Present Tense

Where’s that foothold!!!?? Pulling hard on the crux of Present Tense E9 7a, Seanna Mheallan. Photo: Claire MacLeod. Click on the pics for a bigger view.

Since I last blogged, I have been on several amazing pieces of rock. One of them could yet be another E11, and a very special one at that. Perhaps I wouldn’t be good enough to climb it right now, perhaps I could get good enough? Thinking aloud already… More on that as the summer progresses… But my impatience in the short term has been to return to Seanna Mheallan in Glen Torridon and the two other beautiful sandstone projects there.

Left of the arete of Kolus I climbed a couple of weeks ago, the front face of the buttress is steep and bulgy with two lines to climb, going up past a fridge sized block neatly stuck on with only a good undercut below it and a perfect friction sloper hold on top. One line was to bear-hug up the fridge block and do a weird rotation palming move into the niche on the left - sort of like the move at the top of the groove on Gaia, but a fair bit harder. The day after I was first trying the line, I was wrestling an old 1970’s Kelvinator fridge out of my new house and into the back of my Micra (which is at least 80’s!). It reminded me of the day before on the project!

So first off, I headed back up and got that one led - Kelvinator E8 6c. It was raining steadily  (but lightly) for the entire day, but I was allowed about five minutes of dryness and the now familiar baltic Torridon ‘summer breeze’ to make my chance.

But the direct line above the fridge block continued to seem impossibly technical. Another day spent with Michael dangling on the ropes in the rain allowed me to at least find a way to make the holds work for one particular move, squeezing pathetic sidepulls while clamping the Kelvinator block with your feet. The link felt like solid F8b. Originally I suspected this would come in at E10, but the discovery of two highly unlikely micro wires eased back the chance of a 15 metre groundfall from the crux to something noticeably under 100%.

Yesterday, Claire and I rendezvoused with Jamie and I was feeling very confident and determined I wasn’t leaving without the route under my belt. I’d planned my tactics well for the order and timing of warmup tasks, as you can for this sort of crag. So many more things are under your control than on big mountain crags. I really noticed that. If you are on top of tactics, you can get a lot more out of yourself. 

So, as you might expect, after much to-ing and fro-ing, running around to get to a good temperature, and getting rid of some nerves, I found myself on the sharp end of the rope, staring at the hard moves. My game was to say inside that the wires were solid, and this was a sport route. That was all fine until I stood up out of the block, left hand not perfect, body position wrong and I couldn't feel that crucial good bump in the rock under my right toes. Where is it! Where is it! A long three seconds passed while I fumbled the foot, fingers opening. Nothing for it. Options are gone. Throw for the hold in the next second or you are testing those micro wires. At this point, I struggled to hold on to my hypnotic delusion of safety. Time to grit the teeth and stay alive!

The next move was a mess, But then I came off the other side of the adrenaline spike and the inevitability of it kicked in. Keep fighting and see if you come out the other side. I did, shaking and laughing at suddenly waking up on the easy slab, Claire beside me on a rope still pressing that camera shutter like nobody’s business. 

The sun comes out just as we arrive back at the car, after the whole day in the rain. Thats Scotland!

It’s at least a week before I can travel back to the aforementioned E11 project. This week I am working for my sponsors at the outdoor trade show in Germany. See some of you out there maybe? 

The big ride

Gaz Marshall getting ready for a rollercoaster ride on Firestone E7 6b, Cairngorm. Click on the pics for a bigger view.

Last week I had an excellent day out with Gaz over on Hells Lum. Gaz was after his first E7 and had been working on the unrepeated (?) E7 Firestone by Julian Lines. Firestone is a perfect piece of granite. Worn perfectly smooth by ice and water, it’s quite beautiful to look at. It’s also quite weird, if you stand on a particular part of the hillside, it looks easy angled enough to almost run up. I can tell you, it doesn’t feel like that when you are on it.

Gaz was clearly juggling the sense of being within striking distance of leading his project that day with the questions about when is the right moment to go for it. How much des excitement cloud the judgement. Only experience tells you. And experience is got the hard way and no other.

So, he went to find out, and started padding up the slab. I hung on a rope and shot pictures for some time as he got higher and higher, but suddenly became aware that he’d stopped one move before the end of the difficult section, and everything had seemed to go nauseatingly silent. Still looking through the lens, I felt my mouth go dry as I watched him try several times to replace a sliding foot before suddenly launching both hands into the air, windmilling wildly and shouting “NAHHH I”M OFF”.

I wondered what to do. As he turned and fell, I realised I was most likely about to watch a mate break his legs. So quick thinking allowed me to put off bracing myself for it by simply carrying on shooting pictures as he went for the big ride down the slab.

I can tell you he was going pretty damn fast by now!

Impressive body pasting to maximise sliding friction, together with a fine land-and-roll down the boulders technque. Allowed Gaz to take the 12 metre fall, then get up and start laughing his head off. Thank god for that. 

Claire reckons it’s witnessing scary climbing antics from behind a lens than from belaying. But this did me little good when it was my turn to solo Firestone next. I made it, but I must say I prefer having holds to squeeze harder when I get scared. Full points for steeliness went to Gaz though for limping back over to the route, walking wounded, and going back up it to finish the job! A fine example of grit you don’t see very often now. 

Going for it second time round

This doesn't really need a caption, does it? Gaz’s blog about the adventure is here.

The Prophet of Purism

Onsighting Prophet of Purism E6 6a Glen Coe. The number of runners clipped to the rope give away what this climb is all about.

During the early nineteen eighties in Scotland, any climbing was trad climbing, and the focus for the best climbers of the day sounded like it was very much about how death defying the climbs were, rather than difficulty, as things have leaned to these days.

Or at least it certainly was for Dave Cuthbertson, who was climbing better and bolder than anyone in the country at the time. Dave’s drive was to push himself further and further towards the limits of being in control with the maximum possible constraints and risks in the climbing situation, and try to stay on top [i.e. alive]. 

The more intimidating the cliff, the poorer the protection, the purer the style the better. Even talking to Dave about loose rock, he tells me “I used to revel in all that stuff”. Most of the time on Scottish mountain cliffs, climbing new routes onsight (in the modern sense) is either a pretty messy business, or a suicidal one. One some cliffs, like Lewissean Gneiss, it’s no problem, the rock is clean, sound and the routes tend to give many of their secrets away on visual inspection from below. On others, dirt and loose rock would make climbing first ascents onsight a reliable path to an early grave. Of course it’s fine up to a certain grade (for most this might be the mid E-grades). But as soon as dynamic movement comes into the equation the risk spirals and rapidly overtakes the romance of the ideal.

The highpoint of this highly dangerous pursuit, for me at least, was Dave’s onsight first ascent of Prophet of Purism E6 6a in Glen Coe. Naturally there have been better performances since, but often on more predictable rock types like granite or Gneiss as I mentioned before. But to climb this overhanging wall covered in hollow snappy loose edges with so little protection has always seemed to be an outstanding example of sheer bottle. It’s what climbing used to be largely about for many people, and although its well out of fashion now, it still impresses. Or at least makes us shake our heads in disbelief.

And inevitably more so if you hear the climbing story first hand. Dave told me about doing a massive traverse across an overhanging wall, pumped and committed and facing a 20 or 30 metre fall and swing into the slabby bluffs beneath the wall. At the end of the traverse he ended up grappling in extremis on opposing press holds in a niche which was completely overgrown with wet moss, slipping and gasping for breath and calm. 

I figured, at some point, sooner or later, I better go up and try it myself, if only to have a shadow of this experience. Dave launched across this traverse into the blankness of glen Coe wall without the knowledge of what was across there - a block pulled off, a move too hard, and a terminal fall. I launched across it knowing it was E6 6a, and most of the holds tested for me. Still, it was very cool to pull quickly into the niche, not realising and stretching from a press to another and suddenly dawning that I was in the same move as Cubby told me about. 

Because I could relax in the knowledge that no really hard cruxes were coming, I  felt ok on the traverse and was feeling like the final ten feet of overhang above should be a jog for home. But every hold felt totally detachable, 35 metres up and without a runner that would stop me. Sensitive climbing with a very reserved and calculated movements does get you through loose rock climbing, but I’m no expert at it. Maybe it was because this part wasn’t even worth a mention for Cubby that gave me a wee fright because I thought I should be home and dry by this point and had relaxed too much. I had the gift of being able to play the game of telling myself “these holds have been pulled on before, they won’t come off!! 

After a hurried grapple over onto the Big Top flake, I took a moment to respect a very very bold standard by Cubby to be able to keep cool on this terrain without knowing which holds would take his weight.

I’d like to try a modest experiment in this type of climbing shortly, and know a line that could be around E7. Nearly 30 years after Cubby did Prohpet of Purism, the game wont be too much different. Fitness will matter a little, sure. But this game comes down to what is in your head. Interesting stuff.

The prophet wall on Aonach Dubh, Glen Coe. Prophet of Purism goes up the right side of the wall before doing a massive traverse line across the wall to eventually gain the left arete (Big Top).

Cubby's arete went down

Mid crux on Kolus E8 6c, Torridon (click on the images for a large pic)

It’s a funny thing, that just because it’s thought of as being remote, there’s still not that many people that know how good the north west of Scotland is. I suppose it’s a good thing, for those that know. Torridonian sandstone is one of the finest rock types I’ve ever seen. It’s very similar to Gritstone and, sometimes, Northumbrian sandstone, but better on the whole, than both.

Dave Cuthbertson told me years ago about a really outstanding quality arete project he’d been trying that would be E8 7a at least. He spoke about it several times, and eventually told me where it was and to go and try it. I knew by the way Cubby talked about it, that when I finally went there, I would kick myself for not going much earlier. And so I did.

If it was on grit, the arete left of The Torridonian on Seana Mheallan would be one of the hailed true grit classics. But it’s in Torridon, so it’s sat there quietly, just being perfect on it’s own, with hardly any climbers knowing about it.

Yesterday I had a chance to go there with Jamie and Claire, feeling good, with a cold wind forecast. At first we thought it might be too cold to even get warmed up. Fully baltic! Gritstoners should try this place out rather than be starved of friction over summer in the English heat.

During the past three months, nearly every time I’ve gone climbing I’ve felt guilty because I’ve been so behind with all my work because of the volume of it and other things going on. But now finally I’m getting within spitting distance of catching up with overdue work and after a good 14 computer screen hours the day before, I felt justified in going climbing for a whole day without worrying about late work. I want more of that!

I got a bit of a fright snapping an important pebble foothold off at the crux on my last toprope practice. Scary stuff. Thank god it wasn’t on the lead. Jamie said he got a bit nervous when some really big gusts of wind were whipping around the arete just as I was heading for the crux on the lead. It was really windy but it amazed me how the second I started climbing, the wind didn’t even register in my consciousness. For me, everything was completely silent until I was holding the jug on the lip of the slab.

 

Beautiful Glen Torridon

After my lead was done, we went off to try two more amazing projects, possibly even better in quality, with quite exquisite moves on grit smears. One of the routes, I’m hoping could get led on the next visit, the other is E10. Enough said.

If the summer can keep producing routes like this, I’ll be a lucky man. Claire shot these photos. But we also shot a little footage of the hard part of Kolus with the camera just running on the tripod. I’ll post up a wee youtube shortly.

Jamie sorts out ropes

Mid June in the sunshine. Still baltic!

Andy Kirkpatrick DVD released in my shop today

Today, the When Hell Freezes Over DVD of Andy’s famous side splitting lecture is released. It’s available in my webshop now for £11.99, with as ever, my ebook How to Climb Hard Trad that I’m still giving away with all my DVD and book orders. It is indeed a right good laugh. 

Andy’s lecture was filmed live in Stornoway last December and even Andy forgets that he’s meant to be talking about climbing in Patagonia. He’s too busy making us laugh, for 110 minutes.

If you fancy it, it’s in the shop here.

The search

Although I am doing some more onsight climbing again this summer, I’m feeling more and more strongly that I’m missing a hard project. I’ve written about this before here, but it never fails to surprise how big an effect on me this has. Many people ask me after lectures if I feel pressure from outside to do more big new routes, because this is what I’m ‘supposed to do’. But this pressure is nothing except a need from within, and an extremely strong one it seems.

This strength of feeling to find a hard project to focus my efforts and bring the best out of me can feel like a magic feeling when you have a project. But when you don’t, it can feel like a source of insipid torture. In a nutshell, right now I feel kind of restless, but at a level rather more than I can just shrug off. To be perfectly open, it’s getting me down a little.

Naturally there is one simple way out of this; to go out and find a project. This is a search I have been intermittently starting over the past month and will be doing a lot more of in the next couple. But this is not as simple as it sounds. I often feel that it should be, given the abundance of unclimbed rock about. But it doesn’t seem to be so easy to find the right projects. Perhaps this is why they are so captivating when you do find them. Achemine, Holdfast, Rhapsody, Sanction, Metalcore, Ring of Steall and Echo Wall were all examples of perfect projects and I was so lucky to have them. But I have to admit that life without this drug is difficult for me - I need to find more.

This thought was brought into my mind after talking with Arnaud Petit while at a film festival in the Pyrenees last week. Arnaud recognised how hard it is to find a project that is impossible at first acquaintance, in order that it forces you to reach a new level, but ultimately possible to make progress and maybe eventually climb it. This and with good quality rock and line too. It’s rare. We saw this with Rhapsody which is a brilliant and rewarding climb in many ways,  yet imperfect. Echo Wall is probably the most perfect project I’ve found yet, hence I could give more to it than ever before.

Now I am searching the crags for something bigger, harder and if it’s possible; better than Echo Wall. I might find it next week, it might take years. Doesn’t matter too much I guess. The longer it takes the keener I will be when I find it.

Looking west from Binnien Shuas past Ben Nevis and Aonach Mor. Maybe somewhere out there is a really hard project?

Maybe it's Glen Torridon? Turns out it's not. Spent a couple of of days here and found a brilliant E7, E8 and E10 to do, which hopefully I can do sometime soon. But nothing harder found so far.

Earning the raspberry cheesecake

For the past two and a half years, Morrisons in Fort William have stocked a delightful looking raspberry cheesecake, placed according to the conventions of supermarket choice architecture, right in my line of sight as I head for the milk. I can’t miss it, every time.

I love raspberry cheesecake, but as a climber who isn’t naturally light enough for the grades I want to climb, I feel that I must set limits, and something like that - an out and out treat - is the most obvious target. This is why I’m two stones (28 pounds) lighter than I was at 16 years of age and can climb many grades harder too. Don’t get me wrong, I eat plenty (and I mean plenty!) when I know I’m using the energy. 

Since I first spotted it, I’ve been tempted every time I’m in there to buy it and munch it. But I didn’t. At first I thought “when I do the Ring of Steall Project, I’ll buy that cheesecake”. I sent the project, but not the cheesecake. Then, I thought, “when I finally top out on Don’t Die, I’m having that bloody cheesecake out of Morrisons”. But I didn’t. Eventually, it was “When I do Echo Wall, this time I’m definitely eating the cheesecake”, and then “when I’ve edited the film” etc. You get the picture.

I’ve picked it up at least four times, and had it in my basket and put it back twice. What’s going on here? Nothing seems to be big enough to deserve the damn cheesecake. Today I picked it up and stared at it again, and put it back, unable to think of anything I’d done that even remotely deserved to break the previous cheesecake denial.

What the hell do I have to do to earn the cheesecake?

I’ve done this more and more over the past 8 years. When I did my first E9 in 2001, I went out with my mates from Uni, got steaming drunk, went clubbing and woke up to a brain melting hangover the next afternoon. Later, when I was repeatedly throwing myself from the last move of Rhapsody, my mate Steve Gordon speculated that the only celebration worthy of doing the world’s first E11 would be to go out and take 11 E’s. We negotiated it down so that I would settle for 11 pints and he would take the 11 E’s. But when I did it, I stayed at home for three months and learnt what HTML was and built up this website.

Richard told me if I ever managed to drag myself up a 9a, we were definitely, definitely hitting the town for a hardcore night. But there was training to be done, and good conditions and bla bla.

You may ask yourself, am I going somewhere with this? The answer I’m afraid, for the moment, is not really. This post is an open question I suppose: Just what deserves the cheesecake??? 

I’ve echoed the thoughts of many others before in stressing the importance of the process of what you do and finding enjoyment in that, rather than the result at the end. So in one sense, celebration of successes is a bit meaningless. Why celebrate when the enjoyable part (the thing you are celebrating) is over. Celebrate by finding the next thing. Obviously that only counts for certain types of things - especially very individual successes like in certain types of climbing. Where things are about people sharing or collaborating, it’s different!

So maybe I’ve got my thinking the wrong way round? Is the finding of a new hard project worthy of the cheesecake, rather than the completion of it? In the next month I am going to try a project I expect to be quite a lot harder than Echo Wall. If that proves the right thing for me to dedicate myself to, should I head for Morrisons? I might have just persuaded myself…

Full disclosure: I looked at the cheesecake today not so much for me, but as I was buying food to make Claire a nice meal on her return from a trip tomorrow. Now before you accuse me of letting my own weird and eccentric ways spill over onto those around me, I should stress that after returning the cheesecake to the shelf, I bought a packet of Rice Krispies and a big pack of no less than eight Mars Bars to make Rice Krispy squares (both our favourite).

Thinking about meditation

Several people over the years have asked me if I meditate (as training for hard and bold climbing). I always used to say ‘no, I don’t think so’. I certainly didn’t sit down in a field and deliberately try to meditate. But more recently when I was asked again I knew the answer. Yes, I do. But I do not meditate, and then go climbing. The climbing is the meditation. I didn’t realise it for a long time.

A lot of people will squirm at the sight of the word meditation. It carries a lot of hippy connotations and seems pretty far from most peoples every day lives, including their sport. But, like other words I commonly deal with like ‘training’ or ‘risk’, it’s the baggage that we’ve attached to the word that seems weird or uncomfortable. The activity itself is quite simply to focus the mind.

It takes a lot of effort to get a true meditative experience, whether it’s by finding the time to sit still and managing the shrug off all the noise that modern life throws at us, or having a really pure, highly concentrated effort on a climb. I really think that you get what you put in here.

I think that sports in general could be a lot more rewarding as activities and especially as therapy to recover from the shit we have to go through in ‘real life’ if this coupling of meditation and sport was better recognised, and people were better at tapping into it.

Note to self: think about this more for coaching climbing...

In the footsteps of…

One of the cool things about climbing is that when you read or hear good stories about climbs that inspire you, those climbs are there for you to go and actually experience. Whether it’s a nice boulder problem your mate raved about, or a big mountain epic shrouded in legend from it’s first ascent stories. Many other sports don’t have this. You hear about football fans standing on the pitch and using their imagination to feel the intensity of big games played out by the stars on the same spot over the years. Not much to go on really, is it?

But if you are a climber, you can have more than this. You can go and repeat the very same routes, pull on the same holds, make the same movements on the rock and feel the same fear, just as in the story you read about as a youngster. With every move you make up the route, the 

first ascent story takes on a new illumination. This is pretty lucky I think.

I just had this experience tonight, onsighting the second ascent (??) of Chairoscuro E7 6b in Glen Nevis. This climb was put up with great determination by Kevin Howett and Andy Nelson in 1988, with Kev’s lead being his hardest ever.

left: Kevin Howett

I read Kev’s account of his first ascent just after I’d started climbing, and just after I’d had a bit of a defining moment in my life visiting Glen Nevis for the first time with Claire when I was 17 and being totally inspired by the place and the multitude of climbs there. Kev’s lead sounded unbelievably bold, taking a huge fall from near the top of the blunt arete of Chairoscuro onto an RP1, and breaking his ribs on the swing in. But he returned soon after, taking more falls from the same spot until he nailed it.

This sounds crazy enough just reading about it, but it’s something completely different to actually be there yourself, wobbling and gibbering through off-balance rockover onto a sloping rail after 35 metres of E7 climbing, when that RP1 is so far below you can’t even see it.

This would have been a great climbing experience for me if I knew nothing about the route. But to be there knowing Kev had fallen from that move and come back for more added a whole other dimension to it. You don’t get this when you turn up at a crag in Spain and look at a bunch of lines on a topo with a number attached. This is the depth that trad climbing has, that other types cannot match. Of course their qualities lie elsewhere - thats fine.

This route was also a personal score settled. I had previously gone to have a try at the route onsight with Niall McNair about seven years ago. At the time we were both onsighting stacks of E6s and I had a couple of E7 onsights under my belt. We tied in and started up Chairoscuro feeling confident. Too confident it seemed. After 4 metres (count them!) we went off route and immediately ran out of holds or any gear and reversed down, confused.

It was strange coming back several years later. It really hit home how different the rock looks with experience behind you. It took me five minutes to spot a sequence through some unobvious quartz knobbles we had completely failed to spot last time.

With that in mind, when I finally committed to the section where Kev fell, I reminded myself as I rocked over, wobbling that I had a lot to throw at the next few moves - experience, experience, experience, and a bit of raw crimp strength too I guess.

I hope it’s nice for Kevin to know that his creation back in 1988 was something that bubbled away in my head for some years and imagined many times what it would be like to be alone up on that arete, onsight and scared. It was just as good as I hoped.

The last six weeks in pictures

Regular readers of my blog will know that I'm just back online after a couple of months away from my normal routine of blogging. It's strange for me to think that I've been writing this blog since mid 2006 and especially when I meet people who tell me they've read it regularly all that time. I still think that starting it was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and it's contained some of the best work I've produced as a person.

However, a break is always good to rest and refresh the mind, and although I quite enjoyed my daily routine not involving a computer for a little while, I must admit I've been going through a serious crisis of confidence in my blogging. I'm not worried about it really, It's a good thing to question whether you could improve or take what you do in a different direction. I'm sure the time to reflect a little on what this blog is, and could be, will be exactly what it needs to become something better.

Anyway, now my house is in order, I can put down the hammers, spades and screwdrivers and start hammering the keyboard again. To fill in a little of the last six weeks while I was offline, fixing stuff around the house or off around Europe giving talks, here are some pics from my iphoto... (click on them for a bigger image)

Drew makes the top out

And thank god for that.

Scary rope after falling off an 8c in Siurana

Bloc with a view. I climbed a lovely new V10 traverse here in April, with a V13 extention in the project book for the autumn. the topo is on page 129 of the Scottish Bouldering guidebook

The Ben looking pretty on a March morning

Puss puss attempted an ascent of our chimney and paid the ultimate price (a bath)

Claire attacks the garden before it attains rainforest status

Ready to plant my tatties

Fingers crossed I'll for a fine harvest this autumn. Tatties, carrots, cabbages, lettuce, celery, onions and, of course, broccoli ; )

Enjoying the space beneath your feet on Angel Face E2, Far East Wall, Beinn Eighe

Blair heads off into the Sky on Moonshine E4, Beinn Eighe

PS: is it just me, or has picasa's jpeg compression on it's blogger image uploader got worse?? Anyone else noticed this on their blogs? Does anyone have any good recommendations for photo upload sites with decent compression?