Couple of videos: Pinnacle Trailer and the cave

Here is the trailer for The Pinnacle DVD, ice climbing on Ben Nevis following in the footsteps of Smith and Marshall. Brilliant for the winter psyche!The DVD is in the shop here.

This is an extended clip of Michael making a determined second ascent of my own problem Bone Broke (Font 7c) in the Arisaig Cave last week. The wee fire was great, shame the wind was blowing it into the cave for the full winter cave dwelling experience!

The Pinnacle wins at Kendal

I’m just home from the Kendal Mountain festival where I had a great couple of nights speaking about The Pinnacle film and The Great Climb. The Pinnacle won the People’s Choice prize for the best film at the festival - thanks for voting for it!

It’s great that people liked it so much. It was a great vibe at the premiere and watching the film for the first time I just felt so glad that we were able to make it. I think Jimmy Marshall and Robin Smith’s story is as inspiring as ever and the film shows off Ben Nevis at it’s absolute best.

Diff gave me a pile of Pinnacle DVDs to take home and Claire has just dispatched all the pre-orders today. I had a watch of the extras this morning, which include our live show with myself and Andy Turner talking with Jimmy at last year’s Fort William Mountain Festival, Diff’s full uncut interview with Jimmy for the film, and also Heatherhat’s film about my first ascent of Don’t Die of Ignorance (XI,11) with Joe French on the Ben. All the info about the DVD is in the shop here.

The Pinnacle DVD is here

Hot Aches Productions DVD about our re-enactment of the Smith-Marshall week on Ben Nevis is ready. Tomorrow (Friday) I’m at the premiere of the film in Kendal and will be picking up our DVD stock from Diff there and dispatching orders when we come home on Monday. It’s up in the shop to order if you want a copy, right here.

In case you missed my previous posts about our week, this is what all the fuss is about: In 1960 Jimmy Marshall and Robin Smith, probably the best ice climbers anywhere at the time completed a week of back to back first ascents of cutting edge ice routes on Ben Nevis. The first one-day ascent of Point Five Gully, first ascents of Pigott’s Route, Smith’s Route, The Great Chimney, Minus 3 Gully, Orion Face Direct and a traverse of the Grey Corries as their ‘rest day’. It was a massive step forward and took the generation behind them a good decade and the development of modern ice tools to catch up. Step cutting these routes day after day was a fantastic feat of skill and endurance. It became a bit of a legend in Scottish climbing, to say the least.

Hence, 50 years later, to the day, myself and Andy Turner felt it would be great to go and repeat the week of climbs and make a film about it with Hot Aches Productions. We had a great night after our week with Jimmy Marshall himself, talking about the week at the Fort William Mountain Festival (which you’ll find as an extra on the DVD along with an extensive interview with Jimmy who is now 82). Since then, Paul Diffley has been preparing the edit of the film itself.

It recounts the story of Jimmy and Robin’s adventure and achievement, shows off the routes and the Ben itself rather beautifully I think. It did help that we had a stunning week of weather on our re-enactment.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.

About to top out on Point Five Gully during our re-enactment of the Smith-Marshall week on Ben Nevis.