed? I'm poorer and my finger hurts.

2006-10-29T08:41:00.000-08:00

Was a bit disapointed by siurana. Routes tended to be either cryptic crimp fests or 6 move long boulder problems which were desperate to onsight and painful on the skin to try and redpoint.
One day it was raining so we headed to a crag called teradettes. It was awesome. Lots of 35m routes with the crux in the last five. Unfortunately the warm ups were soaking when i went and i forgot water so felt a tad parched. still managed to onsight a 7b+ and got to see the most ripped man in the world walk up practically everything which was quite inspiring.

Catalunya

2006-10-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

Off to spain tomorrow, probably siurana. Bit miffed that my skin is still buggered as I was hoping to try some hard projects. Ive quit college to be a bum for the year so i'll maybe stick clip up something hard with a view to returning next spring having trained specifically for it. Bit sad but then thats me.

pongo

2006-10-09T05:35:00.000-07:00

Managed to do pongo last thursday. Went back yesterday with my mate allen whos a photography student so I could get it on video. Nearly did it twice in a row and was confident of repeating it but then i ripped open three flappers on my left hand! I'm off to spain on thursday so i decided it was best to try and let them heal. I had enough footage to edit together the video below, hence the dodgy close up of the hands in the middle of the sequence.

Pongo SS

2006-10-08T16:27:00.001-07:00

Categorisation

2006-10-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

Was down the wall the other day and couldn’t help but notice climbers obsession with categorising peoples performance. E.g. “he has terrible technique” or pity “he’s so weak”. I am all in favour of bitching about people I just think people give others a blanket category, like strong with no technique, and then see this as the reason for their every failure. This isn’t really important except that I think it can slow the categorised’s improvement.
For instance Malcolm has been classed as being weak but with awesome technique. I think this can lead to one of three scenarios. Scenario A: Malcolm wants to be seen as good when down the wall so spends his whole time doing problems which require very little strength and so doesn’t get stronger, instead he becomes weaker. Scenario B: he feels less of a man for what he sees as people picking on him for not being butch. He spends his whole time playing on the campus board and lifting weights which alter his technique adversely. Scenario C: Malcolm is unaffected by the bully’s comments and continues to work on a whole range of styles.
Furthermore being strong or technical implies a climber with no obvious weaknesses in that area which is very rare. There are many facets to technique for climbing. A typically technical problem might be a crimpy slab. But burly roofs require a different technique altogether. Basic dynos between edges up the 45 require coordination and precision. Even when going footless a lot of strength can be saved with the right technique and swing of the hips. Some people are good with sequences while others can get a lot of weight on to their feet. Having one does not mean you have the other. Malcolm A, who spends his whole time on slabs, is skinny but can still do 10 pull ups yet he doesn’t get up easy roof problems because he doesn’t know how to move on steepness.
Similarly butch Bob is a thug. But he crimps everything and is struggling with a problem on two finger pockets. Surely it’s his technique? Quite possibly he isn’t moving right but if he was strong open handed he’d cruise the problem.
An article by Jerry Moffatt about perfomance profiling can be found at http://www.cragx.com/articles/issue16/profile/index.htm.

2006-10-06T10:08:00.001-07:00

Young Sam looked up at the route. A sustained ten metres of slopey blob pulling. “Looks tricky” Sam thought out loud. Of course, he was fibbing. It looked impossible to his weak, overweight body. He was trying out the use of understatement in a feeble effort to appear good. He glanced down at the white plaque and gulped. BLOBS-6b+. Crikey! Well he is only fourteen. Don’t see anyone else stepping up to bat… oh except, there’s that guy. But he’s all skin and bones, no muscle and he looks like Harry Potter. Nothing to worry about. Young Sam will have another muffin before attempting route-X and let this young calamity test his metal. On returning from the Cafeteria of Alien Rock Sam was horrified to see the lad cruising to the top…. On lead!!!! Damn it!!! Incidentally the Potter look alike was called Mike. He hung on to his nerdyness just long enough that he achieved at school before making the fastest transition from square to stallion the world has ever seen. Soon Mike had the girls, the muscles and the talent.
The young Sam found it hard to accept that he might not be the best climber in the world. His first thought was to get bold. He had heard a rumour that on outdoor climbs the scarier the route was the higher the grade it got. Perfect-life wasn’t worth living if he wasn’t the best so off he headed to the mountains in search of danger. He got as far as Blackford quarry where he and his mate, Ali, decided to tackle a difficult climb. They looked in their guidebook and saw just what they wanted, a diff. Sam took the lead placing the only piece of useful gear they had at about one third height before gnarling it up to the top. That day Ali didn’t get his chance to shine as minutes later they were attacked by drug dealers. The next time they headed out Sam got to see what a pussy he was compared with Ali. More annoyingly Ali seemed to be quite good, had a body mass index under 40 and could pull girls much older than himself.
Sam was distraught. He was never going to be particularly bold or good.
Then he had a brainwave. Sam took up a Machiavellian approach. He decided to cheat and lie his way to the top- infallible. It was meant to be. Northumberland with its many hard eliminates (ideal for cheating on) was only a stone throw away. All was well… for a while. Eventually some one caught on to what Sam was doing. Actually lots of people probably did, but one decided to say something. It was very embarrassing and worse still, meant young Sam would have to find a new way of getting good.
Disheartened Sam went to the wall. Over a six month(or so) period he watched another young pretender by the name of Conan mutate in to a very strong young man. When asked about this, Conan seemed to suggest it was down to this fingerboard training he’d been doing a lot of. But training… well it’s not what real climbers do. Besides how a few pull ups and hangs were going to transform Sam into a rock god Sam could not understand. The way Conan put it, it sounded as if anyone could get strong if they put in the hard work. Conan obviously had the genetics and he soon grew a moustache. It was unfair how Conan had facial hair and strength.