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!