Arisaig - to the last hard move

Get the left hand squeezed a few mm to the left, and the move works! Photo: Chris Prescott/Dark Sky Media

Two days on my project in the cave this week, in the company of Chris Prescott, Natalie Berry and Kevin Woods. On the first day it was still a bit warm and I was feeling pathetic on the climb. I was full of thoughts and chat about sacking it for the season. Maybe it has to be mid-winter for this project?

An hour later, a couple of blasts of wind came soon before my second redpoint of the day, and next thing I got three moves further. Maybe I should not be so hasty to call it. After a rest day we were back, with a cold front having passed over. Yet the day started off very badly and still I struggled.

There are a couple of themes I have noticed in the cave. I always seem to do better on this project late in the session, when my skin is getting thin. I’m not certain why. It may be something to do with the smooth rock. It gets a bit ‘glassy’ if skin is too thick. Also, I’m noticing I consistently have good attempts just before dusk, when of course the temperature is dropping. It could be both factors working together.

I went back to my sequence and wrestled with one adjustment move for over an hour. Finally I sussed what I was doing wrong - getting a weird undercut-wrap hold a finger width too far right. I still wasn’t feeling like there was really much point in a redpoint. But I rested and prepped anyway. And began. The first part to the kneebar was not bad (but not as error-free as I’ve done it). I felt quite rested on the knee bar. As much as you can be while hanging upside down trying to breath as lightly as you can without sliding out and landing on yer heid. 

But despite a fluffed move on the opening moves of 4th Wave I found myself beyond my highpoint and feeling like I still had some power. So I used it! I did not intend to do so, but spontaneously had a power-scream match with the crux that Adam Ondra would be proud of. I momentarily had that weird floaty feeling where it just seemed to be happening by itself. I threw for the final hard move, held it, cut loose, held on but then started to drop. If I’d held on long enough to get my feet back on, I’d very likely have done it. But I didn’t. I cannot decide if in that split second I truly held on to the last, or if I might have decided a few milliseconds too early that I was off. It doesn’t matter much now anyway, except that I know what I need to do if I get back to that move again.

Better keep trying now!

Slapped

highpoint March 3rd from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.

The video above is my best effort so far on the project, from a couple of sessions ago when conditions were quite good.

Yesterday, I went to the project in Arisaig and was slapped. Here are my list of excuses (feel free to skip directly to the following paragraph):

Still tired from a new mixed route 48 hours before. Humid conditions. Skin too thick. Not enough sleep. New boots I hadn’t tried before or broken in. Too weak. Too heavy. Too many days away from the training board.

Still, I learned a lot, so the time was not wasted. I have been here before on many projects. None as hard as this, but the stages are often similar. Often, at least at my age, the lessons are not really new things you didn’t know, but crucial reminders of things that are easy to forget.

The first thing reminder was how important the small details are. My ankle must have been a tiny bit stiff from winter climbing a couple of days before. Who knows how little, but it can’t have been as much as a 5 degree loss of dorsiflexion. Not even enough to notice during walking or any moves apart from one. Normally it is a squeeze for me to fit my knee into the kneebar rest before 4th Wave. Today I just couldn’t get the knee in at all. What is normally a straightforward move just didn’t happen. So, redpoints were out. Given the above list of excuses, I realised pretty quickly that it would be a session of reflection on the details of the moves, and reflection on the bigger picture of my progress in general.

On days such as this of utter failure, at least by the measure of how many moves are linked, you see clearly the overwhelming probability that you will never be able to climb this project. It is too hard for you. Something has to be. It would be a bit ridiculous to have chronically underestimated my climbing abilities for over 20 years! At some point, you won’t be able to do something.

This holds no sense of disappointment or stress for me - it’s just inevitable. But the value it does hold is that it sharpens the mind to search for the next level of intervention. What is the next move in the game?

Some moves have trade-offs. Do I leave the project for a week or two and do more training, or keep going on it? Not 100% sure. I am almost certainly getting weaker without training on the board. Yet despite knowing it quite well now, I could still flow through the opening section more efficiently. And that comes from lots of time on it.

I have some equipment issues to sort out. Tomorrow I try out a different kneepad, the original homemade one I made for Echo Wall. It might help a little with sliding the knee in. I know that I need to work more on my core strength for the two minutes of stress hanging upside down off those kneebars. At the moment, it’s a straight trade off between sliding out of the kneebar, and breathing. I need to be able to do both.

Some other things:

- I need a more solid warm up routine for my sessions there. I think I might try ‘add-on’ from the start of the project.

- I’m more and more aware of the nuance of conditions in there. I need to take more advantage of good weather days. The cave has okay conditions most of the time, which is fine for working moves. At this stage, I need good conditions now. 

- I need more rest, better rest. Less work.

- I have some work days coming up. I need to combine them with some intense circuit training.

Most of the above is all small but important details. What of big things. Well, most of these I have sorted. But I still have a big hand to play regarding the king of all variables for me; strength: weight ratio. I will play it soon.

Cloudjumper VIII,9 on the Ben

A couple of teetery moves on the second pitch of Cloudjumper VIII,9 on Ben Nevis

Towards the end of February, Scotland kicks off with good conditions for just about everything at the same time. It’s important to be organised to capitalise on it. I have not been this year. My efforts in the Arisaig Cave have been paying off with excellent progress on my project there. I have now got to the start of the crux section and got good overlapping halves, after several hard training sessions and hard sessions on the project. So the climbing part has been going great.

The trouble is that sessions on it do leave me feeling pretty wasted, with a lot of recovery to do. I realise that these sessions necessitate extra sleep to recover from them properly. I go home, eat dinner, it’s 9 or 10pm and I still have a lot of work to do. I try to work until 11pm, but I never get enough done and it runs to midnight or sometimes after. This is okay if you can catch up the next morning (I am a night owl and this pattern suits me well), but it’s not always possible. Later last week I had a bit of a sleep deprivation meltdown the night before going onto the Ben to try a new route. Every muscle in my body ached from the previous five days of bouldering at my limit. I was worried I would not be ready for the effort of trying a hard new route.

But a frantic run around trying to get everything in order was enough to see me walking up the Ben on Sunday morning with Helen, feeling okay. I did welcome a stop for tea in the hut though. We had been thinking of some objectives in Coire na Ciste, but the Ben was looking very spring-like, with the steeper cliffs looking black. So we were forced to explore the upper reaches of Observatory Gully, near my own route Echo Wall.

Our new routes on this part of Tower Ridge. The Great Chimney can be seen on the right side of the shot. Echo Wall is out of sight to the left.

Myself and Helen have done a string of new routes here, partly because it’s a great area and partly because it’s often white when just about everything else isn’t. Right of Echo Wall, Helen and I added an VIII,9 and an IX,9 already, but I was also interested in the complex walls to the left. There was clearly something good to be done, but hard to see exactly where with a myriad of overhangs and grooves and no obvious cracks to lead you.

Helen on the easier groove above the crux overhang,

After one false start, I headed up left along a technical ramp. I passed a curious in-situ peg with a krab on it, and further up came across another, and a wire, both with krabs on them. A previous highpoint from someone else? I spotted another in-situ piece in the next groove to the left, but I wanted to tackle the cracked overhang directly above my head. As usual with winter, my first couple of forays made me think it was not going to go. I could see why the climber before me had opted to go left again. But soon I figured out some hooks to get to the lip of the overhang. Heart in mouth, I reached over, hoping for something good. My pick found a solid hook, but as I weighted it, a block moved. I hung down on the tool below and wondered what to do. 

Which way now? 

It was either bail, or pull the block off and instantly whack it to the side before in hit me square in the face. This worked perfectly (it had to!) and I struggled over and up to a great ledge with options to go left or right. Right looked more possible, and I was tired, so after Helen joined me, I set off on what turned out to be a few teetery moves before gaining the final pitch of our previous route Red Dragon. I topped out on Tower Ridge just in time to catch the sunset and reflect on another great new line on a part of the Ben I am getting to know quite well. We later found out that the route had two previous attempts from the same team, skirting the crux overhang on the left but retreating from higher up. 

On my belay sessions, I resolved to return here in summer as well as winter and climb more of the great things here that wait to be done.

Nice moment to top out.

Boulder Scotland new edition in the shop

We have delivery of our stock of the new Scottish Bouldering guide by John Watson. It’s fantastic to see John put so much effort into updating this excellent and much needed guide. It’s an important contribution to Scottish climbing. Just flicking through the new expanded book, it reminds me not only of the infinite amazing boulder littered all over our country, but also of the great many memories I have of developing many of the areas myself over the past two decades. I just had, and continue to have, so much fun. From lurking at Dumby - its polish refining my technique, to hitching every day to Glen Croe for a whole summer, to more recent perfect days out in amongst the grand highland scenery of the Skeleton Boulders in Glen Nevis.

If you live in the UK, and especially in Scotland, and you boulder, please don’t let your life go past without visiting many of the spots in this guide. Don’t wait for years to discover just how good the Torridonian sandstone is, or drive up the A9 without ducking in to the Ruthven Boulder. I don't really need to say this - if you just look through the guide, you'll see straight away the depth of bouldering that has been developed across every corner of Scotland in the past decade or two.

Even better, let this guide encourage you to pull out a map on your rest day and go for a wander down some random glen or headland and look for new boulders. They are out there. And when you find them, it will be worth it. Just make sure you tell us about them!

The guide, 336 pages, full colour diagrams and photos, is in our shop here. You can also see that we have the new training guide Gimme Kraft AIR in stock too, as well as our daily ship-outs of Make or Break and 9 out of 10 climbers...

Here are a few videos of some recent days out, just to remind you of a wee snapshot of the boulders out there.

Drag Race 8A Rannoch Moor from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.
The Anatomist, Torridon from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.
Gimme That Swing 8B, Glen Nevis from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.
Good Drying, 8A+, Arisaig Cave from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.

Urban Uprising ambassador

Dave MacLeod speaks to URBAN UPRISING from UrbanUprising on Vimeo.

I’m delighted to say I am now an ambassador for the charity Urban Uprising, which takes children from deprived backgrounds climbing. Sounds simple, but it can transform people’s lives, as it did mine. It shows them that someone believes they are capable, it shows them a new world of the outdoors and adventures. Climbing and the outdoors also offers some respite from the stress these young people have to face. I think that being given a window into another world like this, a sense that good experiences are possible, is critical for these people. So I’m right behind it, and encourage you to be as well.

I'm joining other great climbers on their team such as Robbie Phillips, James Pearson, Caroline Ciavaldini, Niall McNair and Natalie Berry. I hope that through any influence I have, I can help raise some awareness and ultimately, raise funds to make the Uprising projects happen. If you are able to donate something directly, do it! It’s easy (instructions here). Another cool way of helping is to buy one of their T-shirts. One T-shirt gets one child climbing for the day. That is pretty cool.

Knuckleduster on the Ben

Dave Almond approaching the bulge on pitch 2 of Knuckleduster Direct (the original version goes right, the direct goes left to continue up the general corner feature.)

Yesterday was a fun day climbing Knuckleduster Direct VIII,8 on the Ben with Helen Rennard and Dave Almond. It was also my first day leading trad since breaking my leg in the autumn. I was very slow placing the gear, and placed a lot. But otherwise fine. It was certainly a good idea to have a gentle break back in to trad leading again. The route was first climbed by Greg Boswell and Guy Robertson in 2012. All four pitches were really good fun, with mostly positive hooks, especially where you really need it. In fact, I got my tools stuck in the crack twice on pitch one!

The highlight of the day was the lovely moonlight as we abseiled back down. The Ben is a little worrying right now, with a lot of loose blocks which are not keyed-in as they normally would be since it’s been both very dry and snowless this winter so far. It still feels like November up there.

Helen seconding pitch 1

Fort William Mountain Festival time is coming again

FWMF Showreel 2017 from Fort William Mountain Festival on Vimeo.

The Fort William Mountain Festival is always a highlight of the year for me. In fact, aside from climbing trips themselves, it’s the most important mountain-related date in my diary. It’s always an inspiring gathering of all the like-minded outdoor folk of the UK. We socialise, watch films, coach climbing and see some lectures that you just get at the many mountain festivals around the world (I’ve been to most of them, many times). 

Anyway, I would say that. The festival weekend itself also marks the end of the busiest work period in my year. Each year I edit the festival showreel, the mountain culture award films and also my own films for the festival. This year has been maybe my busiest. I’ve just finished seven pieces of film and I’m exhausted. As the last one uploads to dropbox, I was straight back on my board and felt much better, and tomorrow morning I’ll be heading off into the fresh snow that finally arrived on the hills today. Great!

Above is the festival showreel. Putting it together always gets me psyched not only for the festival, but for the start of the climbing season proper in Scotland. Here we go!

Hopefully see you folks from all over the UK and Europe at the festival in a couple of weeks. I'm running coaching masterclasses all weekend during the days at my wall (there was a cancellation on one booking yesterday - ring Claire on 07813060376 if you would like to fill it!). We also have a stall at the festival nights as always, selling books and films, so come and say hello.

Time to focus

Good Drying, 8A+, Arisaig Cave from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo.

As ever I’ve found recovering from being broken and stuck on crutches a long road without many shortcuts. I’d definitely lost sight of light at the end of the tunnel for a while. But since Christmas, things have begun to look up quite a bit.

My gait has normalised, I have much less pain, I feel a bit more agility coming back. But most importantly, I completed another phase of my long running diet experiments, a phase which definitely didn’t work. It had caused me to put on quite a bit of fat. After the experiment I switched back and even after one week started to get leaner again, and feel like I can climb!

I’d put a bit of effort into training for winter climbing. But winter does not seem to be coming this year. So on with the boulder projects. Readers of this blog will know that last winter I did a straight-up 8B in the Arisaig Cave called 4th Wave. Its an absolutely brilliant piece of climbing, and so it was a shame the journey was over when I completed it. But the obvious thing in my mind ever since I fist visited the cave was to do the big link from the cave entrance and finish up 4th Wave. I felt pretty sure this was Font 8C territory and a great project to work on (skin friendly, nearly always dry, perfect in the middle of winter and in condition nearly 6 months of the year).

But it did seem rather too hard. So I was a bit scared of trying it. However, over the past week I have made a great start. Re-working all of the 50-odd moves. The first half, to a kneebar rest before 4th Wave is around 8A. There is another straight-up 7C that starts from the kneebar, so I figured I could finish up this also as a kind of 8A+ ‘warm-up’. It would also serve as a good link to do laps on when I was too tired to have more redpoints on the proper finish.

Yesterday, I climbed the 8A+ link, on my first redpoint attempt. My foot also slipped off mid-crux on the exit problem, and I still managed to stay on and finish it. Quite a good sign. 

It makes total sense at this point for me to get serious on this project now. I have three months of good conditions ahead, a great start already done, and I’m really motivated to work on it. I still don’t think it will go. But that is the point of a hard project!

There are several stages for the prep. First is just to repeat 4th Wave, and work up to being able to do it a few times in a session. Second is to drop 3/4kgs back to my fighting weight. Third is to go beyond just knowing the moves of the first half, to being able to climb them with much greater speed and efficiency - putting the hours in, in other words. Lastly, I need to work a bit on my specific body strength to be able to hold the strenuous kneebar rest position for twice as long as I currently can. 

The great thing about climbing in the cave is how powerful the climbing is, you walk back to the car with every muscle in your upper body ‘singing’ with fatigue. And if you need a break, you just watch the otters and sea eagles dotting about the bay for a moment.

 View from my house this morning (Jan 21st) of Aonach Mor. Basically no winter yet.

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.

Urban Uprising

Myself and my friend Niall McNair who also spoke at the Urban Uprising event at TCA Glasgow the other week

A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk at a big boulder comp/party event at TCA Glasgow organised by the charity Urban Uprising. Various talks I’ve done in the past have raised money for Climbers Against Cancer, various mountain rescue teams and others, but I mention this one specifically, just because I really like what they do and want to encourage you to support it.

Urban Uprising take deprived or otherwise at risk kids climbing. Usually it’s the first time they’ve had an experience of an adventurous sport like climbing. In my view, this is a pretty special thing to do. I’m biased of course, because one experience I happened to have as a kid (randomly going out on my bike and finding mountains) totally changed my life. I have no doubt at all that this one experience not only set me on a path to make far more of myself than I otherwise would have, but it also allowed me to gain expertise I could then use to help others.

I was lucky enough to have a bike, and the freedom to choose to go out on it and have this life changing experience without any direct influence from anyone at that moment. So many others have neither the freedom or the resources. One of the great problems with helping young people to help themselves is that no-one ever values them. So why would they value themselves? They are seen by so many others in society as a problem. Actually they are an opportunity. When someone takes time to show them something good, it will have a positive effect on almost all. For a subset, it will change everything. That is worth supporting.

If you want to support them, head to their website, buy a cool T-shirt. Or just donate.