The Great Climb success

We pulled off The Great Climb.

All 55 of us were just a little ecstatic last night and we partied in Glen Scaladale until we dropped. Every one of the usual suspects on the team of producers, outside broadcast production team, climbers, riggers, runners, presenters, medics, environmental consultants and many more were chosen for this project because they absolutely were THE person to rely on to come up with the goods when everything had to happen.

If you watched the program, you saw some of the problems we dealt with as climbers to get to the top - a painful ankle and wet rock. But you won’t have seen all the equally hard work, good judgement calls and quick thinking that made it all happen behind the camera. I’ve got to admit I felt a bit emotional when we got to the top. It was just so great that everyones hard graft, gambles and input paid off in style.

We’re over the moon that so many of you on here, Twitter (#thegreatclimb) and my Facebook said you enjoyed it. First up, some questions answered:

I think there was a blip for a while, but it’s available for download on iplayer until Sept 4th, right here. It’ll also be on DVD fairly shortly. And when it does, you’ll find it on my shop as soon as it’s out. The triple 5 trip (myself and Tim, 5 new routes, 5 islands, in 5 days) which would would have seen in case of disaster on the live day, will be coming to the BBC TV screens shortly and also DVD. I’ll keep you posted on this.

Tim climbed amazingly yesterday. He’s an amazing athlete in every way. Not only did he cruise pitch 1 and kept it together when things got ‘a bit spicy’ on pitch 3, but his lead of the soaking wet, slimy overhanging wall at the end was an exemplary display of climbing skill and mental composure.

For me it was a tough day. By the sounds of it, it showed on camera too. I took as much analgesic as I could, but my right foot hurt on nearly every move. Adrenaline provided 100% pain relief that lasted through the crucial pitch 2. But after that I was using most or all of my ‘reserve’ to get me through it. It seemed pretty unlikely we’d get to the top without falling off, succumbing to ankle pain, swearing on live TV or generally failing for some other reason. But with 30 seconds to go after 5.5 hours live, I finished seconding the final pitch and the whoops rang back and forth across Glen Uladail.

Getting the chance to be involved in a production like this, no matter what role you play in it, is an unmissable experience. You learn so much, from so many different people about how to up your game. So when it comes around to doing your own bit, you somehow magically end up making a 110% effort yourself. 

What do you do when you can’t climb?

Find another way.

Well, I’m partially on my way to full able bodied status again after two days resting up, so I can walk with some pain and stand on footholds no problem so long as the twist doesn’t stretch my stitches too much. And that’s on a half dose of analgesic. Promising.

Today I thought it was a good time to start letting my ankle know it’s going to have a long day on Saturday, as well as get some training in to tick over instead of rapid fitness loss sitting on my bum.

I did this traverse about 7 times until a hold broke and I got really quite soaking in the resultant bog-splat. I went back for another 5 reps later this evening, after a cup of tea.

Even though my ankle was throbbing after this, it’s great progress. Yesterday morning when I got out of bed it was too painful to weight it even for a second.

PS: I wrote the above last night, better again this morning. Check out what the Sun have to say about our live climb!

Relief?

It’s day 3 of sitting with my foot propped up, ice pack and pill taking regime. On one hand, it’s quite nice to detach myself from the craziness going on around me as the live outside broadcast machine steps up a gear each day. But it’s kind of weird to say the least when for weeks it’s just been me hanging about alone on the Sron, and now I’m the only one left behind!

Excellent to see the whole team of about 55 people all in one room last night. The size of the production really starts to dawn! Whether it works out on the day might, among other things of course, come down to how much I can get my swollen, hurting ankle to calm down in the next 48 hours. Better get another ice pack.

Afterwards, I’m off to find some foot-off bouldering...

Minor surgery

On Monday, while descending the lines after a session on the Sron, a breeze block sized flake at the belay 10 feet above me was levered off by an unusual direction of pull. It dropped straight onto my bare ankle, splitting it open in a 3cm gash down to the bone. 

After making the most of the rare opportunity to inspect my own skeleton, I abseiled down and started to hurt. 5 stitches later, I’m in less than perfect shape for climbing, or indeed anything right now.

Iain Peter wraps me up for the long walk out to the medical centre.

Less than ideal. Nevertheless, it’s just a flesh wound as they say. A few stitches in one’s ankle shouldn’t bother one’s ability to climb a five pitch E8 on live telly, should it? So I’m doing nothing new but storing up energy (and ibuprofens) for the big day on Saturday.

Harris sunshine

Improving conditions here on Harris. Waterfalls on the cliff are drying out a bit, and a bit of sunshine always lifts the spirits. However, there are no shortage of problems to deal with, for every part of the team. 

Old reel of film we found at the foot of the cliff. Presumably belonging to Alun Hughes when he filmed his Strone Ulladale film in 1989 which is now on the 80’s DVD.

Sheep with it’s heid stuck in a gate, near Rhenigidale. I helped it out.

Great climb trailer

Trailer for The Great Climb us up on the BBC site here. Mostly shots of me falling off on the Triple 5 film (I fell off a lot on that trip). Thing have been kicking off here at Sron Ulladale, more on that later. Also, here is an interview by Peter Ross in last weekend's Scotland on Sunday related to the Great Climb.

The Great Climb team get going

Brian Hall and the team thrash out the rigging logistics

I’m just sitting in the Scaladale Centre on Harris listening to Brian Hall briefing the rigging team on the full horror of their task for the week ahead; rigging a km of rope on grossly overhanging ground on the Sron. They are going to have a mega adventure this week! Today though, is a tea drinking day. Nothing happens on Harris on a Sunday!

The forecast, as ever, is diabolical. Yesterday, I was on the line myself. The upper two pitches had waterfalls coming down them and Brian and Rory were almost blown off their feet in the unseasonal storm force wind on the top of the wall. A helicopter is due to take all the outside broadcast equipment into the broadcast base camp. But the chances of the chopper being able to fly in the next two days is about big fat 0%. So it’ll all need to be carried instead. Ouch!

The plumb line of the rope with haul bag tied to the end illustrate the angle of the route

Looking out from the foot of our proposed new route. The bag is hanging at least 80 feet out from the base!

The team have no option but to rig tomorrow even though they’ll have to do it in a waterfall. All the ropes have to be in place by Wednesday for the 5 climbing cameramen to get on the ropes and start sussing their shots for Saturday.

No doubt there will be some sore legs and stressed heads by tomorrow night. 

See you on the box, next week

In a couple of hours, I’m leaving for Sron Uladail once more to begin the final prep leading up to our live climb. I haven’t been to bed yet, and that is looking a more distant possibility by the minute - too much work to try and finish before I go! I can’t do it all. So it’ll be a sleepy shift on the cliff tomorrow. I do hope the weather gods will provide us with a friendly day and myself and Tim can provide you with an entertaining adventure to watch on Saturday 28th.

I have an update on the broadcast times, they are:

Saturday 28th August:

BBC2 Scotland and Sky channel 990 1.30pm-7pm

BBC HD channel 5pm-7pm

Streamed live on the BBC website

Available for viewing on BBC iplayer

Enjoy!

I wouldn’t say my preparation has gone perfectly, the wettest July in Scotland for a decade hasn’t helped get the hours in on rock in recent weeks. But I did have an amazing session on my climbing board last night, managing nearly all my hardest links and completing a long term project with ease. It’s nothing new that a mixed bag of training ends up producing great results. The variety might not be in the schedule, but is often better than a synthetic training plan. I have been bitten by a staggering amount of midges in recent weeks, which could be good training also, perhaps?

Trying to keep up work on my injuries book and other work has been a right balancing act as well. To be honest, I think I need a week of hardcore battling with The Big Stone on Harris to stop me from going quite mad!

See y’all on the 28th to watch the fight with the roofs of Sron.

A load of new shop products added

We’ve just added several new products to the shop. Most of them are to complete my selection of the best climbing performance skills books you can get hold of anywhere, but with one interesting and slightly different new title just out: Racing weight.

‘Racing Weight: How to get lean for peak performance’ is the first book on the market covering weight optimisation for athletes, and hence is of great interest to climbers! It's actually aimed primarily at triathletes and other endurance athletes, but many of the nutritional concepts and tactics are directly applicable to climbing.

It was just published last December and summarises the latest research in sports nutritional science relevant to weight dependent sports. However, although it refers directly to the science underpinning the advice, Matt Fitzgerald's experience as a serial author and magazine columnist in several running and triathlon magazines has helped him present the advice in an accessible format. Fascinating reading for any climber who needs to pay attention to weight optimisation (i.e. all of us!). I read it in a sitting - a more detailed review on the OCC blog coming sometime soon(ish).

Winter Skills and Rock climbing skills are the two definitive technical reference books for all the fundamental skills for moving safely and effectively on walls, crags and mountains. They were published a few years ago by the Mountain Leader Training Board UK and are pretty much essential reading for anyone who plans on a life of moving above big drops or under potential avalanches etc…

In the icy-mixed department, I’ve added two of the most worshipped texts in this area - Will Gadd’s book Ice and Mixed Climbing and Mark Twight’s Extreme Alpinism. I say worshipped because so many budding winter warriors have not just learned the raw skills to hone their winter hardman credentials, but both have sealed the inspiration of many into the bargain.

In the performance rock department I’ve added Adrian Berry and Steve McClure’s Sport Climbing Plus which is a nice accessible walk through all the fundamentals of sport climbing. You may find yourself walking up the odd 8a afterwards?

We also have the hard-to-get Mountain Equipment black beanies back in stock. Get em in before someone else buys them all before winter…

In case you're wondering how your orders arrive at your door so soon after ordering despite me being off filming on Harris, it's because Claire dispatches orders each day, apart from Sunday, when the post office is shut. More of you have been using the Euro and US Dollar versions of my shop recently - Thanks, it’s made it worth the effort of constructing it (I’m a much better climber than a coder!). You'll find all of these in the shop here.

Stressed about stress

Being stressed about stress is a modern privilege, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention. I was just looking at an interesting article on Wired about stress and where the research is at right now. The idea in the article about vaccinating against it sometime in the future will certainly raise eyebrows for lots of reasons, but aside from that it’s an interesting toe dip in a field that’s pertinent for just about who wants to live and live long (or indeed for those who don’t!).

Interesting to note that the field has moved on from seeing stress as directly causative of many health problems and more as an agent that amplifies their effects. The article is worth reading for the interesting points about linking social conditions to your sensitivity to stress. But I just wanted to highlight the section on the research supported stress reducers that concur quite well with the data coming from the field (see Richard Layard’s great book for a similar discussion, but focused on happiness).

The more general or background stress buffers like having a good social network, getting good quality sleep and not piling on physiological stress with an alcohol habit (thought it was a stress reducer? - it aint!) seem fairly straightforward. But some of the others are less so. The ability to detach from frustration and anger is an important stress reducer, as is confronting particular aspects of your tasks that cause fear.

This illuminates the rather complex nature of some of the stress influencing variables. So called ‘high-powered’ executives with full-on jobs complain of a lot of stress from their occupations, but only sometimes show the physiological evidence of it. The feeling of having some control over your task outcomes seems to be one of the crucial elements here. The feeling of the solutions being out of your hands, and worst of all, in someone else's, is one of the biggest stressors. It’s a state of mind that seems to come from our backgrounds, and sadly is very hard to shake.

As always I look with an interested eye for applications in sport psychology and behavioural aspects that determine sport success or progress. My own failures in climbing are largely down to a flawed ability to let go of things and also to get some sleep. The sleep thing is fairly simple, a combination of a tendency to feel awake and motivated when my body should be winding down (like now, writing at 2am) and too many interests and a poor ability to sacrifice some for the benefit of others. 

While I’m good at detaching from anger and frustration when I sense a lost cause, I’m terrible at it when I have a hunch that it’s not. There are lots of paradoxes here. Both attributes are absolutely my key strengths in my various interests. They get things done where it would be easy to run out of steam. This was what the film E11 was about. But in the longer term they are also my key weaknesses and caps to building ability in something such as climbing to a really high level.

While these problems have caused me some quite serious issues at times, on the whole I’m talking the more gentle depressive effects of avoidable stressors on maximising response to training, psychological or physical. Just the very fact that you are able to sit at a computer reading these words, on this blog which is often focused on leisure pastimes shows that a lot of us are privileged enough to be concerning ourselves with maximising the fulfillment in life, as opposed to just surviving. In this game we often have a lot of the basics in place. The difference in how far we get in our climbing or whatever endeavor is likely to come down to the cumulative effect over years of small errors made by habit. Another complicating factor is that eustress and distress can exist fairly close together - just being a difference of amplitude on the same axis. Do something a little bit too much or to little and the benefit transforms into a menace.

Trying to raise your sporting level above amateur into competent or above is concerned with energetically teasing out these errors which are so hard to stand back and see. Your friends will often know what they are, but they’d never tell you. They are your friends after all. And even if you asked them to hit you with it straight they might give you an insight. But to break habits you need reminding, over and over.

A lot of our society is geared up to get us in the habit of following behaviours of surprising diversity that end up stressing us. This area is the battle ground for sports psychology over the coming years.