Don't let go

Video still of the redpoint crux on ‘GRA” 8B, Cova De l’Ocell, Catalunya. I was really trying to hold on, but didn’t quite make it this time.

Right now I am in Spain. My climbing partner Alicia has broken her foot, so I am not doing my planned sport climbing and instead going bouldering. I spent some time visiting Cova de l’Ocell and trying the hard problems in there.

Most of the problems finish of the same section of roof with a hard iron-cross move, which I knew would be challenging for my shoulder and a good test of whether I can get beyond ‘recovered enough to climb something’, to strong and able to climb something hard, i.e. complete recovery. 

I’ll admit that every time I do the move, it feels like my arm has been nearly ripped off on a rack. However, this feeling is getting less pronounced. And I still managed to get through this move on Independencia (8B) on my first try and finish the climb.

Now I’ve been trying the other 8B (detailed at about 2 mins into this video) first climbed by Chris Sharma. I don’t know the name of the climb but I’m calling it GRA after the graffiti at the start. The other night, I nearly succeeded on it 4 times in a row, falling each time on the drop down form the iron-cross move.

So this is a story of failure so far. However, on the attempt in the pic above, I had a really good moment. When you commit to the drop down without having caught the hold right, there is a risk you’ll deposit yourself onto your head on the ground. And I only have one proper mat on this trip. Despite this, I got super aggressive  and really really tried to hold onto it, despite my feet coming off and being so outstretched that my shoulder was not properly engaged.

If I were thinking about my recovering shoulder, I would have surely let go. But I wasn’t! I felt completely uninhibited and my body is obviously now comfortable to climb this way again. This marks a big recovery milestone. The ability to completely let go of inhibitions and give everything is critical for climbing at your limit. I'm delighted that my comfort zone is extending pretty close to the limits of my physical capabilities again. This is where I want to be.

Lets see how the next few sessions go on it.

*UPDATE* I went back a few hours after writing this and sent it.

Separated Shoulder

5 weeks ago, I had an accident playing with my daughter and separated my shoulder. I did it properly as well; a grade 3 separation tearing all three ligaments which join my right collar bone to my scapula. It was a classic shoulder separation scenario - diving into a roll but instead landing on the point of my shoulder. Seeing my reflection in the car window was all I needed to know what had happened (it was obvious!), but nonetheless I headed off to get an x-ray and exam to confirm. My clavicle was elevated with a marked deformity across the top of my shoulder.

I’ve always counted myself lucky not to have had any traumatic shoulder injuries. There is a first time for everything. On the first two days it was so painful it took me 30 minutes to get sat up in bed. Taping it had me yelping like a kid! Obviously at this point I was not too happy about the situation.

But even by the third day I was able to make some tiny movements. By the beginning of the second week, the immobilisation of my arm in the sling had devastated my arm and shoulder muscles, which looked (to my eye at least) tiny. It is always shocking how fast immobilised limbs waste away, especially when it is your own limb.

Step deformity at the AC joint (the end of my collar bone)

With my daily exercises, I did everything I could to progress the return of range of motion, strength and muscle mass. At first, I could only really do 1-2 hours per day, but by the third week that was more like three in total. Early on I was just doing a ton of grip and pinch exercises, biceps curls with my arm supported, internal/external rotations with tubing or my other hand for resistance, isometrics at different angles and many more.

It got noticeably better every day, although there were of course still some mornings when I felt rotten, and some evenings when I sloped off to bed exhausted and sore at 7pm. Speaking of bed, the exercises were as always only half the picture. These days I am rather more careful to enforce a minimum amount of sleep, go after a far higher maximum and I’m much more careful with my diet now I have better knowledge on what I’m optimising for. While its not possible to know just how much all of these things make a difference, here is the output so far.

At five weeks I have fairly decent range of motion, but still a bit to go to achieve the last few degrees of pre-injury flexion and especially crossing my arm across my chest. I can manage about 12 pull-ups pain free and can now tolerate short climbing sessions on a 45 degree board doing moves which are fairly easy for me.

I can’t yet tolerate long training sessions, any really hard moves at 45 degrees, forceful ‘gaston’ press moves, very dynamic jumps on steep ground, or other heavy loading of the AC joint with my arm overhead. To me that feels like excellent progress, and I’m still seeing daily improvement. I’m sure I’m not the first climber with this injury so I’ll report back as a few more weeks pass and see what I can manage or cant manage.

Although it’s obviously a massive pain in the ass to have an unexpected traumatic injury I could have done without. But once it has happened, it’s happened. You have to deal with it head on. Its a good opportunity for me on three fronts. First, it allows me to test out the principles I detailed in Make or Break and continue to build on them. Second, it’s allowed me to work on some other projects that needed done. Thankfully the weather has also been rotten for the past month anyway, so there is no FOMO for the mountain crags going on. Finally, as always it allows me to go back to square one and assess my weaknesses to work on in training, and put some proper time into addressing these without the constant drive to just go out climbing all the time.

So let’s see what the next month brings. It would be doing well to be worse than the previous one.

Busy spring

FA of The Mighty Chondria E7 6c, 5c on Creag Mo, Isle of Harris. Pic by Chris Prescott/Dark Sky Media

It’s a good sign when you are too busy being outside climbing all the time to write a blog. Finally it is raining today after quite a few weeks or largely dry and fine weather in the highlands. I’ve been keen as mustard to get out after the general absence of climbing last season. After climbing my project at Arisaig in April, I spent a couple of weeks trying another 8B+ boulder and was ridiculously close for 5 sessions in a row. But for one reason or another, it didn’t work out and I’ve missed my window. It was a long shot anyway. I was losing fitness from being out on rock with lots of rest days and zero training, so you can only maintain a peak for so long in this pattern.

I've got to say, I will really miss the bouldering season. I really really enjoyed it and didn't want it to end. Maybe that's because I focused on it a bit more instead of trying to go mixed climbing in the rubbish winter for snow and ice? Either way, I'm already thinking of next season.

I’ve also been on the trad. First up I went to Harris with Masa, Chris and Nat. We were a bit early and it was baltic. I tried to climb anyway and on one day where it was slightly less windy and cold, I did a brilliant two pitch E7 on Creag Mo called The Mighty Chondria. The first pitch takes the same 35 foot horizontal roof I climbed further right on The Realm (E8) some years ago, this time via a big crack with lots of kneebarring and undercutting madness. That pitch is a fine 7c+ wrestle. Pitch two felt like a grade VIII winter route, and not just because it was almost cold enough to me mixed climbing. It was a highly traditional pitch, with some drips, some chimneying, some great rock, some turf and some darkness at the end. Masa followed me in the dark and we abbed off into the blackness below. 

That was pretty much it for the week, I cleaned another awesome four star E7, but on the last morning it was a waterfall pouring over the crag as the next front arrived and we just retrieved the gear and headed for the Calmac. 

Finishing the FA of Lucky Break E8 6c, Binnien Shuas. So happy with this route.

Since then I got back onto Binnien Shuas and led the E8 which I fell off and broke my leg last September. That was very satisfying and I shall write about that in a separate post as there is a bit to the story. I even got onto the Ben and repeated Trajan’s Column E6 6b with Calum. This felt surprisingly not too bad. Maybe I was just hyped up by the description that made it sound scary? I must admit that because I often do new routes, I sometimes get psyched out by guidebook descriptions. I’ve also been exploring some other new venues with massive potential. More of that later.

FA of The Circus 8a+ at Loch Maree Crag. Yes it is that big! The route is an extension to Hafgufa and was bolted by Ian Taylor who kindly let me climb it. It's an awesome climb, nearly 50 metres long and with great holds and climbing.

Last week I was up at the new sport sector on Loch Maree Crag. I’d seen a couple of pics of the place and it looked really big, steep and waterproof. And of course in a lovely setting as you would expect from a highland crag. It was even better than I expected. I repeated the great existing 8as and Ian Taylor kindly let me finish the huge extension to Hafgufa that he’d bolted which gave a monster 50m 8a+ called The Circus. This was an intensely enjoyable climb with brilliant exposure up the top arete, where the climbing is easier and you can just enjoy yourself. An absolute must-do for anyone climbing at the grade. I’ll be back here with my drill, soon.

Fingers crossed for some more mountain crags type weather coming up.

Cold hands on Trajan's Column E6 6b, Ben Nevis. This is a must do E6, people.

Move it or Park it E5 6c in Glen Nevis. Now without it's pegs but still a well protected route with a tricky move.

Calum Muskett eyeing up a huge arete. Many, many new routes to do here.

Lucky man - part 1

A minute away from breaking a leg. And I just thought I was about to climb a great new trad first ascent. Photos: Masa Sakano

During August and September I was a wee bit frustrated, bothered by my decision to stay in Scotland and do mountain trad projects, only to be met with a dire wet summer. Still I was aware how lucky I was to have these sorts of problems to worry about. I did a ton of training and felt pretty fit, waiting for a weather window for a cool project on Binnien Shuas. My time finally came. As soon as the rain stopped I headed up with Masa, finished cleaning the line and tied in to lead it. Although it was a tough route and I didn’t expect to succeed first try, I was relaxed and just so delighted to be outside, with a cool breeze in my face and starting up a hard rock climb.

Inspecting the new line. It will be an amazing route, when I get the opportunity to go back to it!

I was just getting started, two moves up the route and was lifting my feet ready to place a good wire when suddenly I found myself hurtling backwards without warning. The big sidepull I’d been holding onto had broken off. I landed on one foot on the rock slab below the route and somersaulted backwards, also knocking Masa to the ground. We picked ourselves up in a tangle of ropes and heather and Masa asked if I was ok. ‘Yes, but maybe not my ankle’.

For a couple of minutes, I had a rather powerful adrenaline buzz, which faded to a looming feeling that things were not good. My leg and ankle were clearly ‘not right’. Sadly I am all too experienced with this situation and I defaulted to considering the immediate issue that I was at the top of a mountain with a broken leg and one hour’s walk and 30 min cycle away from the road. 

So I apologised to Masa and asked if it was ok if he would carry my lead ropes down the hill and if I could set off right away as I might be walking slowly! Masa agreed and said he would also retrieve my static rope which was also still hanging down the wall from having finished the cleaning.

Broken rock, broken leg.

I set off, every step becoming more painful and more worrying. However, with the help of my walking poles I arrived back at the bikes in good time and could kid myself on that my leg was not too bad while I had it immersed in the cold water of Lochan na-h Earba. Masa was a long time behind me and by the time he appeared out of the darkness, my heart was pounding out of my chest with worry. He did in fact have his own considerable adventures en route to the top of the crag, opting for the quicker route by soloing a v-diff gully climb which I normally use to access the top myself (so knew how steep it was). He slipped on wet grass on the final moves of this and fell 30 metres down the gully, apparently landing on his back, on his rucksack full of ropes and gear. Bruised but otherwise ok, he staggered off the hill behind me.

A fair walk with a broken leg. Bikes left at the beach at the end of the loch.

While he relayed this story to me as we limped onto our bikes in the dark, I wondered if I might be hallucinating because I was so worried to see Masa appear again that my brain might be inventing the image. I was nonetheless relieved to be on the bike and wobbling off down the track back to the road. Perhaps with the reappearance of Masa and the elapsed time since the injury my endorphin hit was wearing off, but I found it particularly challenging to get off the bike, walk it through the gate and get going again. By that point I was realising the game was up and I started to feel a bit low. 

After several days of lying low, Masa was back out on the crags and climbing again. When I returned home, Claire retrieved by crutches out of the shed and I got used to the idea of being off my feet and off the hills again. My MRI confirmed a broken Tibia and various bits of damage to the ankle I had repaired in March 2015. 

I reasoned with myself that after getting myself through three ankle surgeries in four years, and over a year of that time on crutches, I was well equipped to just do it again. And anyway, what else would I do? It didn’t work out quite like that, as I will describe in the next part of this blog.

 Masa attacking the roofs of Ardanfreaky E3 5c, earlier in the afternoon.

Another little milestone

Waiting for the breeze to come back at the base of Bark at the Moon E8 6c, Glen Clova. Photos by Masa Sakano.

Last week I went for a wee wander about Glen Clova. I hadn’t been there before and checked out a couple of routes I’d heard about. One was Tim Rankin’s E8 6c Bark at the Moon, a great looking line up a big steep prow. I felt it would be a good milestone to build a bit of confidence in my trad climbing. I worked out the moves quickly and was desperate to get back with a partner and give it a try.

So yesterday I returned with Masa to try and do it. Masa started with an impressive tussle with Empire of the Sun and it was great to watch him top out after really going for it. I seconded and didn’t feel I was moving very well. But it was just the strong sunshine I think. We abbed into the start of Bark at the Moon and conditions felt much better.

On the headwall of Bark at the Moon.

After a quick wait for the sun to go behind a cloud, I headed upwards. The route is pretty bouldery so you have to move quickly. Before I knew it I’d moved solidly through the crux and noticed myself letting out a deep breath to relax a bit and enjoy the pumpy upper headwall. 

Although I felt strong and solid on the crux, I’m aware that I am still feeling rather self-conscious in my movement - I am still climbing up the rock thinking about my ankle rather than about nothing. I can see it will take a little while yet to lose this feeling and be able to enter a decent state of concentration on the rock.

Although I wasn’t totally relaxed, I was still very pleased overall to have made another little milestone of progress. I feel I should probably do another few E8s before progressing back to E9 again.

Finishing off with Sunset Song E5 6b

Masa going for it on Empire of the Sun E4 6a

Ab rope stuck in a crack. Got there eventually.

The midges we waiting for us to decide to do one more route. We thought better of it.

It's foot-off time

Post surgery day 2. Anaesthetic drip disconnected, time for the training to start again.

I’ve been getting really motivated for training lately. Which is just as well, because I’m about to have a 6 week solid block of it during the spring. The reason? Ankle surgery. 

Yes, more ankle surgery. Readers of this blog will know that I’ve had surgery on both ankles in the past two years. In both cases this was for damage to the edge of the cartilage surface of my ankle joints. By far the worst injury was happened in this accident when I was lowered off the end of a rope. The microfracture surgery I had did work to an extent, but the nature of doing tons of walking on mountains has meant the lesion, although small, has not remained stable and has got a little worse. Knowing what I know now, I also suspect that some of the advice I was given for the post operative period was, well, sub standard and could well have contributed to it not working as well as it could have.

So I’ve tried to put my money where my mouth is and follow my own advice in my book, seeking the opinion of the best ankle surgeons in the world to see if there was anything else that could be done to protect my ankles from getting any worse. And there is. After speaking to surgeons based in Cambridge, Malaysia, Newcastle and then Munich, I’ve established that a newly developed procedure has a good probability of making the ankle feel better and protecting its health in the longer term.

All of this has taken 6 months to organise and considerable research and legwork on my part, not to mention working to meet the costs of the treatment. But now I approach the start line and I am in Munich and had my surgery yesterday. It all seemed to go fine and I feel ready to hit the fingerboard today. Nothing is certain in sports medicine and I know there is always a chance it won’t make much difference. But I still feel I ought to do the best I can now to keep myself well serviced so I am still in good form in the years and decades to come.

The sacrifice in the short term is that I have to do foot-off bouldering only for 6 weeks. Not too much of a sacrifice really. Foot off bouldering has always helped me feel really strong. So now I have a chance to have a good uninterrupted spell of it. During the recovery from my last surgeries, I thought it was good to place my focus onto writing my book. This time, I will have ample time to complete organised daily training as well as draw dinosaurs with Freida. It is kind of ridiculous that it takes leg surgery to make me train properly, but I just like going climbing too much. So let's see what I can do with this opportunity.

As I’m sure you can tell, I’ve set out a plan to make this a positive step in both the short and long term. There is really no reason why I shouldn’t be stronger and fitter for my rock projects by the start of May than I would otherwise be if I’d just been going out winter and rock climbing based on the weather. 

The process of organising this treatment was at times demoralising. Having actually arrived at the treatment stage feels like I’ve already come through a tough challenge in many areas. Just trying to get my MRI scans from the NHS was a bureaucratic shambles. Then even in the private sector things although good, were still frustratingly slow. The hardest part however has been finding sources of encouragement.

While I’m recovering I’ll be training 7 days a week on my board, fingerboard, campus board, rings, floor exercises, One foot cycling, swimming, general flexibility work, oh and the surgery rehab work itself! Not sure how I’ll fit it all in. But I’m pretty sure I’ll be in good shape after it. At least I start from a reasonable base of built up fitness. It will be interesting to see if the problems in the video below are no longer hard for me in a couple of months time. One way to find out...

Training 24 Feb 2015 from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.

Make or Break: Don’t let climbing injuries dictate your success

For the past 4 years or so, I have been working on a book about climbing injuries. It spells out in detail how to treat them once you have them, based on the evidence from high quality scientific research and practice. More importantly, it discusses all the things we do in our climbing routine that cause our future injuries and prolong those we have already caused.

I have titled the book ‘Make or Break’. This is because becoming an expert in understanding the causes and treatments of climbing injuries will be make or break for your climbing career. As Wolfgang Gullich said, “getting strong is easy, getting strong without getting injured is hard”. In my first book, 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes, I suggested that many aspects of training for climbing are not rocket science. Keep showing up, pulling on small holds, pushing the limits of your motivation and learning from others and you will get stronger fingers and get better at climbing.

It will be injuries that will get in the way of your progress, and if you let them, they will dictate how far you get in climbing. The research suggests that nearly all climbers get injured at some point. Finger injuries are most likely, followed by elbows and shoulders. Of course there are countless bits of our anatomy that can break if suitably mistreated. When you get one of these injuries, you need to be the expert, because unfortunately you cannot rely on anyone else to make sure you recover. This is not because doctors and therapists fail to do a good job (although they sometimes do). It is because there is no single source of advice on the vast array of things you must do to make sure you recover well and prevent future injuries. The climbing coaches, physiotherapists, otrhopaedic surgeons etc. that you will see will all give you pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, but it is you who must put them together.

Claire MacLeod dispatching our pre-orders the other night.

During the process of writing the book, I have discovered many pieces of hard scientific information and subtle concepts I wish I’d known when I was 16. They would have saved me so much of the pain and psychological torment of injuries that climbers everywhere share at some point in their career. There are many strands of information in the book. It is a handbook on how to take care of yourself as a lifelong climbing athlete. In this blog post, I will briefly outline three messages that will give you a flavour of what you will find in the book:

1. Tendons don’t like rest, or change.

Surprisingly, sports medicine research still has a lot to learn about tendons and how they heal and respond to training. However, there have been several big steps forward in the research over the past decade or two. The only problem is, new knowledge in sports medicine takes years or even decades to filter through to the advice you receive. Consider the following quote: 

“In general, it takes approximately 17 years to get 14% of research findings adopted into practice. Moreover, only 30–50% of patients receive recommended care, 20–30% receive care that is not needed or that is potentially harmful and 96% may receive care with the absence of evidence of effectiveness.”

I was shocked too when I read that. I was aware through my own experience that the advice I’d been given to recover from my own climbing injuries was often at odds with research I’d read. But to discover the extent of the lag between research findings and advice given to sportspeople is depressing. We only have one life and we cannot afford to receive outdated advice. Unfortunately, the internet hasn’t made the task of unearthing reliable advice any easier. Scientific journals remain hidden to most behind a paywall, while the same poor quality, outdated and non-specific advice drowns out the few reliable sources.

One of the shifts in understanding from the past decade is that slow-onset tendon injuries such as golfer’s elbow do not respond well to complete rest. In fact, it often makes the condition worse. Moreover, many of the adjunct treatments often offered - stretching, massage, ibuprofen may do little to contribute to healing, and only affect pain. Instead, the most promising treatment has been large volumes of exercise of a specific mode (eccentric) and at a level which causes some pain. Much of this seems counterintuitive at first sight, which is why a detailed understanding of what happens in injured tendons is so important. 

Some practitioners in sports medicine are still working to a pre-1990s concept of tendon healing and will advise you to heal your injured tendons by resting them completely. In contrast, modern research has found that the best way to heal injured tendons is to use them, but only in a way that is specific to the nature of the injury. Tendons do not like rest or change. The successful formula is to provide constant stimulus to tendons to maintain their health. But if you want to change that stimulus, such as by training harder, you must do so very carefully, using all the cues from the body that you can listen to.

Section 1 of the book discusses in detail the limitations of the sports medicine industry and how to get the most out of it, and section 4 details the modern understanding of tendon injuries and how to successfully treat them.

2. Know pain, or no gain

Above I hinted at the difference between the pain level and the healing status of an injury - a crucial concept for any sportsperson to understand. Understanding of the nature of pain has been another area of science that has advanced hugely in sports medicine. It is not enough to be able to listen to your body. You need to be able to decode the messages and see the patterns in them. This is both a science and an art.

Climbers need to be able to differentiate between healthy soreness from training and activity, and damage that demands action. They need to be able to take understand how various treatments affect pain from their injuries and what this means for their daily decisions on how much activity to expose them to. They need to understand how many aspects of their environment and psychological state amplify or suppress pain sensations from their daily activities. Pain sensations are an essential measure for climbers to monitor, but without detailed knowledge of how it works, it is very easy to interpret those messages from pain wrongly.

Section 2 of the book is entirely devoted to understanding pain.

3. The luxury of doing sport badly will not last

A young body can withstand a surprising amount of abuse. But the relentlessness of sport and training amplifies the effect of small imbalances or errors, and it doesn’t take long before these accumulate to the point of injury. Balance is the key word here. One area of sports medicine that has come on a fair bit in recent years has been the recognition that athletes need to develop strength in a balanced way, taking care to strengthen muscles on both sides of joints. That is a good development, but it is not enough.

Balancing of the stress imposed by training for climbing needs to come in several other ways too. Matching increases in training intensity with improvements in the quality of rest is one way. Improving technique and the design of the training progression to spread that stress is another. 

Sections 1, 3 and 4 deal with these concepts and the specific details that climbers should be aware of which commonly result in climbing injuries.

Repeated forceful internal rotation of the arm (the right arm on this move) is a big part of climbing. So it is no surprise that the internal rotators of the arm at the shoulder become dominant. You may well get years out of a healthy young shoulder without feeling a thing. But the resulting impingement syndrome affects so many climbers. If you'd rather prevent it, it's not hard to do a little work to keep the shoulder joint working well. And if you are already suffering, you may be able to reverse it quite quickly, unless you've really tried to ignore it for too long!

Maintaining awareness of the foot during hand movements is a core skill in climbing injury awareness. Slipping feet are a important cause of many finger and shoulder injuries. Do your feet slip too often? Do you know what to do when they do slip? Correct your climbing technique and you can push your body a lot harder before it starts to complain.

Finally, there is the psychological challenge of injuries which is hugely underestimated by both climbers and their friends and families. In sections 1 and 5 of the book, I present the idea that we should see the injuries we suffer as a crucial message that something must change in our way of approaching climbing. By seeing the injury as an opportunity to go back to basics, to understand what must change and make that change, we can not only improve our climbing, but enjoy the process rather than endure it.

I hope the book will help many climbers prevent their future injuries or overcome existing ones. You'll find the book in our shop here, dispatching worldwide.

Review of 2013 climbing

Eiger north face. One of the best bits of 2013 climbing for me.

I wrote the post below a while ago, but just posting it now. It's mainly for my own benefit to see what I did in 2013 and get an idea of what direction to head in 2014.

2012 which was a year of intense projecting for me (to climb Font 8b+ in Switzerland and redpoint my long term 9a project at Steall). So in 2013 I made a casual decision to swing the other way and go to some new places and do some disciplines (multipitch climbing and dry tooling) which I haven’t done much of for ages.

In January 2013 I was just learning to climb again after surgery on my right ankle. I kicked the year off with a nice week in Spain where I was able to start gaining some confidence and claw some fitness back on Malsonando (8c).

In February I started to be able to move around cautiously on crampons and in the mountains, and after a couple of short winter routes, I inadvertently got involved with the huge overhanging walls near the CIC cascades on Ben Nevis. I had gone up with Kev Shields to have a day of ice pitches starting with the cascade itself, but I ended up deciding to give the big seam across the roof a look and this became the best dry tooling route I’ve ever done. It was a fantastic piece of climbing. Unfortunately it proved a bit too controversial for the Scottish winter scene, so I ended up not even claiming it as a route. I say it was a bit too controversial, but any time it comes up in conversation with climbers, they have universally told me they couldn't see the problem a few folk had with it. It's just that they didn't say so on the public discussion at the time.

In March I put a bit of work into my linkup idea, but it didn’t come together this year. There were about 4 days when it looked like I might get lucky and all the climbs would be in condition. But it was always going to be a tall order, and so it’ll have to wait. It’s such an amazing project though, so I am super keen for my next opportunity to try it.

For the rest of the spring, I did some important work to set me and my family up for the long term. We moved house in the summer to Roybridge and now have a great base for all our MacLeod needs. Settling into a good house is something I feel is very important to be able to sustain a good lifestyle over the decades to come. It takes a huge amount of work and some sacrifices in the short term. But I’m certain it’s worth it. So during April and May I worked as hard as I could to prepare my house for sale. Houses in the highlands often take north of 2 years to sell, and that would have made life quite difficult for us. I was determined to give ourselves the best chance to complete the sale and move more quickly.  The work paid off. We sold our old place in Letterfinlay to the first couple who viewed it.

During this period I was also doing a bit of running. Right after my surgery in Nov 2012, I entered the West Highland Way footrace (95 miles) as a little goal to help me with my recovery, and because It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. Unfortunately, the injuries to my foot and ankle were just too bad to allow it. I could only run intermittently during the spring and although I did manage some not bad runs, my plantar fascia which was nearly ruptured in the accident started to hurt more and more in the couple of weeks leading up to the race. I still lined up at the start line, knowing full well I wouldn’t be going far. I ran 20 miles to Balmaha. Although the rest of me was not even warmed up, my right foot was screaming in pain and I got in the car. It was a bitter moment for me. I doubt that I’ll ever be able to run again due to the damage in my ankle joint, although I continue to keep an open mind about this.

My trip to Pabbay with Donald King was a nice contrast to the running. We went with the objective of making the first free ascent of the Pabbay Arch project, tried by Cubby and later Steve McClure. I redpointed it very quickly and it is one of the most spectacular trad climbs I’ve ever seen. I’d love to go back to that roof sometime. 

It was around this time that I had a call to say my father had been taken into hospital with pneumonia. What followed was a difficult three weeks where his condition looked initially not too bad, then deteriorated steadily until he died. Needless to say this had quite an effect on me and the process of dealing with it is not really over.

I hadn’t climbed for around 6 weeks when the date came around to meet Calum in the alps for a few weeks of trying hard alpine faces. I was unfit, but not really in a caring sort of mood, so I was happy to go straight for the hardest route on the list (Paciencia on the Eiger north face) and just see what happened. I was able to climb it by leaning on skills other than fitness. It was a fun experience, but in hindsight I still was not really in a good place.

After the Eiger we headed to the Dolomites to repeat Bellavista on Cima Ovest, but we were met by a week of thunderstorms. So I went home and hastily arranged a last chance return trip with Alan Cassidy two weeks later.

Unfortunately, during that two weeks, while climbing with Natalie, I made a little mistake while leading Hold Fast, Hold True (E9 6c) in Glen Nevis and decked out, badly spraining my left ankle and breaking off several bone spurs around the rim of the joint. They had been growing since I last broke that ankle, 16 years ago, when a hold snapped during a solo of a grit E8. I knew I would need surgery, but couldn’t get it until after the dolomites trip. The day before I was due to leave for the dolomites, the swelling went down enough to get a rock shoe on my foot, so we went out, again with a ‘don’t give a ….’ attitude on my part.

I had to walk on the scree as if I was walking on broken glass, but once climbing I felt like I could go up the rock, if a little like a robot. Nothing was working anyway, it was raining, snowing and then really snowing. So on the last day when we went up to strip our fixed rope from the crux roof, I really didn’t care. That, combined with the training effect of trying to climb it when it was soaking wet for the preceding week, was a perfect scenario. It was winter conditions, but finally dry, and I was in the mood for a good fight with the pitch. So I climbed it. On the place home I remember not quite believing I’d managed to get two great alpine ticks like those two routes despite such poor preparation before the trips.

Once home, I was just on surgery countdown, and afterwards, taking the long walk through the valley of rehab, every night, doing my strange exercises standing on one leg. It’s not a whole lot of fun, but there’s no choice. Rehab exercises make you better. Finally after 6 weeks, I’m able to do winter walk-ins and even managed to jump down from about head height onto my feet at TCA.

Just now I’m flying to Patagonia for a month of whatever the Patagonian weather throws at us. I’m a little apprehensive about my lack of recent climbing, to say the least. However, I am never the type to rate my chances. What I need to remember is how much good climbing I got done in 2013 despite 2 surgeries, 2 months of DIY and dealing with the loss of my father. I also found time to write another 40,000 words or so of my injuries book which gets ever closer to being ready. I’m halfway through a redraft now and the ingredients are one by one falling into place. Working on this book has taken a huge amount of my energy and I think it will be a massive weight of my shoulders when it is complete, not to mention freeing up a lot more hours in the week for everything from climbing to spending time with my family.

In 2014 my goals are to be a bit more organised about trying the projects I want to try. Instead of just taking things as they come I want to focus on one thing until it’s done. I always work better in this mode and I need to get back to it. I also have realised I want to make some major changes in the way I train. Some of these are practical things which will mean I can get more training done and keep better control over it’s content. But I also want to change my approach to performing a bit too. I think it will make a big difference. You never know what life brings, but I would like it if the next year had less big upsets than last year. After a lot of travelling in 2013 I’m really excited about spending more time based at home in my new house and raiding projects from there. I'm also looking forward to be neither awaiting or recovering from surgery, after the year of being held back by injuries.

After Patagonia I’ve got some great Scottish projects lined up in all the climbing disciplines for the spring and early summer and then I’d like to go to the alps to try a mind blowing new route I’ve seen. I’m also going to build the most badass training board ever in my new garage!

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.

Post surgery; 1 week

Things have gone well for me. Much better than I expected. 48 hours after surgery, I was on the campus board in TCA and doing easy problems foot-off. After my surgery last year, I couldn’t face this for nearly two weeks. By day 4 I was hobbling a little in the house and at day 7 walking quite normally, if still for very short distances.

Of course I’ve had a couple of ‘sore’ days. Yesterday I didn’t feel like doing anything too far from a sofa until it was time for my physio session in the evening. I’ve still not ventured out for anything more than a few minutes walk. But I’m well happy with the progress so far. Now I have my big fat bandage off, I can see that my foot is not so far from a shape that would accept a rockshoe.

The huge difference between this and my much slower progress in last year’s operation on the other ankle might be accounted for because the joint was much less ‘hot’ at the time of surgery. I.e. I was walking around on a partially functioning foot rather than on crutches on a swollen, angry ankle. 

Roll on the progress!

Surgery's eve

Alan Cassidy on the big Dumbarton project

I was lucky enough to be able to climb recently despite my pending ankle surgery yesterday. For my last day before the appointment with the knife collection, I decided to team up with Alan Cassidy to go on a very inspiring project.

The wall right of Rhapsody at Dumbarton was bolted in the early nineties by the ever optimistic Andy Gallagher. Various very strong people had tried it and noone had made much impression on it. That’s a shame since it’s one of the best lines at an amazing crag, with superb rock and moves. I had a brief play one cold day around 8 years ago. I felt it was just possible but might be upwards of 9a+ minimum. I was getting kind of ‘full’ of climbing at Dumbarton at the time and left it for a life in the highlands.

Just as well Alan took an interest and looked at it again, giving it a proper clean for the first time. A couple of tiny, but useful holds appeared from under the lichen, that maybe tip it in the direction of possible, although the grade might still start with 9… 

I had a play and was most heartened to be able to do most of the individual moves. It’s clear that it goes and it’s pretty inspiring. I found it kind of ridiculous to be back there after several years, working on the line I’d left behind, thinking that some youth will come along and do it. That will probably still happen, but it’s surprising to me that it hasn't already. There are plenty of folk with the finger strength. All it would take is the attitude. Anyway, it left me with a nice feeling of inspiration with which to enter surgery rehab mode the next day.

I didn’t have to be in hospital until 2.30pm, so at the last minute I jumped out the door first thing and was at Lennoxtown for 8am to look at the other arete project Alex had told me about. I found it (at least I presume it’s the same line?) and it looked amazing! I settled into figuring out it’s exquisite moves for around 30 minutes and realised I was quite close to getting it. Unfortunately it was raining heavily and the sloping topout was running water. I linked it from the start to the topout three times but wasn’t able to pull over on the soggy slopers. Unfortunate, but I’ll still enjoy it when I next get the chance to get on it.

Lennox Castle arete project

After that it was back to reality and a sober drive to hospital to get cut up. The surgeon and staff did a great job and everything went well for me. I was quite terrified of what the surgeon would find in my ankle joint. But it ended up not being as bad as I feared. He pulled several large osteophytes (i.e. Loose chunks of bone) out of the joint and gave a couple of them to me afterwards. I’m not totally sure if they all broke off when I fell off Hold True the other week, or some time before that. Either way, I’m glad to see them out.

No wonder my ankle hurt

Right now, on day one of recovery, I’m totally psyched to get started on a return to fitness. It’s always refreshing to start with a clean slate and reassess all aspects of your game - What climbs do I want to do? What physical weaknesses should I take time to address? There’s plenty to be getting on with.