Day 3

My toes were still sore and the prospect of another long day standing on tiny edges was not a pleasant one. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on perspective, the weather forecast showed heavy rain moving in at midday and so I decided on spending the morning focusing on two short sections of the route; the bold start, and the sustained upper crux. The reasons for practicing the bold start are fairly obvious, but I also wanted to make sure I had the most efficient foot sequence for the upper crux to make sure I have the best possible chance of succeeding on the unrelenting hard moves to the top of the wall.

I set up the fixed ropes as simply as possible and packed up the remainder of my gear to allow for a quick escape in case of sudden downpour. As I stepped over the edge, the now familiar feeling of being very insignificant flooded back to me. The wall feels so vast. I have spent a time climbing on much bigger walls but these are all split up with belays, ledges, or other features and somehow don’t feel quite as massive. This wall on the other hand is featureless, there is nothing to take your attention from the fact you are very small, and utterly alone.

I slid slowly to the bottom of the wall, checking out potential gear placements and pulling on holds trying to warm my fingers up. After donning some comfortable shoes to ease the pain on my toes I pulled on to the first moves of the route and began to climb. The moves felt surprisingly hard and I juts managed them, move by move by the skin of my teeth. I went back down to refine my sequence and started to fall off most of the moves. The rock felt really greasy and the moves felt uncomfortable, I imagined myself on the lead and the thought was frightening. One move in particular sees a long reach, to a “wrong way slanting” edge, off a “wrong way slanting” foothold. As you stretch and reach over yourself, your foot is less and less on the hold and you pray that it will remain in contact long enough to allow you to get a precise hold on the wrong way slanting” edge. Blowing this move will see you falling towards the boulders, 10 meters below, flipping forwards as you fall.

I continued to practice the moves and decided on a favoured overall sequence. I gave the whole sequence an attempt to see if I could manage it, despite the bad conditions, if I dug deep and gave all my efforts. I made it to the good holds and the first good gear with a couple of minor slips. It felt hard but it gave me confidence that I could do it if I tried hard.

Here is a short clip of the very bold first 10m. The ground is about 3m below my feet at the start.

I abed back down and walked to the top of the crag. Fine droplets of rain had started to fall and HotAches had already packed up. I wanted to look at one last section before I called it a day so I quickly abed back in. I lowered myself to the start of the upper crux, trying to memorise the holds and sequence on my way past. I started to climb and steadily made upwards progress. I had a lot of excess gear on my harness, acting as a kind of weight belt and wore my comfortable boots because of my sore toes. Even with these hindrances, I remembered the sequence and successfully linked to the top with a big smile on my face.

Quickly I packed up my equipment and walked back to the car. On the way I considered my thoughts and feelings about my progress on the route. I am happy with what I have so far achieved and feel that with a little bit more work on one specific section on the upper wall I may be ready to get on the sharp end on my next session.

Unfortunately, the rain looks set to stay for today and tomorrow but at the moment, Sunday looks good. I am going to head back to Keith’s house for a rest day and to make plans. If all stays as it is now, then I will return on Sunday for a possible lead attempt.

How exciting...

Devon Days

Day 2

After a very lazy start we finally made the long journey from my friend Keith’s house to the west coast where the weather was glorious. HotAches were already in-situ on the route so I waisted no time in setting up my ropes and dropping in to join the party.

I made my way down the wall, placing gear, cleaning slots and re-familiarizing myself with the moves. On reaching the bottom of the wall I decided to start off climbing to see how high I could get. Unfortunately, I fell in the middle of the low bold crux which is possibly the worst thing that could have happened. I tried to push this mistake out of my mind, but fell off again, and again.

This was a big worry. Falling here is possibly the worst place to fall on the route and will almost certainly result in broken legs, of worse. I need to be confident that I will successfully climb through this section to have any chance of being able to focus on the momentous task that lies above. I managed to climb the lower section a few times but never felt really comfortable; I think more practice tomorrow is in order.

I gradually worked my way up the wall, section by section, finally making it to the top. My toes were on fire and my muscles were tired. It was now around 2pm so it seemed wise to take a break for lunch, giving my feet a well earned break. After eating, I wandered down to the beach to look at the scenery and the other climbs. This gave me a chance to gather my thoughts and feeling and try to sort them into a manageable form so I could begin to make progress towards my ultimate goal. Due to the sheer scale of the climb, I was finding it incredibly difficult to psyche myself for the eventual lead. Normally, the routes I do are less than 15m and it is fairly simple to remember the sequence and visualise myself climbing the entire route and successfully topping out. However with almost 50m of climbing, it’s hard to know where to begin and the thought of being on the lead, for the moment, is overwhelming. For a few minutes, a Kestrel hovered perfectly motionless about 20m away from us, level with the cliff-top. We sat watching this fantastic bird, transfixed by its beauty until it dived out of sight.

My feet felt a little better so I set off to the bottom to attempt to link as much as possible. By this point the wakes were crashing at the base and the spray had soaked the first 10m. I started from here and began my long journey upwards. Right from the start, my toes were on fire but I pushed on and tried to block out the pain. Slow and steady is the only way to go, keep moving up and you will get to the top. I didn’t feel as pumped as I had been expecting and I found I could actually remember a lot of the moves. Towards the top of the route, my legs began to cramp but finally I topped out into the fading evening light.

I was very happy with my performance and had managed to make some very big links, suddenly the prospect of being on the lead seemed a little more plausible. However, my feet felt like they were in pieces and I hoped that 1 night would be enough for them to recover.

We left the crag and put up our tent. It is the first time I have used my Trailhead 6 and it sure is comfortable. Later we met HotAches down on the Quay for a short interview and some other incidental shots. We finished shooting as the sun went down, headed off for some food and went to bed. Dreaming of pain free toes.

Devon Days

Day 1

The weather forecast was looking a little iffy but If I know anything, it’s that you can’t trust the forecast in England. We bit the bullet, forked out for a tank full of fuel and headed down south to the Shire. After a really quick journey myself and David Simmonite arrived at The Mill climbing wall to say hi to friends and grab a bite to eat. Earlier that day, the guys at the mill had experienced the most torrential rain they had ever seen, so heavy in fact that it had flooded the shop! Things weren’t looking great, but there is no point in letting things get you down, you just have to hope for the best and make the most of what you have.

Blue skies appeared as we drove westwards forcing smiles onto our faces but these quicky faded as the sky turned to black and the heavens opened. We parked up and listened to the rain fall on the car. After calling the HotAches crew, who had also driven down today, we decided to wait for them to arrive and then chance a visit to the cliff if the rain stopped.

HotAches arrived and the rain seemed to stop. We headed to the wall trying to avoid the stream that was where the track used to be. It was useless and after a short while I accepted that my feet were going to get wet and just got on with it. The rain came again as we arrived at the route, big fat droplets that soaked you to the skin but everyone’s spirits were lifted on seeing the wall in all its glory. Dave from HotAces seemed particularly impressed and excited by the wall. After showing the others where the line went, and planning out shooting locations we soggily walked back to the car, making plans for tomorrow, hoping for a dryer day.

A few weeks ago I felt a slight twinge in my left ring finger whilst training. At first I tried to ignore it but it gradually got worse until it was becoming a big worry. I took a few days off her and there but unsurprisingly the pain was still there whenever I returned to climbing. I knew what needed to be done, and that was to take a complete rest and treat the injury correctly until it had fully healed but the thought of doing almost nothing, feeling the endurance I have been working on slowly but surely slip away, was not a pleasant one.

In the past I have tried to climb through the pain and whilst this meant I was still climbing, the injury showed no signs of healing and my ability dropped significantly. What is better, to give up on something you love, eventually having to start again from square one, or to carry on regardless, knowing you will always be held back?

My time away at work proved useful for more than just paying my mortgage. Without the constant opportunity to climb or train, I found it easier to switch off my head and forget about the rock. 0n Friday the 20^th, I came off shift and after a few more days of rest, I decided it was time to test out my finger.

The drive to Devon was long and slow, not to mention incredibly expensive due to the ridiculous fuel price in England. It is getting to the point that I need to really justify my climbing trips. As nice as it is to go sport climbing in Yorkshire, at ~ £15 per trip in fuel, maybe I should stay in Manchester and train. Unfortunately, the weather was not looking good but after having come all this way I was determined to get on the route, even if only to clean the holds in the pouring rain. Emily didn’t fancy the rain and made the smart decision to stay in the car and read. I told her I was just going for a quick look and would be back soon, and set off down the track.

As I set up my ropes, the sky looked ominous so I put on my DIAD jacket just in case. It turned out to be a good call as after making it just over half way down the slab, the heavens opened. On my way down I had placed some gear but since I had no Jumars for ascending, even if I bailed now I would have to ab the whole slab again to retrieve my gear, before packing up and running for the car. Basically I was going to get wet whatever I did, so better to get wet for a reason.

I stayed on the route, making my way slowly downwards towards the rocks, swinging left and right, cleaning holds and trying out marginal gear placements. As the rock got wetter, moving around became more of a mission and before too long I was slipping and sliding all over the place. I called it a day and abbed the rest of the way to the rocks, which by now were almost covered by the sea. I unclipped my Gri-Gri and sprinted up the steps and along the coast path to the top of the cliff, determined to do what needed to be done as quick as possible so I could get back to the car.

Idiot, how could I be so stupid. In my haste to leave, I had left my Gri-Gri clipped to the bottom of the rope. I quickly ran through all the options in my head:

1. Use a spare belay device – forgot my spare
2. Pull up the Gri-Gri and ab from the top – can’t because the rope is clipped through gear on the slab
3. Pull the rope and hopefully the Gri-Gri will slip off – Get my rope back but no gear and Gri-Gri falls into the Sea and I cant afford too loose it
4. Leave all my kit and return tomorrow – I think it would be ok, just get very wet, but it meant I would need to come back tomorrow and I wasn’t psyched to get wet again.
5. Run to the bottom, get the Gri-Gri, run back to the top – I don’t like running

I take option E ang grudgingly collect the Gri-Gri before stripping my gear, packing up and heading back to the car rather wet and tired to find a worried looking Emily, who was just about to come and search for me after my “quick look “ was not so quick.

The next day dawned much brighter and so I headed back with the hope of actually getting to climb on the route. The rain held off and I had a good few hours working the various sections. The route is a complex affair. The whole slab is around 40m high and from a distance it looks completely smooth and featureless. It starts off up a 20m unclimbed section, the first 10m being unprotected climbing, with 6c moves on slightly dubious rock above sea washed boulders. You then get some good gear and the climbing eases to 6a/b for another 10m to join the original line. The original line was first climbed in the 90’s and traversed in off the right arête at about half height. It is incredibly sustained slab climbing on edges and sidepulls. The higher you get, the harder the climbing becomes and the more your forearms and calves burn. The route follows a tiny, parallel sided crack, too thin for your fingers and this crack provides the only gear. Originaly, there were about 15 pegs placed in the thin crack (placed at some point in the 90’s, before the first ascent) and this is how the route received its first and only ascent, in sport climbing style with pre placed quickdraws.

Before I go into more detail about the actual climbing, I feel I should give a brief summary of my history on the route, and how I have come to be at this point.

I first looked at the line a few years ago but was off-put by the rotting pegs. I initially planned to replace the pegs and climb the route in its original style but after speaking to various people and educating myself on the issues of in-situ gear I decided if I was to ever climb this wall, I would do it without the pegs. When I weighed them all up in my mind, the cons completely outweighed the pros for many reasons. I will go into these details at a later date or I will be waffling on for hours. I was left with a difficult choice; forget about the route and leave it as it is, or remove the rotting pegs and re-climb the route on traditional gear which would be incredibly difficult and dangerous, mainly because the crack is too thin and parallel to take anything other than pegs, only occasionally providing placement for a micro-wire or two.

And that brings us back to today, hanging of a rope which suddenly looks very thin, feeling very isolated and helpless as the waves crash 100ft below me. The last of the pegs have gone and the wall seems a lot fresher, like it has just received a new lease of life.

When you are on the route, you can’t see any holds unless you are right on top of them and so you need to try to remember 40m of intricate slab moves which as you may guess is not easy. The rock is very frictionless meaning you need to look for edges to stand on, but the rock is also quite brittle and crumbly so small edges have a habit of breaking off! Add to this very spaced and hard to place small gear, combined with the slightly dubious rock I mentioned before and you have the makings of a pretty tricky undertaking.

To climb this wall, in one push, on natural gear, from bottom to top will be an interesting journey. There is no doubt I will find it difficult, possibly more so than anything I have done before but I am looking forward to the challenge. The wall is one of the most impressive I have seen in the UK, truly inspirational and for me this is what climbing is about.

I can only apologise for the major delay between blog posts, I have been pretty slack on the writing front, and pretty busy on the climbing/training/working one. Believe it or not, I have sat down on numerous occasions and wrote a few thousand words, but at the last minute decided not to publish them for one reason or another.

I have mainly been training endurance for my future projects but I have managed to make it further than Manchester Climbing Centre on a few occasions. One of these found me way up north in bonny Scotland, at Dumbarton Rock with my sights set on the second ascent of Rhapsody. I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s safe to say that Rhapsody turned out not quite how I was expecting it to be, and so wasting no time I headed home to prepare for something new.

As usual the weather in England got the better of my plans and I got back on with my endurance work. Time passed and I felt myself making slow but steady progress. I don’t enjoy training in general, and endurance training is the worst. At least when you are working power, it is quick and relatively pain free. You try a problem, and you either do it, or fall off on a particular move, then you rest until you feel ready, and try again. With endurance, it’s all about suffering. You climb and climb and climb, your arms getting fatter and heavier and with every move making you feel sicker with the increasing pump, but you keep on climbing and climbing, feeling sicker and sicker, until you can climb no more. Then you rest, your heart pounding and forearms throbbing. Before you have had chance to recover fully, you force yourself to pull on again. The cycle repeats itself, only this time you feel sick right from the start...

On three separate occasions my plans to spend time on my new project failed to come to anything, thanks to Mr Rain. Living in England you grow to accept this is just the way it goes, and like endurance work, it is a necessary evil that will always be there. There is no point in moaning, you just have to get your head down and find a way to deal with it and in the end, these discomforts and inconveniences make the eventual success even sweeter.I head back to work in a few days time so it looks like my project is going to have to wait for another few weeks.

It is sometimes hard knowing this unclimbed beautiful wall is just waiting. I feel ready, I have all the necessary gear, I have everything I need except time. Things keep getting in the way but for now, there is nothing I can do about it so I am going to take my earlier advice, and quit moaning.

Speak to you all soon

Finally I am just about recovered after my epic 24 hours on Friday/Saturday. After leaving work at 11am, and dashing back to Manchester I made a brief stop at home to say hi to Emily and shot off to the wall. The Christies Seven Summits Challenge was organised by Molly and Sophie, two 10-year-olds who are regular climbers at Manchester Climbing Centre. Molly's mum Carol is a patient at Christie's cancer hospital and the girls were inspired to come up with an original way to raise money to help the hospital continue its vital work.

The idea was simple, teams of three would be sponsored to climb as high as they could in a 24 hour period, the higher they climbed, the more money they raised for charity. The combined heights would then be added together and hopefully the combined total would be more than the combined height of the Seven Summits (43???)

The event started at 3pm and by 7pm I was ready for the end, my hands were sore, my muscles ached and the thought of 20 hours more climbing was not a happy one. There was a competition between teams to see who could climb the highest and my team (John Dunne and Dave Barrans) were determined to win. We had set of at a blistering pace, which turned out to be a big mistake and we were soon feeling the strain. Thankfully we were quite far ahead of all the other teams and relaxed for a short while to plan out the rest of our time. We decided to push on in 1,000m stints until we had racked up the equivalent height of Everest. This lofty feat came at ~ 4am and we decided to celebrate with a few hours sleep, arranging to meet back up again at 8.30am for round two.

I woke up to find my inner thighs on fire, red raw from chaffing from my super-light sport harness which in hindsight was a bad choice. After applying copious amounts of talcum powder I dragged my way back to the wall and was surprised to find lots of people already climbing. It turned out they had been climbing through the night, slow and steady, gradually gaining distance as we slept. We were 2,500m behind the leading team, a phrase about a Hare and a Tortoise sprang to mind.

Getting back that sort of distance was not going to be easy but we were determined to give it our best, reputations were at stake after all. Up, down, up, down, up, down, monotonous to say the least. No rest, keep moving, forget about the pain. The minutes ticking by were both fantastic and terrible. Each one that passed brought us closer to the finish, but with bigger blisters and deeper aches. At last, 3pm came.

15,710m was all we could manage, thankfully enough to win, making all the suffering just about worth it.

Here is a report of the event;

“Last weekend saw climbers at the Manchester Climbing Centre taking on the challenge of climbing the height of the Seven Summits (43,322 meters) in 24 hours, in order to raise money for Christie's hospital in South Manchester. Enormous heights were climbed, and sales of finger tape rocketed as over 200 climbers took to the ropes, including over 60 hardy souls taking on the full 24 hour challenge.

The event was officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Manchester, and ITV's Dr Chris Steele, along with over 70 young climbers from Manchester High School for Girls. Hollyoaks star Stuart Manning also added his effort to the proceedings. Christie Bear also made an appearance, and even had a climb....

A fierce competitive spirit quickly took over, leading to some incredible feats of endurance. Anyone fancy trying to beat the current record of 1,700 metres without resting? The target height of 43,322 metres was achieved in an incredible 5 hours, and so further targets were needed to keep the motivation flowing!

The event was now the 'Fourteen 8,000-metre peaks Challenge', giving us a target height of just over 115,000 metres. Teams climbed throughout the night, spurred on by huge amounts of Gatorade and other sugary goodness, and the target was one again within reach. By 9am, target no. 2 was in sight. E

Once again, climbing was proving too easy, and so the original mountains were added back on! We were now aiming for a height of 150,000 metres, and everyone was still worryingly awake...

By the end of the event, an amazing 161,580.5 metres had been climbed. The team climbing the highest consisted of world class climbers John Dunne, Dave Barrans, and James Pearson, who notched up 15,710 metres between them.”

After a few days of rest, I headed to Widdop with my friend Jim for a pleasant days bouldering before I got back into my training routine. It was the first time I had been to Widdop and I was really impressed with the beautiful setting. I climbed some of the classic boulders and took a wander up to the edge to look at some of the trad routes. Reservoir Dogs E8 7a looks absolutely stunning, a real 3* line and a good contender for an onsight attempt in the future.

For the last month I have been semi-focused on training for a certain route I would like to try. I have yet to make the journey to try the route so it is very difficult to know exactly what I need to work on but I have spent many (tedious) hours analysing the footage of the first ascent and think I have a fair idea of what to expect. As far as the individual moves go, I think I will find it OK but the whole route is long and very sustained and so I have been working on increasing my endurance.

The Manchester Climbing Centre kindly allowed me to replicate the route on their main leading wall and so after making a plan of where all the holds need to go I set to work stripping some old routes and setting the new one. With the help of Andy Jack, everything went really smoothly and within a few hours we had almost finished. After trying a few of the moves, and watching the video again we decided that our version needed to be a little harder and so changed around a lot of the holds for smaller/worse versions. It looked that the holds on our version were generally poorer than the holds on the real route (as far as we could tell from the film) and I was a little worried that ours would be too difficult. After a few final tweaks, I decided to give the route a go and procided to climb it all, falling on the last move.

This was a little strange as it felt a lot easier than I had been expecting. The holds were all very small; much, much smaller than the other routes on the same wall and, like I have said before, appeared to be smaller/slopeyer than the holds on the “real” route. All in all, it should have felt hard, but it didn’t?

Thinking about it a little more deeply, I came up with numerous possible answers and could probably have come up with more and more until the cows came home. At the end of the day, they would all be guesses, the only real way to be sure is to go and try the route in the flesh. Hopefully (weather permitting) I will make the trip just before I have to go back to work which gives me roughly another week and a half to work on my fitness.

Wow, It sure has been a long time since my last blog, so long in fact that I cant even remember what I wrote about. The reason for the absence has been simply that I have not really done anything worth bloging about, until this weekend.

During the last few weeks I have mostly been working, looking after my girlfriend who has recently had major knee surgery, and training my endurance for a few hours every day. I have become a lot fitter and within the next month, I hope to feel ready to attempt one of my 2008 projects.

This weekend I have been in London, at the opening party for The Arch climbing wall. The wall is located in one of the railway arches near London bridge, a truly amazing location. I was asked to set some new boulder problems as well as give a multimedia presentation and run a masterclass session.

I didn't want to leave Emily on her own for too long so caught a train down south on Friday evening with my return planned for Sunday afternoon. After arriving at the wall and and meeting the owner, Fred, I headed to Fred's house for some sleep, to be ready for the early start and manic day ahead.

After setting 11 new problems and eating an incredible sandwich (a whole roast dinner, lamb, roast potato, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrot, etc, etc in a bread roll) I started my final preps for my presentation. I had decided to lecture on my milestones and motivations, with the aim of inspiring the audience and explaining why and how I have done the things I have. I wanted to make sure the key points were fresh in my mind in the hope of giving a smooth, pain free talk.

15 min before I was due to start, I was as ready as I would ever be and it was time for a last min soundcheck before setting up the show. The next two hours are a bit of a blur, and I wont bore you with the technical details but in short, 3 laptops, 2 projectors, some back converting to old file formats and some very rushed last min editing saw me finally ready and stood in front of a very patient audience.

I find it difficult to judge how my talks are going whilst I am actually giving them, but aplause, and laughs in all the right places are usualy good signs. As my talk came to the end, the room burst into applause that went on, and on, and on, and on. I smiled.

The feedback I got after was fantastic and really made my day. The quote of the night came from Neil Gresham,

"Good effort that was awesome, F***ing awesome. Really inspirational, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!"

After chatting to friends, both old and new, and watching alcohol induced climbing comps get closer and closer towards broken bones, the night came to an end and I fell into my very welcome bed.

Another early start allowed me to get in some training before my masterclass. I made my way round the problems at The Arch and found them all really enjoyable, with some great, intricate sequences. My clients arrived and we all got to work. After 2 hours, I was shattered, and my clients seemed pretty tired as well. Hopefully they will be able to put all they have learnt into practice, because after all, practice makes perfect. To use a very cheesy, and slightly worrying analogy, I have planted the seeds, they need to make them grow.

I returned home to a fantastic "real" roast dinner (not in a sandwich) which hit every spot known to man. Tomorrow morning I go back to work untill friday which whilst not ideal is a necesity at the moment due to the large chunk of money that dissappears from my bank ever month, more comonly known as a mortgage.

After I come off shift, it is straight to Manchester Climbing Center to take part in the 24 hour Seven Summit Challenge. Ill let you know how it goes but I think its safe to say I will be needing to catch up on some sleep.

Until next time...