The forces of nature

Just when we thought the Scottish spring couldn’t get any worse, going climbing has been even more difficult of late. After a weekend in Glasgow and training indoors to hide from the 100mph winds, 60 odd fallen trees stood between us and home on the A82. The one below landed on the car and tanker, thankfully noone hurt and we proceeded to chainsaw it up and carry on.

Further up the road, fallen caravans marked the way across Rannoch Moor.

Yes, it used to be a caravan, until the Scottish conditions remodelled it.

So the tour of Scotland’s perma-dry sport crags continues. Even Steall an Tunnel Wall were soaking, so I checked out Am Fasgadh in Gruinard Bay for the first time with Gaz and Murdo. I was a fine little crag, and we managed half a session before the wind finally dropped and we received our first beating by the midges of the season. Before they stopped play, I managed an 8a+ second ascent (Stork’s ex project) and ticked some of the excellent 7bs and 7cs. It was so nice just to go climbing on some established routes for a day, and not have to bolt and scrub them first! I forgot how easy it is just to climb other peoples sport routes.

Endurance still has a long way to go, but some progress has been made and my appointment with my Orkney project is getting closer in my mind. Time to attack the board again today...

Murdo relaxing on Black Sox 7c, Am Fasgadh

Steall sessions

First ascent of The Fat Groove 8a, Steall

Two good sessions at Steall with Tweedley and Boswell. On day one I mostly put in bolts and scrubbed and was knackered. Net day, after baby class it was time to get actually climbing. I equipped a big diagonal groove cutting across my route Stolen and Running into the last part of Trick of the Tail (which is now bolted to the niche below the perma-wetness with permission from Mark at great 7b+). 

Being a groove I figured some bridging would be possible, which it was in places. The rest however was some powerful fingery undercutting with some technical dancing about on little smears, if that is the right word?

A little bit of grunt and I made it through to the superb upper section, with all sorts of funky groove moves going on. Brilliant. The other line I bolted won’t give up so easily I suspect.

Michael scrapping with The Gurrie 8a+

The whole time, it dumped it down with rain and fresh snow fell on Ben Nevis above us. I don't reckon too many other new routes got done in the western highlands today! Nice to see that other are enjoying the routes here recently as much as I have done. Niall and Alan both rating Stolen as possibly the best 8b or even 8 in the UK!!

Gore-Tex Arctic Norway trip competition

A project that’s been in the pipeline for a while has been a trip I’m planning with my sponsors Gore-Tex. It’s just launched so I can finally talk about it. So, would you like to come on a climbing trip to Arctic Norway with me?

The lowdown is on the Gore-Tex Experience Tour facebook page here, but here’s the rough plan: Gore-Tex have been running several competitions to go on some superb trips with their athletes and this year it’s my turn. Some of you might remember I was asking you for ideas for it months ago. We are going to go rock climbing, hopefully new routing, in northern Norway for two weeks in August. And we are looking for two climbers to win a place on the trip, courtesy of Gore-Tex!

I see a load of you have already clocked this on the Gore-Tex Experience Tour facebook page and applied! Great stuff and good luck. Looking forward to sharing a fine climbing trip with you. Please do post up on the wall with any more links you have to your climbing stories and pics to make my choice easier when it comes to the casting day!

A couple of personal things to say about the trip we have planned - 

First off please don't be afraid to apply! I know from experience of coaching climbers and doing talks etc that people sometimes get put off by the prospect of going climbing with someone you've 'heard of'. There's no need in this case. Climbing new routes in places where there's tons of rock offers endless possibilities and our objective is just to go climbing and have fun for a couple of weeks. We'll have no problems finding routes to climb that have however hard or easy climbing we are after. We'll choose the objectives when we get there and based on how we are all climbing. So it's flexible - the only hard and fast rules are that we will have an adventure, we will get rained on at some point, we will come home with tired arms and wide eyes. You get the picture..

If you make the shortlist and get invited to the casting day in July, basically the plan will be we'll meet up near a cliff somewhere in Europe for the weekend, I'll show a few slides and tell some climbing stories over a beer. The next day we'll climb and find out who is ideal for the trip but I'll also make sure we all have a good session of climbing coaching so everyone has a good and productive time.

Why Norway? Well, other than being a climbing paradise with nearly endless potential for adventurous new routing on every type of cliff, it's beautiful, off the beaten track and aside from an unpredictable climate there are no barriers to getting on the rock - it's everywhere! Depending on the team's desires, what grabs our eye when we arrive and whether the sun is out, we could climb sport routes, single pitch trad or some rather bigger walls. I'm sure there will be the odd bit of sessioning on perfect granite boulders too…

Can’t wait. You can apply until the 5th of June, here.

The turnaround grinding into action

I’m in the middle of the two-week hell that always accompanies the transition from boulderer to stamina monster. Stamina monster is definitely the wrong word right now! But the plan is that it will be. All the holds on Tunnel Wall feel so easy to pull on but I am still getting pumped on the laps. I feel like an overloaded plane trying to take off - Once I’m off the bumpy ground I can start going up. Oh well that’s how I like to think of it anyway. I think next week I might be fit enough for Steall...

New cycle begins

Gaz Marshall on Strongbow V7, Laggan (classic problem!)

The sprint to the finish line on Seven of Nine seems to have left me feeling rather burnt out. Or has it? For the past five days I’ve felt unexpectedly lethargic, sleepy and ineffective at more or less anything.

Time for a change of scenery. Almost every year I get a few days in both May and September when this happens. Whether it’s down to the change of season, natural cycles of training or something else, who knows. It doesn’t matter. It only lasts a few days and then I usually feel good again. This morning I woke up feeling normal again and psyched to start the routes season after yesterday’s false start.

After sessions at Laggan, running laps on Sky Pilot for Cubby’s camera and then a day of failing miserably to climb anything at Tunnel Wall, I can see it’s time to phase out the boulders and start getting pumped on routes. I’ve got 6 weeks to get in shape for the start of the route project period. I’ll start off with a bit of Tunnel Wall and Steall, and then hopefully a bit of tradding. It’ll be interesting to see how quick the transition from strong to fit goes.

Nice unclimbed overhang

Boulder hunting

Laggan outlook

Tunnel Wall and the Coe

Seven of Nine

Seven of Nine V14

I still can’t believe the Sky Pilot project went down last night! I was buzzing so much I was unable to go to bed until 5 am, and lay wide-eyed until Freida burst into life at 7. The crucial difference after all those sessions? Several small but crucial ones.

First, I had genuinely detached myself from expectation of success. When it’s at your limit, time and time again this seems to be crucial for realising true focus of energy at the right moment, free of interference from the conscious. I read with interest Chris Sharma’s comments about also having to re-learn this lesson over again during his recent project victory at Margalef. I find that in order to achieve this state, it’s impossible to focus on ‘not being attached to success’. I’m not sure you can think in negatives like this easily, if at all. Rather, I found that focusing completely and exclusively on enjoying the effort, movement and routine of each and every attempt, that I could relax and begin to really climb.

Second, I went back to the sequence. No matter how well you think you know the holds and the moves, when it’s limit and your a hair’s breadth from success, there is nearly always something new to find after going back to basics with the sequence. In this case a simple change in order of foot movements and a tweak of timing tipped it my way.

Lastly, I’d clocked up the necessary hours to be all over it. Daily training for several hours, careful diet, careful rest, careful thinking over time and the destination finally appeared.

Nothing new here, but still important.

Cubby climbed the original route here ‘Sky Pilot’ (E5 6b or these days a very highball V5) in 1981. He also tried the project a decade or so later, but didn’t do the moves. He was the catalyst for me looking at it, telling me it would be a brilliant short solo and hard compared to other short routes in the UK -  harder than Hubble, which he had done the moves on. 

It’s a funny climb, somewhere between a highball and solo. I certainly wasn’t at all keen on falling off above the crux, and had to go all out to avoid doing just that. Grade wise I don’t have much to compare it to since I haven’t bouldered much for a couple of years, except that it’s definitely harder than any of the V13s I’ve done and seems harder than some V14s I've played on a good while ago now. Or is it? I’m not sure if it’s my style or not. 

Anyway, what a great feeling to be able to pull hard on holds and do some training again for the first time in a couple of years. A big milestone for me..

A little video below from my compact propped on a stone of the first ascent and another new line just right of Sky Pilot:

Three new books and DVDs in the shop today

Three new products just added to the shop which provided me with some excellent climbing entertainment of very different types! I hope you like them too:

Climbing philosophy for everyone: A book that has been needing to be written for some time. Stephen Schmid has brought together a series of philosophers who are also involved in climbing to take a head on look at the philosophy of various aspects of climbing. It’s quite a big task, and this book definitely errs on the accessible side. In highly readable and easy going style, it examines in turn aspects of the climbing experience such as freedom, risk/reward, the enjoyment of climbing several aspects of climbing ethics, styles of climbing and climbing culture. 

Far from being a hardcore academic style book, it’s a fine door opener to the world of attempting to understand climbing on a slightly deeper level. Your next heated post climb debate or forum rant will be less without it under your belt, but in places it is certainly a source of climbing controversy itself! Entertaining stuff. The book is right here.

Reach DVD: The latest in the genre of skate/MTB inspired bouldering flicks coming out of the US. If you enjoyed the likes of Core from last year, you’ll love this one too. A host of talent is squeezed in, cranking out V13 plus boulders with good music and a feel good style. The beasts Dave Graham and Daniel Woods are of course the highlight. Inspiring as usual with their jaw dropping feats of strength. One to make the boulders tremble. Right here.

The Fanatic Search 2… A girl thing DVD: Yes that’s right, Laurent Triay’s latest film creation is all about the girls. And well impressive they are too! Charlotte Durif (8c onsight), Daila Ojeda, Lynn Hill, Robyn Erbesfield (plus 9 year old 7c+ climbing daughter), Martina Cufar, Berta Martin and others in full flow on the best crags of Spain France. Inspiration aside, it’s an education to watch - whether you are a male or female climber. I was particularly interested to watch Charlotte Durif and see her style on the rock. She is one of the best performing onsight sport climbers in the world but there is very little footage of her around. It was just as interesting as I hoped! Right here. 

They are all in the shop here.

Resting up, Glaswegian style

Peter squeezing the life out of Auto Roof, 6a, Sky Pilot. Moving large rocks around all day long for a living helps with climbing rocks.

Cool piece of Schist, Creag Dubh

Nice exposure on King Bee, VS, Creag Dubh

After a long stint of working hard on the project and training every day, the time came for a break. After the final session I could feel every muscle hurting. Two days in Glasgow really helped restore energy levels. I ate chips and Irn Bru for tea, slept a lot and soaked up sunshine. A proper Glaswegian break.

But coming home in 23 degree sunshine meant that resuming battle was not really on the cards, so another night of relaxing was in order. Two barbecues, some beers and some leisurely days jumping about the crags with Peter helped restore a sense of life outside of the project tunnel.

I think it was just what was needed.

Mountain Equipment Pro-Team T-shirts back in stock

I know, I know, we only got a short batch last time and ran out pretty much as soon as we got them. As promised, a big box of them dropped into the MacLeod house this morning. The reassuring ‘thunk’ nearly woke Freida! They’ve only been live on the site a few hours and already the box is getting lighter. So get them in… 

They are right here.

New horizons

Anna enjoying Sky Pilot bouldering

Spooky forest

One of hundreds - no joke

Straight out of Switzerland

Cave of granite crimps - yesterday’s prize

Progress on my project has been up and down. I got past the main crux another three times and felt like it was right there, only to fail convincingly on the next move every time. It’s well hard. And sadly, now it’s too hot. Today it was 19 degrees and it felt like I was climbing it with a rucksack on. And that’s despite feeling super fit from daily projecting or running. I’ve not had a rest day in three weeks though, so we’ll see if a day off will fill the tank again. 

To adjust on the sloper or not, that is the question… On the rope it feels slightly easier but uses a lot of energy that I maybe don’t have on the redpoint. But then I keep failing without the adjustment. A dilemma to ponder on the next run.

My runs have been great. On the past two, I’ve found more unclimbed crags and boulders than I could climb in a lifetime. Just endless new lines to do. It’s amazing! All of them are within 30 miles of my house. Only problem is that a good chunk of that is walking in some of the most remote glens in the highlands. Hence they have remained undeveloped by climbers. Could do with a bike/boat/helicopter. 

I could go on about caves full of flakes and crimps, 50m high overhanging crags lining the glen, perfect gneiss, hard granite, lovely views… Hopefully I can get to climb some of them soon and I’ll show them off.

Maybe yesterday’s run was a little overcooked. I had a time limit to be back home for engagements with the girls. My quest for the granite boulders took me 5 minutes over my turn-back time and as I turned to run the 6 miles back the savage headwind hit me. I nearly face planted on rubber legs as I got back to the car.