The Alternative

The arrival of winter sends me out in search of primo bouldering conditions.  I did one winter route last week, enough to remind me that I don't really like mixed climbing.  Too much grovelling, shuffling and digging and not enough actual climbing.  No doubt if I climbed harder the balance of interesting movement would start to tip in my favour, but I'm not very good, and for now not that fussed.

Here's a few from the last two weekends of flaskhugging-toefreezing-fingerrasping rock desperation:

Highball Arete at Cummingston, normally a good bet when it's cold and snowy inland.

Rich and Paula's new arrival, Bronwen the crag spaniel.  Lock up your Smartwool socks!

What it's all about: 

Cold, blue sky days in the North West.  Stac Pollaidh shimmers above Reiff in the Woods.

Rich in classic TP&QC pose at Reiff in the Woods

Necessity is the mother of invention: Rich cleans snow from the top of Gale Force at Laggan 2

Esoterica!

While transferring files from my old laptop to my new one I stumbled across a load of forgotten video files. They were all of boulder problems that I've done in the random and obscure places I've found myself across Scotland over the last few years. I wasn't sure what to do with them, but in the end decided to edit them together into the wee film linked below. I think it's a nice testament to the amount of untapped potential there is out there and also a display of how desperate I must have sometimes been!

For some reason embedding from Vimeo isn't working, so the link is here.

Boom

A 2 goes on anything, anything goes on a 2. You can only play lower than the card underneath a 7. 8 is transparent. 9: miss a go. 10 burns the pack. First to lose all their cards wins. No finish on a power card. Aces high.

When you add it all up, you spend more time on climbing trips resting and travelling than you do at the crag, especially on a budget Euro sport climbing holiday. You've got to find ways to pass the time: good books, nice food, a pack of cards. The game du jour at Jordy's refugio in Margalef was the schoolboys classic; Shithead. The evenings and rest days just flew by.

I tagged onto the last week of a three week Spanish sport trip of a Scottish-Welsh team who'd started in Margalef, moved north to Terradets and then returned to Margalef when I turned up. I knew the Scottish contingent - the Fyffe, Fat Tony and Young Gun Murdo - and vaguely knew Guy from his days at the Ice Factor, but Baby Dave, the John Orr Boom Express and Youngest Gun Callum were all Welsh-based and new to me. One of the great things about being a climber is you instantly have things in common with other climbers, so I had a great week getting to know them, exploring the crags and, naturally, playing endless amounts of Shithead. It was on my last night that I realised that I was the only one of us that hadn't onsighted E6 or Scottish VIII, or both. Punter.

Who killed the dog?

The boys pick up another random dog

As I've probably complained about recently, I've not really had a chance to climb much in the last couple of months, so I was pretty psyched to get out there, clock up a few routes with low expectations and see how things went. The weather generally played ball, with a few showers to begin with but enough dry rock to get routes done, then a mega-wet day to rest, then three days of cloudless skies to burnout, then home-time. I was pretty pleased with the final score - daily 6c onsights, a 7a onsight (or 2, depending on which guide you look in) and taking the lob with my hands above the chain on a 7a flash (or 7a+, depending which guide you look at)

Dave redpointing 7c+ at The Hermitage.

It's a great place, climbing on funky pocket-and-pebble conglomerate limestone, with tonnes of different crags, so many routes of differing styles, and even more crags that are still untouched. I'm already excited about the return.

My Autumn

The Autumn seems to be passing in a blur.  It's only a matter of time before the northerly wind brings the snow to the hills, but it seems like only yesterday I was lapping up the summer sunshine.

I guess I have been pretty busy; Sarah starting a Masters in Edinburgh, my new job, organising and attending Steve's Stag, then his wedding to Fran, the OMM and all the training that requires, then trying to climb on any free time left over.  No wonder it's gone so fast.

                            Sam Loveday enjoying Stag Do 'activities'

Athletes at work: Duncan and Konrad's interpretative dance workshop at 0300 at the wedding.

The OMM is my annual concession to being a runner - an autumn crusade to get fit and fast.  As in the last 8 years, from late August to the end of October I increase my weekly running mileage and head out for some long runs in the hills.  Fortunately my last few jobs have kept me in reasonable hill fitness, so I've got a good base to build on.  The highlights of this year's training runs included a round of the Drumochter munros, a link-up of 5 of the Alder/Ardverikie munros and the Pentland Skyline (I couldn't do the race so ran the course on the Friday before).  Duncan, who I've been running the OMM with for the last 6 years, is now a proper runner, he's in a club, competes regularly, and has even been crowned the South of England Senior Fell Running Champion, so I was acutely aware of my relative lack of running.

The race was this weekend just gone, based near Comrie in Perthshire and based round the munro Ben Chonzie and it's surrounding classic OMM wasteland of bogs, steep glens, deep heather, peat hags, hills, mires, fens, swamps and flushes.  Running in Elite again, we were chuffed to see the straight line course was only 38km on Saturday and 29km on Sunday (relative to last year's 51km and 36km), however hilly terrain and rough ground meant we were out for almost as long.  Saturday's weather was also suitably OMMish - low cloud, heavy rain and a strong wind. Lovely.

In the end we were really pleased to finish in 6th, our highest ever place and behind a load of beasts (i.e. proper runners that win big races and are known names in the circuit).  It never fails to amaze me how we do it, but somehow we do.  Well done Duncan!

     For Athlete's like Duncan Steen, re-hydration is key.  Tequila is optional.

As for climbing, well that's been on the back burner for the last few months, but I have spent a fair bit of time hanging from my rock rings at home, as well as a few visits to the Betts training dungeon.  I did add a new problem to Laggan 1, and had some fun trips to Moy, ticking some of the raft of new routes.  A quick redpoint of the new F7a One Man Went to Moy reminded me that things aren't too bad, and a day lobbing off Primo (F7b+) at Am Fasgadh reaped some rewards with new sections linked and crucial beta found.  I'm off out to Catalunya with a bunch of wads from Scotland and Wales in a few weeks, so quite keen to get fit.

I'm never satisfied....

Unsung Heroes: The Wellie Boot's Story

Most of the year we live in the car boot, sandwiched between an ever-changing array of kit from Gaz's life.  Most of the time we're untouched, forgotten, unloved.  Forsaken for smaller, for smarter, for more expensive.  You'll never read about us in magazines, or online, or in gear reviews, and you'll never see us for sale alongside swanky specialist gear.  But the truth is, we're one of the most important bits of kit that Gaz and many of his friends own.   Without us they'd be wet, cold, miserable, and probably wouldn't bother.  With the changing of the seasons, our time approaches.

Take today, the 16th of September.  There's the slightest chill in the air, and a grey sky, and the merest hint of the leaves turning.  Summer has passed, and with it the last of the swallows and house martins.  Autumn lies ahead, running season for Gaz, and bouldering.  And that's when we come out and play our part.

We've been untouched in the car boot for months, sliding from side to side round bends and roundabouts, travelling the length of the country and never once being allowed out.   But today was different.  After Inverness the road felt familiar, the twists and turns - Contin, Garve, Achnasheen, Kinlochewe.  After that the steady stop-start of passing places on the way down Glen Torridon and finally the crunch of gravel under the tyres as we halted in the regular parking spot.  And then the boot opened and there was the view.  The view!  Mountains and rock and water and sky.  Familiar, but always different.

As Gaz puts us on he gathers up the usual bouldering paraphernalia - pads and shoes, flasks and brushes, tape and towels, and another unsung hero, the tarpaulin.

Today is no different from the usual Torridon bouldering session, it's just special because it's the first of the new season and Gaz is impatient to get  back on the sandstone.  Splishy-splashing through the burn and the bog to the tumble-down rock jumble and the old friends and enemies that lie hidden there.  So many stories, successes, failures, ongoing sieges.  The scene of torments and of frustrations.  But most excitingly, the scene of so much potential, for Gaz personally, as there is still so much for him to try and to complete,  to train for and to mark as notches in his progression, or not. Potential for others too, as they hungrily quest across the hillsides in search of the new, the perfect and the hard.  After a while on the classic warm up circuit Gaz takes us down to the Ship Boulder and uses us to keep the tarp from blowing away as he takes continual falls from Malc's Arete.  He's still not very close to doing it, but closer than last season, so I expect we'll be back with him quite a bit this year.

Eventually the expected rain arrives, so Gaz packs up quick and puts us on and traipses back through the mire to the car, where we go back into the boot, and wait in the dark, until next time.

Dringfeydd!

Don't worry, I haven't dropped something on the keyboard, that word is 'climbing' in welsh, which sums up the last week's activities pretty well.

After an anarchic late night show at Edinburgh's Fringe on Saturday night, winter-scratcher and part-time rock-jock Viv Scott and I started the L-O-N-G drive south to Pembroke on Sunday, eventually getting to St. Govan's Inn in Bosherston in time for last orders. I've concluded that despite not being all that big, Wales must be very dense as it takes a long time to move through. Finally fed, watered and fighting fit (or maybe fighting fat), we were ready to kick off our wee trip, and stumbled down to Stennis Head the next morning to traverse out above a rather angry sea on Riders on the Storm. After neither getting wet or falling off, and finding solace in some of the biggest holds known to mankind I decided that Pembroke is rather fun, and we set about ticking more classics, with Viv on Cool for Cats and me on Manzoku, and then headed down into Huntsman's Leap for Viv to take a good lob from the crux overlap on Beast from the Undergrowth - be warned, the photo in the Rockfax guide of someone making 'the stretch move', is complete anti-beta. Well done. Meanwhile, Blair was working his way up Just Another Day/Scorch the Earth only for it to start raining (a running theme of Blair and

Nona's trip), but he waited it out and topped out in the dry. Good work Fyffe.

We started the next day on First Blood at St. Govan's East, followed by Calisto, then swung round to St. Govan's proper and I had an amazing time on Deranged, which was possibly the best route of the trip, and Viv romped up the super-classic and super-polished Army Dreamers. We were tempted by a final route to finish the day, but instead decided to eat ice cream, explore St Govan's Chapel and then go to the beach. Slackers.

Wednesday dawned overcast and windy, and after a pot of tea at Ma Weston's we decided to up sticks and explore the crags round St. Davids, eventually reaching Carreg-y-Barcud in time to climb Beyond the Azimuth and The Great Valerio before the tide did for us. Both of these were great routes on thin (ish) slabby sandstone, and the antithesis of South Pembroke's steep limestone, so we decided to stick around and return the next day. In the mean time we ate more ice cream (I recommend Blue Lagoon flavour) and deep/shallow water soloed the perfect Red Wall at Porth Chlais, before retiring to The Farmer's Arms.

Viv going sideways on The Great Valerio

Enjoying big holds and big sea on Red Wall

Back at Barcud the next day I started us out on Sinecure, a fingery wee number, and Viv styled the crag classic Kitten Claws. There was then just enough time before the impatient tide and approaching showers to nip up the soft touch Stingray. We then headed back into St. David's for some culture and a look around the 12th Century Cathedral. Those that know me will know I don't exactly have positive leanings towards religion, but there's no denying that from a historical perspective it's a truly stunning building; full of ancient tombs, shrines and ornate decoration, and well interpreted so oiks like me can understand what I'm looking at. In particular it felt nice to get to know a bit more about the place we were visiting than just the crags, pubs and campsites.

Following up Kitten Claws

After another flourescent blue ice cream we hopped in the car and headed north for stage two of the trip...

On arrival in Llanberis, it was rather wet, and remained rather wet for a few days. Rob Greenwood very kindly put us up in his nice new house (within a pebble toss of Pete's Eats), which made life significantly better than mouldering away in a soggy tent. Rob took us on a brilliant run up a hill above town, whose name I will never remember except that it sounded like Noel Edmunds, which was a timely reminder that OMM training should start about now.

Each night we made a vague plan to do some routes in the slate quarries the next morning, then to head up the Pass or out to the coast, but each morning the plans were re-written by the drizzle. On Saturday we ended up going out to Llandudno, guided to Craig-y-Don on the Little Orme by Rob. I lead up a classic venture called Hydro, and Rob then casually strolled up Frozen Moment/New Wave and Nimitz. By now the tide had gone out and LPT was good to go, so we went and clipped shiny seaside bolts. My aim was to do the classic 7a The Pink Pinkie Snuffs It, which I'd fallen off on a very quick onsight attempt a year and a bit ago. Rob kindly put the clips in for me, and I managed it first go this time, which was nice. I then got nauseatingly pumped onsighting Under the Boardwalk and spent the rest of the evening not doing much. Meanwhile, Rob redpointed the rather savagely sharp sounding La Boheme.

And then it was Sunday and the last day of the trip, and since it was drizzling in town we hatched a Gogarth shaped plan and headed for Holyhead. Other than The Strand on Upper Tier last year, I've never climbed at Gogarth, so was keen for my introduction to be solid and relatively safe and stress-free, so I managed to persuade Viv out of going straight down Red Walls and over to Castell Helen, where we did the brilliant Atlantis/True Moments/Freebird link up. Despite this being amazing, I still didn't feel ready to up my game to proper choss-shuffling, so pursuaded Viv that the slate would be dry by now and to bail back inland. Luckily for me, he assented, and the slate was dry, so I finished off the trip with one of the routes I had most wanted to climb in Wales, Comes the Dervish, which, rather unsurprisingly, was bloody brilliant. Celebratory beers in The Heights ensued, followed by a Pete's breakfast next morning, and of course, as we drove away the sun was out and folk were out climbing in the Pass. Typical.

Viv traversing out on pitch 2 of the Atlantis link.

Excited about the Dervish

The End

Eight Days

To get out climbing you need the holy trinity of factors to align at the same time - time, weather, and someone to climb with. A big stroke of luck has brought these all together over the last week and I've finally managed to start getting some routes done. A nice high pressure system coincided with my contract finishing earlier than expected, and with graduates and teachers being on holiday.

It started last Friday night at the Camel with Jim, when I redpointed Final Straw, the last of the sub-7b routes I still had to do there. Jim did likewise, and we both warmed down on Stone of Destiny, which never seems to get any easier. A good start.

On Sunday morning I met Murdo in Contin and we motored oot west (as the Canadians might say) to Loch Thollaidh crags near Gairloch. Despite their Northerly aspect and sometimes feeling dark and cold, this is one of my favourite places to climb. All the routes I've done here have been brilliant and the Lewisian Gneiss is beautiful to climb on. My highlights were climbing Water Lily and Strip-teaser, both of which had been on my must-do list for a while. Murdo only has a couple of routes left to do here, so after seeing off Wild Iris, a bold E4 he'd been putting off for a long time, was ready for battle on Old El Passe, one of the Cubby/Anderson E6s on Gairloch Wall. After a prolonged and painful tussle with the brutal steep starting cracks he decided to call it a day though- a good reason to come back.

Me on Seams Obvious at Seanna Mheallan. (Photo: Murdo Jamieson)

Next day out was Tuesday, and Murdo and I fled west once more, this time up the vertical heather slope to Seanna Mheallan in Torridon. I'm coming to realise that sandstone climbing is hard - mainly because I'm crap at jamming - so it was a good opportunity to work on my apprenticeship. I managed a couple of good E1s - Sandpiper and Seams Obvious, but failed on an E2 called Mark of a Skyver - mmm mmm, sweaty jams. Hey ho. Again, Murdo has pretty much ticked the crag so only had a few things left to do. He ticked a couple of E3s he'd not done and the notoriously tricky E4 Hunter Killer. Despite all the hearsay about trickiness and shonky pegs, he made it look a path. The boy is on form. Next time he's up there he'll have to do Dave Mac's E8 Kolus.

Murdo about to start moving right to the arete on Hunter Killer.

Wednesday was slab day, and after Murdo and Guy did Thor on Shelterstone's Central Slabs a few weeks back, Murdo was keen to go back and do Cupid's Bow. This sounded like a good plan, as it has an easy HVS/E1 entry pitch that I could lead, then dangle from some rusting pegs (and other good gear) and Murdo could style the 6b crux. And that's pretty much what happened. The Central Slabs are an awesome place to be - an intimidating sea of flawless granite, traced with corners and grooves, perched on high and looking straight down the length of Loch Avon. Once the route was over, my heart had stopped racing with fear, and we'd finished the three abseils back to our kit, we strolled over to the Lower Slab by Hell's Lum and I finished the day with the pleasant E3 Cerberus, while Murdo thought about trying Firestone, but decided against

it under the burning July sun.

A timeless classic climbing image: Murdo's arse starting the crux pitch of Cupid's Bow.

The terrible view from the Central Slabs.

Then Friday, another sandstone apprenticeship day, this time at Ardmair with Steve. In this vein I went for some mileage on the E1s Sunstroke and Tunnel Vision and the HVS Friendly Groove (which felt the same grade as the others). Steve dug deep with an ascent of the classic

Acrimonious Acrobat, an inspiring fight to watch. About halfway up the route he was clearly having psyche-up issues, and ummed and arred for a while, then suddenly declared "basically, I'm being a pussy and need to man the fuck up", which he promptly did and grunted his way to the top. Props!

Lastly, yesterday I was hired as a guide by Sarah and Sofia (and paid in fish and chips, ice cream and pub credits) and took them up Ardverikie Wall on Binnien Shuas. I first did this as my first Scottish multi-pitch route in 2004, when I'd only been climbing for about 6 months, and it felt fairly full-on. It was great to return on a beautiful summers day, to feel relaxed and satisfied after a good week of great routes, and to just enjoy the climbing, the scenery and the company.

What a lucky bastard I've been!

The girls getting psyched for a day of micro-granite wonder on Ardverikie Wall.