Our legs were feeling fresh(er) and our skin was thick – time to return to the battle field. The walk in had certainly not got any easier during our two day vacation but slow and steady wins the race and we arrived at the crag at a respectable hour, not too much out of breath. Cascade is usually the first port of call as the morning sun is yet to turn the corner and the shade is a welcome relief. Well not today; the air temp was so cold that people were belaying in gloves and down jackets and numb fingers were all around. We quickly fled for warmer climbates.

I was pretty keen to get back on Bah Bah and was feeling quietly confident. I felt like the individual sections were reasonably straight forward and that the starting 3 bolts would not tire me for the crux and remaining tricky section. The first few hours were spent belaying Emily as she knocked off her ticklist, and as she began to tire, I decided it was time for a look-see.

After spending a while refining my sequence and linking the upper sections a few times I ate lunch and went back to belaying Em until I felt ready for a redpoint. The sun had moved on and I was cold from my rest. I guessed the first try on the route would end prematurely due to numb fingers, which it did, after just entering the crux. Not to worry, this was to be expected, next go will be much better...

Once my fingers were warm again and my forearms felt good I set off again. What followed can only be described as a shambles; a shocking display of climbing ability, or more precisely lack of! My feet were slipping, I missed holds on my first slap attempts only to scrabble around and get them on my next go. Safe to say I fell at the start of the crux and to make matters worse, realised Arnaud Petit had been watching. Arnaud kindly offered beta on the route, which I think will be useful. I say “think” because I couldn’t actually try it out. My body felt like lead and I could no longer even make the individual moves. Dirt me...

I don’t really understand how ones performance can change so dramatically in such a short period. Is it physical, mental, spiritual, I don’t know but guess it’s a mix of them all? We began the long walk home which allowed lots of time to think about those very things. We have one day left at Ceuse, my skin hurts and I feel tired. However, my bag is still stashed at the top of the hill, I have not given up hope, bring out the garlic!

My friend Neil of Maisonbleau fame is currently holidaying near the Verdon, so on our first rest day, Em and I decided to drive to meet him for some fun in the sun. Neil had seen pics online of some DWS in the verdon which he was going to check out by “pedalo” and as we hopped on board, the thought about wet skin and rough rock not mixing failed to cross my mind.

The rest day turned out not to be so restful. The almost virgin limestone was pretty sharp and rough and by the end of the day my skin was not looking good. It was great fun however, and something I would definitely recommend. We climbed around 5 routes on two different buttresses in the first 400m of river but if you peddled further, who knows what you might find?



The water is warm and deep, just watch out for clueless tourists peddling right underneath you! For anyone interested, the beta is simple. Drive to the north east point of the lake at the base of the Verdon. A obvious road bridge will cross the water at the mouth of the gorge, park here, hire a boat and go exploring.



A further rest day was needed after our DWS adventure and the time was passed in the Gorges de la Méouge swimming hole (near Laragne Monteglin). This natural beauty consists of sandy beaches, shallow swimming pools and waterfalls and is a perfect place to pretend your a kid again. Once the relapse is over, the adult in you couldn’t pick a more pleasant spot for reading a book in the afternoon sun.

We had a lazy start today, arriving at the cliff at 4pm, just as a huge thunderstorm developed. The gentle breeze turned into a gale, and Em and I were quickly chilled to the bone. Earlier, in the 30 degree campsite, I had shrugged off Emily’s advice to take a sweater, a choice I was now regretting. I really wanted to try Bah Bah Black Sheep, and so sheepishly asked Em if I could climb in her hoodie in exchange for my waterproof shell.

What a sight! Me swinging around getting blown all over the place wearing a skin tight girls hoodie, and Emily lovingly shivering away below on belay duty in multiple multicoloured shells. I went bolt to bolt as quick as I could and happily found the moves not to bad, linking the route in a few sections.

The route is a strange affair, with very varied climbing and an unusual crux. There are two points I think may prove difficult on a redpoint; the jump after the crux moves, and a dynamic lock at the end of all the hard climbing. We only have a few days left in Ceuse before moving north to Chamonix so I’m not getting my hopes up too much, just enjoying climbing in a new area.

I opened my last post talking about slackness but I feel my blog activity of late has redefined the word. As you may already know, throughout April and May I was part of The North Face Summit Series Road trip and since time was incredibly short, I didn’t feel a pressing need to complete my personal blog, especially since we were already writing a daily account for the trip. Unfortunatley, this habit carried over once I returned home, days turned into weeks, weeks to months, and here we are, a long long way down the line with very little said.

The truth is you haven’t really missed much. I have been trying to maintain/improve upon the stamina I found during the roadtrip, which has mainly involved tedious circuits down the wall. But gains feel minimal and slow coming, and motivation is often hard to come by. Giving up and going bouldering or trad shuffling is certainly a tempting alternative but if I can break through this wall I hope the grass will be a lot greener on the other side.

To celebrate Emily finishing Bar school, we are currently on our first climbing trip together in two years. Six days in and we are camping at Ceuse which is wonderful. Believe it or not, this is my first time at the crag and it is certainly living up to expectations, both the routes and the walk in.

Long walks are most definitely not my thing, and on the first day I was really feeling the pain; especially after leaving the car keys in my sack at the top of the hill and having to do the entire thing twice!

Slack is just one of many words you could use to describe my blogging activity of late, there are others, particularly ones from France, but I feel slack gets the point across without being too harsh. As usual, there are no real excuses, but I will give some anyway because a) it makes me feel a little better about being slack, and b) it gives me something to write about in what has otherwise been a pretty uneventful time.

In short, I have been super busy with numerous different projects and since multitasking is definitely not one of my strong points, I have found it difficult to fit them all around one another. Writing a blog dropped right to the bottom of my pile of priorities, it became a do it tomorrow task and as the famous saying goes, tomorrow never comes.



Apart from my usual activities of climbing, training, lectures and personal work, I have recently been organising a lot of the logistics for an upcoming North Face trip I am running. The Summit Series road Trip runs from the 1st of April until the 10th of May and will take us through 14 countries to the finish at Melloblocco in Italy. Along the way we plan to climb a selection of the best, classic Fr8a’s in Europe as well as holding lots of slideshows, masterclasses and other events during our rest days.



The schedule is manic, and pretty much works out at one climbing day, one event day, one climbing day, one event day, all the way to Mello. I would never have imagined the amount of work that is needed to organise something like this. In the past my trips have always been fairly spontaneous, you know the date you leave, and after that, everything just sort of happens, but for this, simply because of the very tight schedule we need to keep if we are to complete it as planned; we need to have every day planned to perfection. Hundreds of emails have gone back and forth between many different people, and whole days just seem to vanish into a blur of forwarding, Cc’s and attachments!

When I have been able to justify time away from the computer, it’s been a tough decision between time on the rock, and time training. Obviously the rock is where I would like to be every day, but especially in the UK, days out at the crag can seem like frustrating wastes of time and money if the weather is bad. I love being outside, and in a perfect world, I would climb outside every day, but since climbing is more than just a pastime, I need to be both realistic and professional and make decisions that I feel are best for my personal progression.

Training certainly helps me progress and since it is not weather dependent it often seems like the right choice. However It is surprisingly easy so get sucked into a circular cycle of training for training sake, and at times I have had to check with myself that there is a specific aim to work towards. Without an aim or a goal, is there really a point? Possibly I guess, maybe the aim is simply to get really strong and ripped? But if that was my goal, I’d probably just take up body building. At least then I’d get to cover myself in baby oil and wear a shiny thong....



Last time I wrote about French Duke at Earl Crag. It took me a while to return to for round two on the route, much longer than I had originally planned and unfortunately the weeks between seemed to have caused a significant drop in the skin-rock friction coefficient. Despite feeling much stronger than my previous session, I failed to reach my high point and after 3 or 4 attempts I decided to cut my losses and try something else.

Paul from Hotaches was out with me getting some footage for their next DVD and so rather than just calling it a day we drove to Ilkley to try to film a little circuit. It was a fun afternoon with a lot of climbing and by the time we had finished, I felt tired and a little beat up but very content. We filmed a few problems including Desperate Dan with the direct start, Baby Spice, Ring Piece and finally Cindy Crawford. I was trying to highball CC but was stopped by a powerful lock out to the arête a few moves from the top. You are pretty high at this point, and committing to hard moves when you know you are not firing on all cylinders is difficult to do.

The difference between success and failure on the grit is very slim and 9 times out of 10 comes down solely to conditions. After climbing lots on Gritstone over the last 6 years, It seems to me that to find success, you need a healthy dose of either luck or patience. Planning in advance is almost impossible, you just need to be in the right place, at the right time, and the magic will happen.

Embracing, rather than fighting the warming weather, I began to make a few trips to Wales to climb in Parisella’s cave. This seemed like a good trade off all-round as it was still real rock, yet the problems are all powerful and often endurance orientated so would also work as training.
After re-acquainting myself with the place, I recently had a pretty good session climbing a nice set of problems both old and new (to me). The highlight of the day was split between climbing The Wire, and Bell Pig, two very different problems but both pleasantly satisfying. One of the best things about the cave is the almost never ending opportunities for links, when you complete a problem, there is almost always something you can climb into or out from it. I would like to spend a little more time in there when I get back from the trip, and if my endurance is as good as I hope it will be when the roadtrip is over, maybe I can do something really long and hard.



I have climbed quite a lot over the last week and my body is feeling tired for it so I think it will be wise to take a rest up until the roadtrip begins. (un)fortunately, I still have many jobs to do for the organisation so its safe to say I wont be sat around twiddling my thumbs!

A few months ago Jordan Buys made the first ascent of the project arête right of Mind Bomb at Earl Crag in Yorkshire. Dubbed The French Juke, Jordans solution to this often tried last great revolved around guppies and twin clamping heel hooks; not exactly a simple sequence, so props to Mr Buys for working it out.

To cut a medium story short; after wandering over to look at the line one day whilst bouldering at Earl, I decided it looked like a good contender for a flash attempt, and not only that, thought you could place the gear on lead, rather than pre-placing it. I returned the Sunday before last with ideas of doing just that.

After warming up by climbing up and down the start of the route and hanging around trying to fiddle in various bits of small kit, I felt happy that I had the gear placed as good as I could be without placing it from an ab-rope. I was even happier to find that it was actually pretty good, which made me more confident about giving it a good flash attempt.

It was a very windy day and I was really struggling to stay warm. My fingers would turn numb all too quickly when on the rock, making it nigh-on impossible to hold anything but jugs. As the day progressed, it got a little more bearable, but unfortunately never ideal and by the time I had climbed into the crux my fingers no longer belonged to me and I just managed to reverse back to the ground.

On my second attempt, I decided to try another sequence, which was a bad idea and the Duke promptly spat me off. After milliseconds of uncertainty, the gear held true, time for round three. I returned back to Jordans sequence but was having real trouble making the guppy feel good. I guess due to its unusual nature, there is a good way to hold this hold but it may need a bit of practice to find it. However, it may just be that I am too weak/crap to use it! Unless I headpoint it, we will never really know. Anyway, I took the guppy, worked both my feet up and could just about start the next move when I was suddenly airborne again.

Attempt number four, sequence number three. This sequence was not really planned; it just sort of came to be and took me to my current highpoint of just tickling the top slopers. I locked off, reached up, came up short, locked a little deeper, reached up again and I was off. Frustrating but also encouraging.

The light was fading and that was enough for the day. As I climbed up to retrieve the gear I realised how absolutely shattered I felt, which made me feel a little happier about my final sequence. I hope that when I return, I have the umpf to lock to the top sloper from where I hope the next couple of moves will be ok.

Fingers crossed

A few days after Gerty Berwick, I headed back up to Ilkley with a few other personal projects in mind. Onsight/flash/ground up was the plan of attack, and all seemed good until I unpacked my bag and found I was missing a rope – bugger. Surprising the urge to drop to the floor screaming and pounding my fists, I decided on plan B, which turned out to be much the same as plan A, just without the aforementioned string but a load of foam instead.

With my choice of routes altered, It was time for the worst 20minutes of the day. My boots felt extra tight, which I hoped may take away from the pain I knew was on its way. No such luck; as my fingers touched rock and took my weight, all feeling ran for cover and was replaced by the oh so familiar stingy-numby-ache. Drop off, stuff my hands in my armpits, bounce around, do it again...

It feels as if it will never get easier, but you know it will, and you tell yourself this, and eventually you believe again – time for the main event. Route number one was to be Cindy Crawford, a john Dunne route on the back of the Calf from 2001. After warming up on the start, I began to find a sequence through the strange and chalk less features and after a few goes, and a lot of drop knees made it to the rail right at the top. It was here all previous knowledge of the route vanished and I had 2 choices; a move out right to the right arête, or a few more moves up and left through blank and green rock.

I dropped off, gathered my thoughts and climbed back up. I thought I had spied an edge in the green blankness during my last attempt and this was my goal. Arriving back at the rail, I looked up at the distant mystery hold, and down at the distant floor. Sadly the edge turned out to be nothing, but happily I managed to fall in control and decided to return to fight another day armed with some beta straight from the horse’s mouth (update: turns out you go to the arête – ho hum).

Route number two for the highball treatment was Desperate Dan. First climbed by BIG Ron in 1979, Desperate Dan is a funny little affair. The whole arête looks stunning and on first glance there appears to be no holds on the lower half and it looks highly improbable! It is only when you find out the actual route starts half way up, by stepping off the adjacent boulders that things begin to make sense. Once you leave the boulders, the route comprises of about 3 to 6 (depending on your sequence) insecure moves to reach the sanctuary of good holds and a few more steady pulls to the top.

I jumped on the route and climbed excitedly to the top; the moves were fun and the holds were really pleasant and unusual for Gritstone. Light rain began to fall and so I quickly hopped back on for some pickies, and tried an alternate sequence which was fewer moved but a bit less secure – still fun non the less. Turning to spotting duty, I watched the rain get heavier and the ground get wet. Whilst spotting friends, I couldn’t help but look at the lower arête and eventually noticed bumps, which turned into holds, which turned into a potential sequence.

Fortunately, the route was just about staying dry, but the dampness now so obviously present, would certainly not help matters. On went my boots, and I huddled in the corner beneath the route in an attempt to keep my feet dry. The holds were slopey and awkward, but I imagine this will be due in part to the conditions. After being spat off a few times, I figured out a slightly different hand position on the crux sloper and slapped into the start of the original, only to fall due to poor footwork.

What is this all about? What is the point? I looked around at the now deserted crag and over at the small group of friends still laughing and joking in the ever increasing drizzle. I am sure from an outsider’s viewpoint, this would appear absolutely pointless, even to the extent of being a bit silly, but to us it made perfect sense. I squeaked my boots, chalked my paws, and climbed from the floor to the top, nearly killing myself on the way down as a pidgin flew out of its nest making me jump and squeal like a girl.

Climbed as either a route or a highball, the direct start to Desperate Dan makes the experience much more complete. The climbing on the lower arête was quite a lot harder than the upper section and would be pretty fun in its own right, if you left your balls at home. I don’t know if it has been climbed before, the usual suspects say not, but you never know. If no one steps up to claim this monumental prize, then I put forward the incredibly imaginative name of Desperate Dan Direct. Shika ding!