Practice of the Wild

Video still of climbing Practice of the Wild (Font 8C) in Magic Wood last week.

The footage of Tyler Landman doing the second ascent of Practice of the Wild was what first inspired me to visit Magic Wood in 2012. Obviously I’d already heard about it, as ‘Chris Sharma’s hardest boulder problem’. I’d heard about Chris’s method for the last move - a wild all points off dyno across the roof. Landman looked so dynamic and strong on it and the climbing looked so good. It it was an exemplary piece of hard climbing. I had to go there.

But not for Practice of the Wild - at Font 8c and one the hardest problems in the world according to Daniel Woods who also repeated it, it was too hard for me. Although I do boulder for quite a few months in the year, sometimes as much as 6, I’ve never got much beyond a handful of Font 8Bs. On my 2012 visit, feeling in good shape for me, I did manage two 8B+s (New Base Line and Mystic Stylez) which I was very surprised and delighted with.

Of course bouldering grades do tend to be a bit stiffer in the UK and neither of these felt as hard as some of my own problems in Glen Nevis such as Seven of Nine. But operating pretty much on your own, it’s easy to get lost with grades, and I frequently do. I’ll give myself the excuse of not doing one climbing discipline for long enough to get an idea, and stick to it.

In 2012 I did try Practice of the Wild for a session, and confirmed that it was indeed far too hard for me. I couldn’t do any of the crux moves. None. But that was sort of irrelevant. Because I was inspired by it, which is all that really matters. I’m fully accepting that when you try something hard, you might never succeed. If that wasn’t true, it wouldn’t be hard, would it? So who cares whether it’s too hard, so long as it drives your motivation.

I visited Magic Wood again in 2013 for a week (of warm and wet weather). The hardest thing I climbed was 8A. Ridiculous as it is to say, the best thing about the trip was just to stand and look at Practice of the Wild again, and think.

Climbing Dark Sakai (8B) last week. I'd tried it before in October but tweaked my finger on a nasty pocket at the start. This time I could do it first try after a quick reacquaintance.

In the past year or so, I’d gone through two ankle surgery rehabs, a big chunk of the year on crutches and was looking at another surgery. I was 36 and after so much time just trying to be able to walk and climb anything, the idea of reaching a new level of Font 8C seemed laughable. A joke. I looked at the problem and even in my dreamy inner thoughts I felt there was no chance, ever. Don’t kid yourself on MacLeod.

For quite a while I accepted this. Actually it was part of a wider shift in my thinking at the time. I was really trying to come to terms with my loss of form after the surgeries. I wasn’t really prepared to deal with it and was trying to find the best way forward. For a time it seemed like I should accept that upward progress in sport climbing or bouldering was just over for me. As I wrote in Make or Break, I do feel that almost every serious battle scar you pick up in life changes your constraints. It changes the rules of the game for you, sometimes tipping the scales against you. If you are unprepared to push back against this and still fail, it may be better to leave the game. Eventually I realised this was not me. I do still enjoy trying to improve at climbing so much, that playing against poor odds is still worth it for me.

Given some time to recover from the surgeries, I naturally felt this black and white way of thinking melt away a bit. The reasons why I couldn’t keep improving seemed less important when I could get on with a daily routine of actually training and going climbing, ticking routes again, even if they were not hard ones.

Some footage of me climbing my model of Practice on my board in March

So with some positive feelings returning I made a statement of intent by building a model of Practice of the Wild on my board. It was a pretty good one! At first, I couldn’t do any of the moves. After several sessions, I could do two of them individually, then another, then another. But that’s where the progress basically ended. By last September, at my strongest I could string two moves together (of seven). At this rate, I’d maybe climb the model when I was 45?! I’d have to hope it was harder than the real thing. Actually I knew it wasn’t.

And so I knew I needed another ingredient, not an edge, but a supercharger on my climbing standard. You don’t get many of them at 37 (without crossing boundaries of legality and sporting fairness). But you do if you are not thin. I’ve never been a thin climber, and always struggled to keep my body fat % below about 15% (putting me firmly in the outlier category at the high fat end of the Font 8B+ or harder cohort). For reasons I couldn’t fully understand (even now I still only have fluid hypotheses) it was getting harder and harder for me to even tread water in this battle. I still had a hunch that somewhere beneath my tyre was a potential Font 8C climber.

So although this aspect of my preparation clearly would be the linchpin, the trouble with it was that I’d already thrown every single piece of advice coming from sports nutrition at it already, and failed. I’d slowly, depressingly failed for two decades. So how might I suddenly succeed? I’m sorry to break the narrative and potentially spoil the read at this point, but the ‘how’ what came next I’m going to save for a dedicated blog post (well, actually massive essay). Please forgive me for this, but it’s such a controversial topic that I am very concerned that I might be taken out of context, or seen as being flippant or glossing over important details in such an important issue. Also, and not least because the approach I took was precisely the one that many nutritionists warn is a path to outright failure in sport performance. So if you are interested in the ‘how’, it’s coming. For now, here’s what happened:

Phase one of me intervention was reading around 20 books and many hundreds of scientific papers and hundreds more webpages, so I had a handle on what I was doing. In phase two, I easily lost 3.5kgs in less than one month and my climbing standard took an immediate jump. I didn’t really get to test this other than on my board since it was the start of the winter. In phase 2, I maintained my new lower weight and felt great in training with much better energy and much to my surprise a few other long term health issues cleared up as well. During this time I managed to climb my model of Practice of the Wild. So I made it harder so I couldn’t do one of the first moves again and built up to being able to just climb it once at my limit.

In phase three of my dietary changes I dropped another 2.5Kgs, still feeling great and just before my trip to Magic Wood in April I could run laps on the model! When I arrived in Magic Wood I headed straight for Practice. I was somewhat bleary eyed after the long drive across Germany, but I could immediately feel I was much stronger on the moves. But it was on the second session, after a night’s sleep that reality hit - I could link it straight away to the last move! A huge leap in progress, and more than that a realisation that this was not a joke project. I could do this.

Since the start holds were still quite wet I spent time practicing the finishing big dyno a few times. On the third time I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder while holding the swing. “Oh no! Surely I’m not going to get injured now. Not now!!!” It didn’t feel that bad, but not good either. In hindsight I think I just scraped a rotator cuff tendon a bit. But I was worried it might be a SLAP tear. Either way I was terrified of doing the move that way again.

So one night while it snowed about a foot, I broke trail into the wood, set up my lights and worked out another method. A huge cross through stab to a crimp, and then I could get the jug statically. It was maybe a tiny bit harder, but I could do the move several times in isolation.

I had one more session of redpoints to the last move every time. One time I held it and my lower hand pinged off. I knew it could happen next session. But I also knew this could get harder psychologically - playing defensively creates pressure. When all you have to do is not blow your chance, somehow this becomes much harder to avoid!

Sure enough, next session I felt inexplicably a few % weaker. Two mistake riddled brawls to the last move, falling weakly. One fall from lower down. Then a hole opened in my finger. It was unravelling! I’d surely need two days to let the hole heal up, then the rain was coming. Practice of the Wild can stay wet for weeks at a time. I spent half and hour repeatedly doing the last move, systematically trying every tweak in the movement I could think of. I came upon a small improvement. If I pulled up a little higher and went for the move without dropping down so much (more of a snatch than a lunge), it felt a tiny bit more solid. I went for a walk. Looking at my shredded fingers, I figured I wanted one more try that day from the start. If I was going to take two days off and potentially more after the rain, what did it matter if my fingers were totally trashed?

Whatever happened in that moment, the pressure of anticipation for that session dissipating, the walk warming me up a bit, my skin hitting that sweet spot of friction just before it gets too thin, whatever, everything clicked. As soon as I pulled on I felt good. The moves flowed by and I arrived and the last move not feeling anything. It wasn’t until I felt my fingers bite into the crimp that I woke up and realised it was on. I breathed to force me to take my time setting my feet, and then grabbed the massive jug.

Done.

Video still of going for the jug on the last move on the successful attempt. I'll post up a video of it when it's ready.

None of this matters to anyone except me. And only two things about it really matter to me. Firstly, Practice of the Wild is a brilliant piece of climbing, and by being hard enough to give me a good battle, I was able to enjoy it all the more. Secondly, I had to make real progress in my climbing to do it. Well okay one more thing matters, I had to use my brain to figure out how to make the progress. The battle was won while sitting on my ass at 2am with square eyes reading obscure papers on cellular metabolism. There is more to climbing than just pulling on holds.

Footnote: I’m always a bit sensitive writing about weight and climbing. Personally, I think writing about it and being open is much better and healthier than being secretive. But I know disordered eating and inappropriate food restriction happens in climbing and it’s a problem. In my view we’ve got to be open about when it’s appropriate to look at weight as a priority for training for climbing. As I said above, I have a post coming on the ‘how’ of my training intervention. It’s a highly controversial and polarised topic that needs handling with care. So even in that post I’ll be urging you to listen to the whole body of research out there, not just one voice. But from this post if you take anything away from it regarding weight in climbing, let it be these three simple points:

1. I spent months and probably 1000s of hours studying vast quantities of scientific research and discussion before doing anything.

2. I used a strategy for weight loss which does not involve being hungry, or anything other than eating high quality real food.

3. I am a 37 year old male who had a tyre around my waist. My individual story is relevant to me, not you. Fat loss tends to be effective in climbers with excessive amounts of fat. It can be seriously performance negative (at the very least) in those who do not carry excess fat, or people who are growing or have other health conditions. This leads back to point one - start from an informed position.

Climbing Steppenwolf (8B) in three tries.

Magic times

Shallow Water to Riverbed 8B+ from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.

Right now I am back in Magic Wood, Switzerland, waiting for the rain and snow to stop. I’ve been here for a week, with a mix of great climbing sessions and the usual wet days. I’m always full of anticipation and excitement for any climbing trip. But this one maybe that bit more than ever as I felt some signs that I feel in maybe the best climbing shape I have been.

In some ways I find this amazing since I worked ~16 hour days more or less non-stop between last October and the Fort William Mountain Festival in February. Some of this work included training and climbing. But the point is, I had a heavy workload with a lot or pressure on my ability to rest and thus sustain a training schedule. I have adapted some good strategies to squeeze maximum benefit from less resting time that I would like.

So what about the training? The minor factor in this has been a solid uninterrupted period of training through the winter on my board and not recovering from surgeries as I have been pretty much non-stop since late 2012! There is nothing ‘rocket science’ about the training really - just turning up, working my weaknesses, completing my workouts and then resting as well as I can between them. Because I have my own board, I have to take extra care not to become too set in my ways with the movements I set for myself. Part of this is having a good range of hold shapes, making sure to record and climb other climbers problems and set informal models of hard moves my projects. Part of it is just setting new problems often. But my big weakness remains ‘old school’ pure finger strength and body power. So I have many basic fingery problems and still spend plenty of time doing my deadhangs. When I do get the opportunity to go to large commercial walls (TCA in Glasgow is my favourite!), I forget the basic stuff and use the opportunity to get more variety of movement styles that expose and work my weaknesses. Obviously, this situation is quite specific to me.

The wall-based training factor is only the minor aspect of my recent improvement because it is overshadowed by the other factor has had such a dramatic effect on my climbing. This factor was radically changing my diet back in October. Many readers have asked me to write about this, and I will. However, it is an ongoing experiment and still a little early to draw any conclusions about exactly what has made the difference. I am also reluctant to potentially influence anyone before completing a broad base of reading on the scientific literature on the subject. This is something I have spent a lot of my spare moments doing and find it a mixture of fascinating, shocking, disturbing, exciting and depressing all at the same time. I have more stages of my ‘experiment of one’ yet to complete. No doubt I have much still to learn. However, so far I have experienced a range of quite dramatic health improvements, quite apart from the original goal - to increase my climbing level.

I did a bit of mixed climbing this season which did rather get in the way of rock training, but was certainly worth it with four IX’s onsight. I finished off just a couple of weeks ago with a repeat of Ines Papert’s Bavarinthia IX,9 in the Gorms. I kind of felt ready to get on something harder, but the season didn’t quite work out for me - the conditions disappeared just as I had my window to go mixed climbing more. Hence I went to Mull and did the crack project instead. Just before I left, I squeezed in two sessions on a nice boulder project on Skye. I was sooooo close on the second session. But it didn’t happen, so I’m hoping for some strong northerlies in mid May when I get my next chance to go there.

In Magic Wood one of my main trip goals was to work on the sit start to Riverbed (8B+). Although I did Riverbed (an 8B in itself) on my last trip very quickly, I got totally stumped by the sit start. I couldn’t do it at all!

At the end of a session last week I surprised myself by linking this part in about 30 minutes work, and excitedly reacquainted myself with the Riverbed section beyond. Next session I arrived rested but in slightly humid conditions. After a warm-up I shocked myself by completing the whole thing on my first try. I didn’t expect that! It’s only the third 8B+ repeat I’ve done, and it was great to feel it was not at my limit at the moment. Check out the video above - it’s a nice boulder!

So obviously I’m excited to see that some of my training decisions are paying off (at least for now) in quite dramatic style, but also what else I could climb while I’m here. Unfortunately, it’s now heaving it down with rain and snow. So I am sitting drinking tea and climbing nothing. Perhaps I will see some of you for my talk at the Aviemore Mountain Film Festival on Friday night (22nd) where I will discuss some of the ideas that have improved my climbing of late. After that I will return to Magic Wood and wait for the rain to stop again.

Another Magic trip

Magic night in the Wood from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.

The last two weeks have been my third time in Magic Wood in Switzerland. The place is packed with some of the hardest and most iconic boulder problems in the world and for that reason it’s a great testing ground of your level in bouldering.

It’s still a long term ambition of mine to climb a Font 8C, but fit this into my normal all-round climbing life of trad new routing, winter climbing etc. I’ve always admired the Chris Sharma creation ‘Practice of the Wild’ and have this as a lifetime climbing goal.

It’s a little tough as a goal, not just because it is 8C but also because sometimes one particular boulder problem that’s above your current limit might not match your strengths. However, it’s not just about the grade - I’d just love to one day climb that line. For to happen I know I’d need to be doing a lot more bouldering than I do now. Coming from a summer of big wall climbing and a bit of trad, I felt totally weak on it when I arrived two weeks ago. Just nowhere near even doing the moves.

So I tried some other projects. First I went into the Darkness Cave and spent a couple of sessions on Dark Sakai 8B. I almost got it about 5 times and felt quite confident that I might manage it after a rest day. Unfortunately I woke the next morning to realised quite badly tweaked my finger (strained lumbrical) on the nasty pocket at the start. I went back to it but immediately realised I’d have to leave it for this trip - my finger was not happy.

I sat out some wet days and then started from scratch on another dream line I’ve been wanting to do for a few years - One summer in Paradise (8B). I worked out the moves over a couple of quick sessions when it was still really damp. Although I could do the moves, I wasn’t feeling very confident about my power level.

Yet on the third session and around two weeks into my trip, I finally started to feel some strength returning to my fingers and after a warm-up in the encroaching darkness, I climbed it pretty easily first try. I was absolutely delighted to feel like I was moving well on the rock and feeling like I could actually do something.

I was expecting to be trying the line all evening so I headed down to the famous Riverbed 8B which I’d played on a little previously. I was enjoying just working out the moves in a kind of relaxed fashion and started thinking I would probably return to it. But when I started from the start I found myself climbing the whole thing. As I climbed through the crux I realised I better really concentrate and try and do it, but relax at the same time. There were some exciting moments as I hadn’t placed my torch to shine on the upper headwall and ended up groping around in the dark trying to find the finishing jugs.

Brilliant! I was over the moon to climb two dream 8Bs in a night. Like so many climbers I watched Dave Graham doing the first ascent of Riverbed in the Dosage films and was inspired to visit Switzerland for bouldering. 

I had one session left and decided to return to Practice of the Wild. It was still really damp (it’s in a deep cave and seems rarely totally dry) and on warming up I almost just left it because the holds were quite slippery. But curiosity basically drove me to keep trying and after an hour I finally managed to do all the moves. I couldn’t do any more than that, but I was ecstatic. For me that feels like a real breakthrough and a tentative thumbs up for some changes in my training picture recently.

It’s definitely put some extra fire into my motivation to train specifically for bouldering and return to Magic Wood with the confidence that this climb is actually a possibility for me.

For now we are off to Spain for a week or so to go back to the sport climbing. Hopefully at least I will be able to pull on the holds, although no doubt I will be pumped by the third bolt.

Bouldering, media and Messner's castle

A damp day in Magic Wood from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.

A wee vid of one damp day in Magic Wood (Pirhana 7C and Left hand of Darkness 8a) and a quick hour on the way home at Kyloe in Northumberland (Hitchhiker's Sit Start 7C+). I last visited Kyloe maybe 12 or 13 years ago I think. And couldn't do this problem!

After the rather down few weeks following the no vote, I was fortunate enough to have a trip to look forward to. I’m now on my way home from a Gore-Tex event at the International Mountain Summit in the Dolomites. En route, Claire, Freida and I decided to make three stops of several days each. First we took on Disneyland Paris. Quite an experience.

Then we met up with friends in Fontainbleau. Much of our days here were spent finding things to do while rain poured down. We managed to get two or three sessions in on the boulders. Conditions were awful and so nothing hard was done. The hardest thing I could get to the top of was Salle Gosse (7C). There was a brief window of wind and although conditions were still pretty bad, I almost got the 8a sit start. I’d love to come back here in decent conditions.

The most important thing I did here was climb with Freida. She learned a lot from the brief opportunities for clambering up little boulders. Claire’s face was a picture when Freida started screaming ‘boulders!!!” and sprinted off in the direction of the rocks.

Next, we moved on to Magic Wood. And again, we spent most of the days waiting for it to stop raining. I did get one good session at the start and did the moves on an excellent long problem called ‘From Shallow Water to Riverbed’ (8B+). There’s no way I could do it in bad conditions. I get a bit annoyed with myself for never learning, and accepting how badly I climb it warm/damp conditions. My goal for this trip was simply to learn to pull hard on holds again after a summer of alpine north wall action and general multipitch big hold action. So I shouldn’t be worrying myself about this. But inevitably once presented with a forest full of hard and amazing boulders, I still want to climb them just as much. Bouldering trips teach me over and over again that I’m simply not strong enough to climb hard stuff when it’s greasy. I just have to suss out the sequence, and take my opportunity when the cold breeze finally comes. Easier said than done, for my fiery head anyway.

Freida inspecting the very wet Riverbed boulder, Magic Wood.

I reminded myself of my experience here last time, after over two weeks of failing and failing on Mystic Stylez (8B+), I needed literally one try to do it easily, the one time I turned up and there was a cold breeze. Keep that in mind, MacLeod.

After playing in the sand with Freida under a still soaking Riverbed boulder, I did get two nice problems climbed in semi-dry conditions Piranha (7C) and Left Hand of Darkness (8A/8A+). They are in the wee vid above. I do really like Magic Wood and am still totally inspired to train and come back here for a long trip in good conditions. Hopefully in the spring...

And then it was on to the IMS festival in Brixen. The folks at the IMS and Gore-Tex took great care of us. I was especially impressed on the climbing day to turn up at the crag at 9am to find catering staff already set up with tables spread with cakes, sausages, potatoes, apples and even beer!

On the last day I was due to take part in a panel discussion about climbing and the media at Reinhold Messner’s castle in Bolzano. There was a panel of rather esteemed climbers, journalists from near and far, and me. Generally speaking, there was were quite a few voices feeling that mainstream journalism was going rather downhill. Messner himself seemed worried about both the direction of journalism, and alpinism itself. 

While I totally agree that the newspapers spew out daily rubbish on everything from the usual propaganda to rubbish about climbers and climbing, I’m not sure how much of a problem this is for climbers. Messner and others expressed concern that kudos would be dished out unfairly to pretender alpinists, using their bottled oxygen to rattle out tweets while being dragged up Everest. Meanwhile, the real feats of alpinism go unnoticed. For some, seeking sponsorship to achieve some ‘real’ climbing feats, this must be an issue. But it balanced out in some ways. Sometimes, I feel that it’s convenient that much of the BS in climbing is kept contained within Everest instead of infecting the whole of climbing. In other words, leave them to it. We can still achieve plenty in the media, if not far more these days with social media.

When I say ‘achieve’, I’m not thinking of maximum dissemination of our boasts about our hardcore ascents. In my mind, the primary purpose of dealing with the media at all as climbers is to inspire and inform an audience, sharing our ideas about what climbing gives us and what we learn from our escapades in the mountains. However, some playing the media at it’s own game can help us with this goal.

Just as we love to hate climbers who use things like an oxygen and guide supported ascent of Everest to launch a narcissistic career in anything from motivational speaking to politics, we can use our ascents to spread a different message.

Guys like Tim Emmett and Will Gadd are great exemplars at this. They can both be showmen when it is the right time. This takes the attention. Then once they have the attention, they use it to show their audience some really great ideas and ways of living.

Social media has made this even easier than before. In days gone by, in order to sustain any profile, you had to keep doing things that got you mainstream media attention. Now, you can use just one appearance to gain an audience for your feed and off you go.

Now, I understand that only a very few can achieve the same reach in social media as you can in mainstream media, even today. However, I don’t think that mainstream media attention is always all it’s cracked up to be. It is often consumed at a passive level, and of course, often written up badly by journalists with selling more dead trees or eyeballs in mind, instead of exerting a positive influence on people.

Coming out of the discussion at Messner’s, I was left with the conclusion that complaining about other alpinists and journalists does little to help things. However, there is a lot we can do by focusing on our own responsibilities and resources. Where we do get a chance to speak through a mainstream media outlet, let’s use the opportunity to speak clearly about the good things in climbing. Otherwise, the stories will only ever be about deaths in the mountains and Everest shenanigans. As climbers I feel we are sometimes awkward in presenting our messages to a non-climbing audience. This may be partly or largely out of fear of oversimplifying or dumbing our ideas down. I think we have to get better at communicating to this audience, as well as accepting that we have to speak a little differently to an audience that has yet to learn that climbing is not all about death, risk and who is the fastest or first. Remaining aloof, prickly, or simply opting out of the discussion isn’t a great solution.

The good news is that even if some some profit driven journalist drives our climbing down to a level of ‘world record’ this or ‘adrenaline junkie’ that, as long as he points at our blog or twitter feed, we may have a second chance to speak to that audience and tell them a different story.

Dave film

DAVE (with Dave MacLeod) from MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT on Vimeo.

Since I’ve been out of the blogging loop for a bit, this is a bit late and you might already have seen it. Anyway, below is a film that Polished Project made about me. It’s not so much about a specific climb or anything, although there is some footage of me climbing some classic hard problems at Magic Wood. It’s really about ideas of mine and quite important things I’ve learned over almost 20 years of climbing.

I suppose the central idea underlying everything Im saying in the film is that I learned the things I did through not being naturally suited to climbing as youngster, but very naturally suited to spotting the patterns behind others apparent talents and trying to copy them.

Thanks to Mountain Equipment who supported the film. I’ve been working with ME for ten years - about half the time I’ve been a climber. So they have been quite a big part of my life as a climber.

Waiting for Autumn

While I have been waiting for the summer to come to an end and the season for climbing on small holds to begin, I’ve been trying to sort some things out. To be honest, I’ve been feeling a bit fed up with how the summer has gone. Having said that, the battles have been enjoyable. I could so easily have had very different results on a couple of hard projects had conditions been right at the right moment. But it didn’t happen. I particularly thought on quite a few attempts that I was going to get my Steall project. On reflection though, I don’t feel I really did enough to deserve it just yet. Also I went to look at a couple of cliffs I hoped would have another great hard trad new route for me, but they were a bit disappointing. Outside of climbing, I have written a lot of book which is good although much work remains and progress has been rather slow.

I signed another three year contract with Mountain Equipment which is really great and gives me an opportunity to keep pushing myself in my climbing. I have been thinking a lot about my training going into the colder months and what moves to make next. This summer has been the first that I haven’t felt my fingers getting stronger. I know that it’s down to just going climbing on physically ‘easy’ trad routes for a long time and not doing any training since my elbows weren’t up to it. Already I’m noticing some small gains since I’ve been healthy and able to start basic strength work again. But my body is feeling like it will take some time to get used to strength training again.

After speaking at the St Anton festival in Austria last week I had a few days in Magic Wood. The objective was just to pull hard on powerful crimpy moves as much as possible before going back to Scottish projects. It’s just as well, since the conditions were pretty bad. After a few days moping about looking at wet projects and climbing damp boulders, there was one day of decent conditions. I could do Darkness to Sunshine (8A/+) quickly and then worked on some harder things without success. I spent an hour or so trying Remembrance of Things Past (8B+) which is exactly the opposite of my climbing strengths. There’s not a lot of opportunity to lean on technique and get weight on your feet, but raw finger strength is the order of the day. It was still quite wet but I could see I probably would struggle to do it even in good conditions. On the other hand, the moves didn’t feel impossible so I don’t think a huge gain in strength to weight ratio would be needed to manage this level. I’d love to try this again sometime after a winter back on the fingerboard.

I super motivated for this season to get back into basic strength training and see what possibilities it opens up. I’ve also spent a lot of time recently reading to expanding my knowledge of sports nutrition and feel like I’ve learned a lot there with much potential to do the hardest stage - putting new knowledge into practice.

A good run

While in Magic Wood, waiting for boulders to dry out, I decided to go for a couple of jogs to keep trim. I found a nice track that led up into the mountains in steep zig zags from 1300m to over 1900m, above the tree line and into a lovely open mountain corrie. On the first outing, it was super humid and felt like hard work. I walked a few sections, but I sensed that the uphill running was beginning to feel close to ‘steady state’. So a few days later I did it again on a much nicer day and got on much better.

I ran over 600m altitude gain in 36 minutes without stopping to walk which is the first time I think I’ve ever run so far uphill in one push. The interesting thing was that I did the run after eating lunch (I’d had 4 hours bouldering in the morning). Normally if I ever run I do it after the overnight fast to get into fat oxidation quicker. The difference was quite amazing! I know that’s rather obvious but it was still quite something to experience it. Instead of feeling like a motivational mission, it felt pretty easy. Moreover, after the harder steep sections I could feel my legs wanting to run faster as soon as the angle decreased again. I guess habitual runners must be used to that feeling but it’s nice for an amateur to feel it even once.

I remember reading when I started climbing that Messner, in training for the first ascent of Everest without oxygen in 1978, 'claimed' to be able to run 1000m uphill in 35 minutes. So I’m officially 3/5ths as fit as Messner. Im not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Perhaps I put in some training for my enchainment idea after all?

I wrote some ideas about mental strategies for motivating yourself to run uphill on the training blog here.

In conversation with... Reinhold Messner from MOUNTAIN EQUIPMENT on Vimeo.

Mystic Stylez 8C video

Video of me doing the repeat of Daniel Woods problem Mystic Stylez in Switzerland a couple of months ago. The clip comes from the Polished Project’s film about my reflections on climbing which is on the way.

Home Soon

Another clip from the Polished Project film 'Dave' which is on the way. This clip shows off what a nice climb New Base Line is!


I was home from Switzerland for all of one night before driving south to speak at various Cotswold stores around England and Wales. After the first talks I have a couple of days off now and then to Chester, Bouremouth, Islington - details here).

I spent a long time looking forward to the Swiss bouldering trip and enjoyed it a lot. Now I’m going to be heading home soon I’m pretty sure it’s time for some routes again. I’ll need to start from scratch with endurance for tries on my Steall project. I also need to put some time into planning more trips this year. 

On my last day I finally managed to get a session on Practice of the Wild (8C) before I left Magic Wood. It was dry for the first time since I’ve been here. It’s definitely the most inspiring line I’ve seen in the woods and I’d be keen to return sometime to work on it more. It has definitely reminded me not to be afraid to try the harder stuff in bouldering even though I struggle a lot with indoor climbing. For sure this is partly down to my training diet of mostly climbing outdoors - I can usually get more weight on my feet than most on real rock. But a big part of it is my sweaty fingertips and general inability to perform well even in  moderately warm conditions. I’ve resisted this conclusion for a long time, but it’s probably better if I just accept it and start working with rather than against it.

My body also feels in good shape to start some basic finger strength training again this year. I’ll have to be careful to build up slowly. That, together with some other changes in my training will hopefully reap some good rewards down the line. In the short term, I’ll see where the mood takes me when I get home and probably go exploring some of the great places I’ve still never been to.

Mystic Stylez

Holding the swing on the last hard move of Mystic Stylez Font 8C, Magic Wood (video still) The footage will be in the Polished Project film which is on the way.

Today I climbed Mystic Stylez 8C in Magic Wood. As far as I know the second ascent of this Daniel Woods climb from last year. It really has been a big restorer of my confidence after a couple of weeks of questioning my ability to get things done.

Having just succeeded and with the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s probably fair to say I tend to be a bit hard on myself at times. So much so that I know people sometimes mistake me for not taking satisfaction from my climbing. While being hard on yourself makes you hard edged and a bit ‘difficult’, it does have its uses, in moderation. This is how it went:

After I did New Base Line nearly two weeks ago I wandered down to Muttertag (8a) to try that and look at Daniel Woods 8C sit start, Mystic Stylez. With only three moves into the stand start, itself a one hard move 8A, It must have some pretty bad holds? The holds did seem better than you would expect, but it’s not until you try it you realise that they are at such unhelpful angles that moving between them is desperate. It’s a running theme with the steeper problems on Swiss Gneiss. The holds are deceptively good, but the climbing very powerful. The only way to make powerful moves less powerful is to get more weight on your feet.

So after getting the stand start in a few tries, I set about finding all manner of knee ligament shredding contortions to get opposition with my feet for the crux. I found a method to reach the right hand hold of the stand start, but was completely unable to move from that position (except towards the ground). But it was enough of a sequence to warrant some more serious sessions.

Then the temperature rocketed. 25 degrees in Chur, then 26, then 28. By the second week it hit 37 degrees briefly while driving to the shops. I started climbing by headtorch after dusk, then getting up at 4am and warming up by headtorch. It’s always hard to just blame conditions. I was determined that my movement was getting worse; more errors, less confidence. With hindsight, the big greasy fingerprints on the holds after each attempt should have told me that my lack of confidence that I could make more progress was because I could feel my fingers sliding from the warm holds, unable to apply their strength.

I replaced biscuits at the crag with apples, rested, got up earlier, and carefully refined my movement on each session. Time to leave for Scotland was approaching fast, but each session I did learn at least one small thing about how to climb the moves better. And I got a little further. On my last session before departure day, I touched the finishing finger rail on Muttertag 4 times. Although it is the last hold, touching it and holding it are two different things.

It would be expensive, but I could change my travel home and stay another week for the small chance I could keep making progress. It seemed a remote chance of making any difference. Maybe I should just take my medicine and go home to the fingerboard? I joked with a friend that on the other hand, maybe I ought to take my climbing more seriously than that and just stay no matter how remote my chances. He knew what I meant, but still laughed. Although lots of people think I do take climbing unbelievably seriously, a lot of the time I do feel like I’m at constant risk of being a lazy bastard and not fulfilling my potential. 

On one hand, the climb represented a target to focus my efforts. It’s just a bit of rock and it doesn’t matter to anyone whether I climb it or not. But completing it does make a difference in the mind of the climber. If you’ve really set yourself the target, and you’ve done enough work to know it’s possible, then giving in when the ‘extra mile’ to completion is there for the taking makes it difficult to move on with confidence to the next challenge. I’ve completed plenty of super hard projects, and have many more incomplete projects that I’m just not ready for yet. So I have been here before. I knew I might not manage it, but I looked forward and visualised driving home to Scotland without the send. The failure on the climb wouldn’t be worth a second thought (because if you never have failures, you can’t be trying anything that’s actually hard). The only regret I’d have would be failing without first giving everything to the fight.

So I rebooked the travel this morning, and studied the forecast. Rain on a cold front was coming through (at last!). By tomorrow, the front would be through and the temperature lower. So I planned to go for a run in the woods and get up at 4am for the next session. On the way I dropped in to see Thomas at Bodhi Climbing and book a room for the final days. He reckoned the rain was coming tomorrow, and I panicked. I walked outside and the temperature was dropping, clouds lowering and wind increasing. Maybe I should just get on it right NOW?!

So I jogged into the woods, and got my mats out under Mystic Stylez. As I did, raindrops started to patter onto the mats. I laughed at how desperate this was getting and just did the stand start twice for a warm up and to see if the rain would come on properly. It started to get heavier. Inwardly I said ‘well maybe I should just do it first try!’, while thinking back to the last 4 sessions of failures.

And then, I pulled on and did it first try. I was strong enough, confident enough and moving well enough all along. All I needed was a cool wind. All in all I probably tried it for 8 sessions. I’m pretty sure I could have done it in 4 if the conditions had stayed cold.

It seems that it doesn’t matter how many times you learn that conditions matter and it’s ok to be confident when you’ve put in the work, it’s hard not to get downbeat when things don't run smoothly. At least this leaves room for nice surprises.

Hot Hot Hot

Scots don’t do well in the heat. We always used to shake our heads when we waited for the Glasgow flight home from sport climbing trips in Spain, watching reams of fellow Scots returning home lobster coloured and happy. Of course, whether we were the exactly the same colour just depended whether our project for the week was south facing or not.

Although I struggle with the cold in Scottish winter climbing, I certainly don’t in bouldering. Probably because my work rate at the crag never drops low enough to get cold. My sweaty fingers keep me from climbing harder than about 7C+ indoors most of the time. But with a cold Scottish breeze I can actually use my finger strength.

You can probably tell this blog is a bit of a conditions moan. Well, it’s not really. Yesterday at 3pm my car read 37 degrees driving to Chur. But at 5am that morning I was falling off the last move of my project in 10 degrees. Still waaaay to hot for me but at least I could get on OK. In Scotland it would be totally fine since you’d probably be pinning your mats down with rocks to stop them blowing away in the wind. But here in Switzerland, wind seems like a distant memory. I saw a twig move on a slight breath of breeze at 7am and had a really good attempt next try.

But hope is on the way. A cold front ahead of my last couple of sessions in Switzerland might help me climb a little harder problems before I head home. Aside from it being too hot for the really hard stuff now, I'm feeling great in my climbing, strong and enjoying pulling hard without any injury niggles at all. Even the holes in my fingers have healed up well now.

Better get to bed early. Alarm for 4am... drink tea, put on head torch, stumble to the boulders.

New Base Line

Climbing New Base Line 8B+, Magic Wood. Video stills from the Polished Project. Their blog is here and has a few more pics.

Woohoo! I’m well pleased I did one of my long term dream climbs - New Base Line 8B+ in Magic Wood. It is one of the most iconic hard problems on the planet and I’ve seen so many pictures of the world’s best boulderers on it and thought it looked line an inspiring line. For years I’ve wanted to come and try it, but I expected it would only be to see how hard it was. I didn’t really dare to think I could do it.

I was able to climb it a lot faster than I expected, on my third session. When I walked up the first day and saw it, I just thought it looked even more inspiring than the pictures. But after a couple of weeks in Switzerland I’ve finally curbed my tendency to headless chicken, and I carefully worked the individual moves. I got them all done after an hour or two but was getting worried about very thin fingertips.

Next day I found an even better foot sequence for the first and last moves and got overlapping halves before my skin totally died. My plan was to have a rest day and come back for some proper attempts. Lukasz and Wojtek were arriving that day for a week of filming me talking about ideas of mine about climbing. Maybe they would have timed their visit well?

But next day it snowed like hell I had to take another rest day to sit out the blizzard. The guys couldn’t even make it up the road to Magic Wood film the snowy landscapes. I knew that there would likely be a few days of snow melting down New Base Line. So, never shy to shift some offending snow, I borrowed a yard brush from our flat, floundered up through the forest and cleared great heaps of soft snow from the top of the boulder.

It was a good strategy. Next day it was bone dry and in perfect condition. So I warmed up and battled my way all the way to the finishing jug. I wasn’t quite warmed up to full power on the successful go and on the final four moves I was fading fast, swinging out wildly on every move. If it had been a week earlier in the trip I’d have definitely fallen, but I’ve really re-learned the bouldering skill of just not letting go even when your mind tells you you’re falling.

I was so happy to complete it. Apart from being so nice to climb, it’s definitely a landmark in my bouldering progress. We finished off the day with a flash of Foxy Lady 8A and had a session on an 8C that seems to suit me. Since then I’ve been back for another session trying hard things, and once my skin and muscles get tired, going off round the forest ticking off classics like Sofa Surfer 8A, Muttertag 8A and Free for All 8A. 

The weather has gone rather downhill again - warm and wet, which is probably just as well as I’ve seriously pulled a muscle in my trunk and can hardly bend down never mind climb hard!

The footage of New Base Line and all the others will be in the Lukasz and Wojtek's film, although the main part of the film is about ideas of mine, and things I've learned from the last ten years of my climbing life.

Swiss Gneiss first week

I’m settling well into Switzerland, sharing our flat with various friends and visiting the boulders. The first week of my trip was spent in Chrionico which was unfortunately a little warm for hard stuff, and rainy too, but still good fun. I was speaking in Lecco also which was a great evening, if a little stressful with my words being translated sentence by sentence. I think it worked ok for the 500+ audience who turned out!

I spent a couple of sessions trying From the Dirt Grows the Flowers 8C which was excellent. I got the moves but it was far too warm in the sun for the famously slopey top out. I’m sure I’ll come back to this one sometime. Rounded topouts are a huge weakness of mine which although I don’t enjoy them so much I’d like to improve at them. In between trying this I went across the river and made a quick ascent of Conquistador Direct 8B/+ which was recently put up and the video of it looked excellent. I made my own video above.

It was just as good as it looked although I did have a grumble to myself about the heat making in hard to squeeze the pinches. It’s really made me realise how lucky we are in Scotland with frequent good conditions thanks to the almost permanent wind! When I was climbing Conquistador Direct it was about 14 degrees and humid after the rain but completely still. It’s often 14-16 degrees in the highland glens right through the summer, but with a good wind it’s much easier to stick to the holds. The rain, however, does present a problem…occasionally.

Now we have moved over to Magic Wood which despite the sudden 20 degree increase in temperature, conditions are still surprisingly good and getting some excited about recent links.