At last some mountaineering

Seconding a brilliant VII,8 pitch on the Aguja Guillaumet, Patagonia. Photo: Calum Muskett

With a one day weather window forecast for Friday, we packed our things and wondered what objective to point ourselves at. The options were a bit limited. So just going up and being there was all we realistically hoped for. It had snowed very heavily the day before and many of the approaches would be dangerous. The rock routes would be in winter condition, and the window was too short to go on a really big wall.

Me leading a nice ice runnel on pitch 2. Photo: Calum Muskett

So we decided to go to the Guillaumet and see if we could safely get to a mixed route on its east face. On Thursday’s walk in, it was still windy, snowing and clagged in. My ankle hurt like hell with a heavy pack on and for the first hour I was unsure if I was going to make it. But after a while it became tolerable and I could think about something else. Near the snow line, we made a small bivi with rocks under a boulder and settled in for the evening. 

Calum setting off on steep cracks on pitch 3

The dawn slog up onto the glacier brought a sunny morning and the greatest surprise of the trip so far - no wind. After hearing so much about the wind in these mountains it was a little surreal to be standing in the morning sun looking at the granite walls. Our plan A, a route on the Mermoz, was immediately ruled out after a block test in the snow revealed an easy shear. Later, we met some Austrians who did venture across the glacier, but gave up before they even got to the foot of the Mermoz, in chest deep fresh snow.

We weren’t about to waste the chance to climb something, so we headed right to the Guillaumet and eyed up a 6 pitch steep wall with some snow and ice clinging to various cracks and corners. A short route by Patagonian standards, but as we found out, it packed it in, with one pitch of Scottish tech 6, one of 7 and three of tech 8. 

Calum starting up a big tech 8 corner on pitch 5.

Calum got two great pitches in the middle of the route. First a smooth wall with thin cracks and good hooks at VII,8 and a long steep corner which was around VIII,8. I had another VII,7 pitch with lots of great steinpull moves on rounded flakes. But the highlight for me was the final pitch which I got to lead; an improbable looking ramp leading into a smooth overhanging corner above. Both features didn’t give anything away until the last minute. The ramp went with a series of undercut placements in a row, with feet on a delicate smear of thin ice. The top corner went with lock-offs, feet not able to help much at all!

Eyeing up a thin ice smear on pitch 6. Photo: Calum Muskett.

Counting an hour back at our bivi boulder to have some Clif Bars and tea, we walked out in 6 hours. Calum had the march on. He was gunning to get back to El Chalten that night. I   scurried along behind him, trying to keep up through the forest as the darkness crept up. Just before midnight, Calum suddenly flung down the haulsac in frustration that we hadn’t got back to the road yet, pulled out his bivi bag and within seconds he’d retired for the night. I crawled into my bivi bag and settled in, only to hear a truck go over the bridge in the road, about 200 yards away round the next bend in the path. In the morning we only had a short stagger and a quick hitch back to El Chalten.

Lovely clouds above the Poincenot.

Even if that turns out to be our only weather window (which it might, the way the season has gone so far), It was great experience to get some climbing done on the Patagonian towers. As far as we know, it’s a new route too. I certainly felt like we made the most of the tricky conditions to get a good route done. So now, it’s back to bouldering, sport climbing, eating steaks and watching the forecast. 

Patagonia first days

Repeating Wasabi, V12, near El Chalten (video still: Calum Muskett)

We have now been in Patagonia for 4 days, and our expectations for getting some free climbing done in the mountains soon are coming down to reality. We’ve met lots of familiar faces around El Chalten, and many new ones. Everyone wants to be up high doing long rock routes, but everyone is waiting for the wind, snow and rain to stop. At least two climbers who’ve spent a few seasons here have informed us that there is no chance of our primary objective on Cerro Torre coming into condition. So we have some plan Bs, Cs and Ds.

Most of those still require it not to be snowing and blowing a hoolie on the granite towers. So for now it’s time to crack on with the excellent bouldering. Straight away I’d got stuck into trying Wasabi on the superb boulders near El Chalten. It gets Font 8b although I think it’s a bit easier than that. Today it dawned rainy but cold. I worked on my book until lunchtime and then wandered up for another session on it. My first try saw me right up at the lip of the boulder but scared to carry on in a pumped state with no mats. Thankfully David Lama turned up with a mat and I got it done next try. I have a little video of this, but the internet connection is far to slow to bring it to you. 

I’m told there is a hotel in town with something resembling a real connection. Given the forecast, it shouldn’t be too long before it’s time to go for a cup of tea there, so I’ll send it then. Tomorrow’s forecast is stormy, then stormy again the next day, and the next. Patagonia: hardcore bouldering destination and writer’s retreat! If I could run, I'd be doing plenty of that too.

I had a great time today at the boulders and certainly looking forward to getting stuck into more hard problems while we wait.

Commencing the wait

Calum, Ben, Ally and myself have just arrived in El Chalten, Patagonia. We are here with the plan to climb on Cerro Torre, if we can. Any of you who have been to Patagonia already know that any firm plans here are, shall we say, subject to some adjustment. We want to climb rock, so we will have to wait until the liberal coating of snow and ice currently covering Cerro Torre melts back a bit. 

I’ve never been here before. Back in 2001 I was considering it when my friend Alan Mullin was going there. He pretty much put me off it with tales of two consecutive two-month trips which consisted of sitting in the hut waiting for a weather window that never came. But then, one might be lucky, and Patagonia is somewhere you really ought to visit at some point. So since Calum and I both had eyed up the same projects here, I thought now was as good a time as any.

I was fully braced for a month of editing my book and getting fat, and on arrival in El Chalten, the forecast duly delivered. No weather windows in sight so far. However, I didn’t really appreciate that the bouldering here is so good. So while we wait, we are bouldering, a lot. I’ve had two great days climbing so far. I’ve done some nice granite sport climbs and got some good links on Iker Pou’s famous power endurance problem V12 ‘Wasabi’. I’ll be back on that again soon. It’s great to be on a climbing trip after so long on the couch after surgery. Here’s to the next month, whether it brings chilly adventures in the mountains, or ‘waiting’ amongst the granite boulders and adventures on small crimpers.

The bit in between

Right now, I’m still progressing quite well with my return to climbing from surgery. The weather in Scotland has been rubbish, so much of my climbing has been indoors. Every night, I’ve been working away on my basic balance, ankle and and body strength exercises. It's not very glamourous stuff; just standing on one leg with my eyes shut and making shapes, over and over again. I had some alarming losses in strength to regain. But the nightly work is paying off and I can notice that I can get a lot more weight through my foot on steep ground since I was Spain a few weeks ago. The surgeon is happy with my progress, although he did say there was a fair bit of trauma (osteophytes trimmed back from both my talus and tibia) to recover from. 

On a rope, I feel reasonably confident now, but in bouldering, I’m still very timid to land for good reason. I went to TCA last night and still have to climb everything as if I’m soloing and climb back down rather than jump or fall. It will probably be good for my climbing to do this for a little while.

So I’m in the bit in between being a surgical patient and recovered climber. There is still work to do, but I’m enjoying the progress. As I write, I’m en route to speak at the Bozeman Ice Festival this weekend. Hopefully, when I return at the end of next week there will be some winter conditions for me to get into back home. Then it’s only a short time until I go on a rather exciting climbing trip!

Venezuela Jungle Jam film

Finally, we just got our copies of the new film from the crazy Belgians in the shop: Venezuela Jungle Jam. Nico Favresse, Sean Villanueva and their climbing partners are the undisputed kings of making expedition climbing movies. They are also pretty much the kings of making badass climbing expeditions. It’s a killer combination.

Their previous films Asgard Jamming and Vertical Sailing have been very popular with you and for good reason. They are two of the most fun climbing films you’ll ever see and full of all the ingredients of great adventure - big characters, thrills and spills and unexpected funny moments. Venezuela Jungle Jam is the latest in the line! It’s already picking up a string of awards on the film festival circuit. In this film they are off to the amazing 500m sandstone Tepuy of Venezuela to deal with sweaty jungles, wild animals, loose rock, falls, overhanging big walls and, always, jamming on the portaledge.

The climbing looks challenging, in just about all the ways it could (apart from being cold). The scenery is gob smacking and as you’ll just about see in the teaser (it really is a tease) Sean’s superb sideways plummet off a ledge is another one of those ‘oh my god’ moments we almost come to expect from these guys. Brilliant stuff. The DVD is 58 mins plus extras, Subtitles in English, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Polish and German.

I’ve also just added the Distilled DVD now we have our DVD stock, so you can either download it, or get it for your winter partner for Christmas!

Two new films for winter

I’ve just added two new climbing films to the shop. First up is Distilled, Hot Aches Productions new film about Scottish winter climbing with Andy Cave. There are still only a handful of films out there about Scottish winter, and of these, one one or two really good ones. So it’s great to see another. Andy explores what is so special about this ‘distilled’ form of alpinism by going climbing on all types of routes from the classic mountaineering routes like Tower Ridge to proper hard mixed in proper wild conditions. Inspiring and timely stuff. You’ll find Distilled in the shop for HD download and the DVDs will be with us in a few days.

Next is The Last Great Climb DVD, Alastair Lee’s latest film with Leo Houlding. Leo increasingly these days is going on some pretty badass expeditions to far flung places. Ulvetanna in Antarctica is just about as far flung as you can get. It’s a jaw dropping mountain to look at and the line they managed to climb on it just looks sensational. As you might expect with Alastair, although it’s heavy on the cheese factor at times it is very well filmed and a great adventure. One to make you think twice about just going down the local wall and booking a ticket to the other side of the world instead.

Fresh eyes

I came back to my big traverse project, which unfortunately was quite wet. However, good progress can still be made even though I can’t try all of it. With fresh eyes, I spotted quite a few changes to my sequence that seem so obvious now, but didn’t before. It always makes me smile when that happens. Why don’t you see an obviously easier way to do a move before, but having had a wee bit of time away, it’s obvious? Who knows, but it’s nice anyway. I felt like I almost did the project just before I went in for surgery. So I'm gunning for a dry day where I can get a chance to see where I'm at on it now.

My ankle continues to have up and down progress. I can now do some rather shaky one-leg calf raises, which were completely impossible 1 week ago. I can also bat hang again. However, although I can hang upside down from holds by my toes, walking up mountains is still challenging.

I tried a longish walk over classic tussocky Scottish bog, in search of some new crags. I found a great deep water soloing venue 5 miles from my house! However, after 45 minutes, it hurt.

So at least another week of bouldering, training, physio, book editing etc. Maybe I’ll see some of you on Thursday night in London for my talk at the Royal Geographical Society.

Post surgery: 4.5 weeks

In my last two days in Margalef, I managed to keep up the progress with my surgery rehab. I had a quick try on another 8c and although I got it in two halves, I still wasn’t able to get much power through my left foot or move with any confidence. However, even the next day I could feel it getting better and actually got fairly close to doing the route. My body movements are still feeling pretty foreign. That might sound a bit silly, but it’s a difficult sensation to explain. Because I climb a lot and have climbed for years, my brain has such a strong expectation of how my body ought to move. So when it doesn’t function that way, it feels like it’s someone else climbing.

On my last day, after a couple of quick tries on the 8c, I got a bouldery 8a+ redpointed in half an hour or so, and a 7c+ onsight. On both of those, although I’m still far off fitness, I felt a bit more myself during the climbing. I can’t tell you what a satisfying feeling that is.

So now I’ve had a handful of climbing days to get me started, I’m heading back to Scotland and can try and build a base of fitness and confidence again. The next stage is to be able to walk up a hill again. After this trip I’ve consolidated walking for 10 minutes or so on uneven paths. So if my upward progress continues I’ll hopefully manage to walk a mile or so, and then I’ll shoot for walking up a Munro and climbing 8c again. My goal (if it’s not to cold now) will be to complete my 8c project at Ruthven as soon as I can. The rest before the crux has a left foot toe hook though, so I might have to try powering on through instead!

[Update] Since writing the post above I managed to miss the last tube train back from a gig in Glasgow and walked at least a mile through Govan in the wee small hours to find some transport home. It might not count since it was under the influence of a few analgesics. I'll take it as further progress anyway.

Post surgery: 4 weeks

Tomorrow is 4 weeks since my ankle surgery. I’ve had just as many ups and downs as I expected. At first, I was going great guns, ditching my crutches quite early on and starting to walk quite freely around the house. In the second week, I even had a 15 minute climbing session on easy problems at the Ice Factor. 

Then the ankle became infected, I got antibiotics, they made me get really sick, then it got super swollen and exquisitely painful. All of this coincided with a family trip to Fontainbleau, the first day of which I spent lying as still as possible in bed with a fever. After that, I was of course desperate to climb. The next day I did one 7B+, and paid for it for the rest of the week, limping around generally feeling pretty rough. Back home and I managed to get through a couple of days coaching and lectures in Scotland before getting on another plane to Margalef which I’d arranged long before I’d even had the ankle problem.

When I woke up on the first morning, I wished I’d just cancelled the trip. I’d been hopeful I could begin climbing by now, but the ankle was still really swollen and angry. A 200 metre walk to the crag nearly had me in tears. More antibiotics, rest days and lying down with my foot in the air seems to have brought a breakthrough at last.

Yesterday, I made another tentative start. A 7a+, a 7b and a laughable attempt at an 8c. I know that my confidence won’t take too long to get back, but yesterday felt like I was 16 and weak again. I’ve lost a lot of confidence to be aggressive with my feet and get body tension. To be expected of course.

Today felt slightly better again, with 7b+ onsight and an 8a redpoint, and the crag was about 10 minutes walk from the car (the crux of the day!). Tomorrow I will rest and then we’ll see if I can make another little step in an upward direction.

New titles in the shop

I’ve just added a couple of new books in the shop. Both are must reads for anyone keen for inspiration and information on climbing, but both are very different. The last book is a long awaited guide to some of the finest lumps of rock in the UK.

First up is Julian Lines autobiography ‘Tears of the Dawn’. I imagine most of you will not need introduced to Jules, who has been the ‘dark horse’ of the bold trad and free soloing scene in the UK for the past 15 years or so. I’ve done a couple of his routes myself such as Firestone E7 6c in Hell’s Lum which is archetypal of his climbs - no gear, not really any holds either. Just a deep breath and a lot of trust in the frictional properties of thin granite smears. Many of the nailbiting adventures he’s had over the years involve free soloing, by himself on the quiet mountain crags of the highlands. But he’s also well known for his deep water soloing exploits, not to mention jumping off cliffs and paragliding. He’s hit the ground from a long way up too many times to mention, but is either a very lucky man or has bendy bones. It’s a great window into the mind of an solo adventurer, but very much the opposite of an Alex Honhold type of character.

Next is The Art of Ice Climbing, a lovely book which is part coffee table inspiration book, part technical manual. It’s a great production with interesting historical and new photography throughout. It has excellent advice sections on sharpening ice tools, screws, ropework and techniques for ice climbing. I think just about any ice climber would learn something new here. In the past there have been some great books on ice climbing that every climber should have on their shelf. I reckon this is the latest in that line.

Lastly, I’ve added the new Torridon bouldering guide which is finally out by local activists Ian Taylor and Richie Betts. It’s great to see this guide finally out. The rock at Torridon is the best I’ve climbed on in the UK. It’s truly amazing stuff, and many of the problems are amazing natural lines too. The guys have done a great job producing this guide which contains around 250 problems to go at, and of course many first ascents still waiting to be explored.

You’ll find all of these, along with the rest of the best climbing books, films and gear out there in the shop.