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...

Cedars Birthday

I had planned for my last full day to be a very relaxing affair, wandering the streets of Yangshuo. It was Cedar’s birthday and when he and Tim raised plans to climb one of the easier multi-pitch climbs I found it hard to say no, even with the wet misty weather outside. At the base of the crag, I felt pretty excited at the thought of climbing some trad routes. The small group simul-climbed a cool but very damp route to a ledge at 200ft. Everything seemed pretty great, even with the wet but things soon went downhill when we pushed higher up the wall. The idea was for Cedar and I to climb a mixture of sport and trad pitches whilst Tim took photos of our adventure. Great in theory, not so in practice. Wet and loose rock is a bad combination and on my first trad exploration I came incredibly close to pulling a big-screen TV sized block off on top of me. As I climbed past it, I knew it was loose, and so made sure 95% of my weight was on my feet. All seemed to be going well until I was almost on top of it. I pulled outwards with about as much force as needed to open a quick draw and the whole thing came away. I threw my weight in over my feet and miraculously the block stopped. Sheepishly, I carefully traversed left before pulling my self together and getting on with the job in hand. If the block had fallen, I don’t think it would have killed me but it wouldn’t have been pretty. Thankfully the pics looked great, and that’s all that matters, right? ;) Next it Was Cedars turn. What we thought was an existing 5.10, turned out to be a very bold first ascent. Lose rock came flying past the belay at regular intervals and after seconding the pitch, I can honestly say it may be the worst route I have ever done. The taxi home was a very welcome sight. We all got ready and headed out to for Cedars Birthday. It was a really fun evening, complete with an amazingly intricate cake. Sadly, the stripper we had tried to organise through the Chinese Mafia never arrived, although on second thoughts, maybe that was a good thing. Well that’s pretty much it. I leave tomorrow for a day in Guilin before heading on the long road back to England. It has been a cool trip and I have had a great time. Here’s to the next one…

Banyan Tree

Saturday was rain free but really misty. The tem split into three to try to complete various projects and arranged to meet up later. I headed to Banyan Tree to look at an 8b+ (5.14a) by Steve McClure and John Dunne as well as the classic 8b (5.13d) Nine Deep, One Shallow. Conditions were pretty awful and the crag was extremely greasy, wet in places. I decided to leave Nine Deep for a future trip with better conditions as it looks like a good candidate for an on-sight attempt and set to work on the Steve’s route. It was a fairly short route and really crimpy. Conditions were far from ideal for this type of climbing but after a reasonable on-sight attempt, and working the remaining moves I took my first red-point, greasing off on the last hard move. After cleaning the route and drying the holds as best as I could I rested for my next attempt. Reaching the same point as before, I pulled hard with my left hand which subsequently fired off the greasy side-pull with such force I punched myself in the face. Safe to say I didn’t red-point on that attempt and I took it as a sign to call it a day.

After meeting up with the rest of the group at Lei pi Shan, I tied on at the base of a very wet Single Life and using my newly found crimp, managed to climb to the top. I felt tired clipping the chains but pushed on anyway for a shot at the extension. I had briefly felt the holds a few days before at the end of a session and remembered them feeling pretty small bad. I hoped they would feel better than I remembered but I was out of luck, falling with about four hard moves still to go. Maybe next time…

Wet, Wet ,Wet

On Friday, just like England, the forecast turned out not entirely correct. The rain stayed in the clouds so the team headed back to Lei pi Shan with high hopes. Unfortunately, the previous days rain was badly seeping through and my project was wetter than ever. I dogged my way up the route and if anything, it looked harder than I remembered. I find it hard to put a number on it because a major section of the route was wet but it felt like the hardest thing I have tried in China. Time will tell and hopefully one of the visiting or local super-heroes will be able to red-point the route once the holds dry out. If not, I’m sure I will return at some point in the not too distant future.

Stripping the draws left me with mixed feelings. It’s always difficult to accept that you cant to something and walk away, even if factors out of your control (wet streak) are to blame. Yet at the same time I felt like I had done what I came to do – to leave something behind for other people to enjoy. Even thought I didn’t free the route, the bolts, hangers and anchors will be there for years to come for anyone to use. Thinking a little deeper, the fact I didn’t free the route means the prize of the first ascent, of what could potentially be the hardest route in China, has also been left for anyone up to the challenge.

After pulling my draws, I tried to flash an 8a+ (5.13c) called Single Life. Like my project a few of the holds were wet but I made it to the last hard move before running out of steam. I tried twice more, falling on the same move before pulling on the rope to look at the holds finding I had missed a good crimp, just left of what I had been trying to use. Emily then dropped the clutch and got in sending mode, smoothly dispatching the 8b+ (5.14a) extension to Single Life. Tired and hungry, we all headed back to base.

Rain, Rain go away

Well, crossing my fingers didn’t work. We have had almost torrential rain all day combined with a thick damp mist. Out of desperation we took a taxi to White Mountain but even this (supposedly) perma-dry crag was sopping. Before we walked in, we had arranged with our driver for him to pick us up in four hours time and so with a wet crag, in the middle of nowhere, with no phone, we were faced with either a long wait or walk back to Yangshuo. We chose the walk and it was fairly pleasant, getting to see up close a lot of the local comings and goings. After a short while we managed to flag down a van and once a price had been agreed, hopped in and rode back to town. The forecast for tomorrow does not look good, nor does it look great for the rest of the week. At some point I need to return to Lei pi Shen to retrieve my remaining 14 draws from my project which, judging by the amount of water that has com from the sky, probably won’t be the best experience of the trip.

If the rain has continued to fall, I think the plan is for a bit of wet-aineering up some of the multi-pitch towers around town. Sure its not sun-kissed, overhanging, tufa covered sport climbing, but a little bit of adventure never hurts ;)

Underestimation

It’s amazing just how wrong you can be. After spending 2 days bolting and cleaning the route, I figured I had a good Idea of how hard it would be as most of the holds seemed good and it didn’t seem so steep. 8a/+ (5.13b/c) was the armchair guess but when the time came to finally give it a go, I just about managed to haul my self to the anchors going bolt to bolt.

It felt really tough and there were two sections I couldn’t climb (one due to wet holds, the other was just damn hard). I think I could climb the bottom section (to the good rest) with a little work, but the top section, with its unclimbed crux, into a massive four point off dyno, into the unclimbed wet section, to some pumpy jugs and final boulder problem seems a little beyond me at this moment in time. Reaching the anchors, I felt defeated and couldn’t see myself climbing the route with my limited time left. I decided to strip the draws but was convinced by my friends to leave them in and try another day.

I hope that I was just tired from bolting etc and that it will seem much more amenable when I next get back on it. I just need to hope for some good weather to dry out the wet streaks, fingers crossed…