The Setup

There are many reasons why becoming a homeowner has been really exciting, but high up on the list is the fact that I now have the space to construct my own board.  I've been living in rented accommodation since leaving my parents and going off to uni in 2002 so I've never been able to drill, saw and generally vandalise my home in order to dangle from my fingers.  I've partly circum-navigated this issue by using temporary kit – rock rings hung from rafters and a Beastmaker mounted on a board that fits onto and off an Argos pull-up bar (a design dreamed up by Murdo, my training guru), but nothing beats the convenience of having your own setup in the garage.

Since Rich built his I've been a regular in the exclusive Bettsmaker user group, and although every session I have there is a general lesson in punishment and humiliation I do think it’s probably given me some gains.  If nothing else, I love the simplicity of board sessions: short, sharp, hard.  In the near future I can only imagine that life is going to get busier, so being able to get in regular good sessions without having to trek into town will be a big bonus.

So now it’s on.  The month of January, a month that’s brought some of the wildest weather for a while, has been put aside for me to convert our big wooden leaking shed into a, um, big wooden leaking shed with a board in it.  At the start of the process I knew almost nothing about construction or woodwork or design, but a couple of weeks in I’m pleasantly surprised at how things are going.  I still know nothing about construction or woodwork or design, but I’m learning that with a liberal application of cement, screws, bolts and half-arsed trigonometry and with regular trips to Wickes, Homebase and Highland Industrial Supplies to buy an armoury of metalwork, you can make things stand up and stick together.

There’s still a fair way to go before it’ll be ready, but I’ll let you know when it’s done and you can start the countdown to my first injury.

2014: Top 3

Another year comes and goes and we keep stumbling on.  Queue the annual reflective blog post.

2014 was definitely the year I grew up: getting engaged, turning 30, buying a house and finally getting a job that doesn't mean I'm always away from home.  I'm sure the 20 year old me would be deeply disappointed to see me now: a slave to the wage with a mortgage.  But it seems to me that unless you're very lucky, very talented or willing to live hand-to-mouth from other people's charity there's not much choice. Anyway, we've just bought a cool house in the sticks and I'm doing a job that 20 year old me would be proud of, so there.

In previous years I've listed my climbing, reading and musical highlights, so I'll follow the tradition, but this time I'm doing top three's (in no particular order):

Trad routes:
1. We the Drowned, E5 6b, Diabaig. The realisation of a long-held ambition: a tricky new slab route in the North West Highlands.  I was well chuffed when I heard that Jules Lines had on-sight soloed the 2nd ascent. Nutter!  He agreed with the grade and reckoned it would be 3 stars on grit.  I guess he would know.

Pretty Crag at Diabaig

2. Sumo, E3, Beinn Eighe. A great day out with Ian T who's almost ticked the crag so was happy to be my belay bitch.  Steep, positive, safe climbing and on a crag with one of the best views in Britain.

Sumo Pitch 2 (Photo: Ian Taylor)

3. Kachoong, 21, Arapiles. The only route I'd heard of before we went out to Oz.  I'd blown it up in my head as a must-do, so was pretty relieved not to take the ride.

Quality bumshot (Photo: Rob Greenwood)

Sport routes:
1. Primo (Curving Crack), 7b+, Am Fasgadh. Four years passed between first attempt and eventually clipping the chains, which is quite a long time for a 15m route.

Game face (Photo: Ian Taylor)

2. Giza Break, 7b/+, The Camel.  I totally fluked this on my first redpoint of my second session, three days after turning 30.  Happy birthday.

Starting up the 30m long potato field of The Camel (Photo: Nick Carter)

3. Wicked and Weird, 7a+, Kujho Crag. Spring in the North West Highlands: birds singing, sunny redpointing and no midges.  A punchy little route too.

Boulders:
1. Vapour Trail, 6C, Torridon. On the to-do list for a long time but I'd never plucked up the courage before this year.  Superb.

Getting high by myself.

2. Scatwell Massacre, 7A?, Scatwell.  A classic Richie Betts sandbag ('Betts 6C+') at  my new local boulder, tucked away in the woods of Strathconon.

Lamps out at Scatwell (Photo: Rich Betts)

3. The Link, 7c, Tom Riach.  OK, so it's a long boulder traverse, but I'm counting it.  My hardest link on anything to date, pieced together over a couple of months of summer after-work evenings.

Book:
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel.  Part one of Mantel's fictional biographies of Thomas Cromwell.  Uniquely written and about an era that it would seem GCSE and A-Level History skipped over. Poor old Catherine/Anne/Jane/Anne/Kathryn.

Tunes:
This is always impossible, so rather than thinking too hard I'll just pull up three from my current 'most-played' list:
1. Remurdered by Mogwai.
2. Marcos by Kan
3. Open Eye Signal by John Hopkins

All in all, not a bad year on the rocks. Merry Chistmas one and all!

Light!

Trying The Catch 7B at Scatwell.  It's hard.
(Photo: Rich Betts)

I know you shouldn't wish your life away, but for the last week or so of our trip to Oz I couldn't help but think about the things that waited for me back at home.  As I've said many times on this blog before, I love the changing seasons and different activities they bring, and perhaps most of all I love the simplicity of winter bouldering.  There's something about the north and winter time that is a big part of me.  From the other side of the world, where it was late Spring and heating up to a balmy 30 degrees in the daytime, the thought of cold days and sandstone slopers seemed very distant, but I couldn't wait to get home.

Talking of which, the weekend after touching down on UK soil Sarah and I got the keys and moved into our new home.  It's the first time we've owned a place, so suffice to say, we're dead chuffed. Proper little country mice now. The board has yet to be built in the shed, but it'll happen. In the mean-time, two campus rungs screwed into the shed rafters are providing me with some good exercise.

In climbing terms, the best thing that's happened lately is the purchase of an XQ Lite FL1188, or in other words, a rechargeable lamp for night bouldering.  My relatively new job means that I'm no longer away from home in the week so having a lamp has revolutionised good weather evenings.  I'm still working out the best venues but so far Scatwell and Cummingston have come up trumps.

The Cummingston episode was a bit of a repeat of last season when I found rare amazing conditions on Gorilla. I got really close in a session but ran out of steam so, knowing how rare the combinations of cold dryness and tide are, I had to go back the next day to dispatch.  This time the problem was Fingerlicker, the desperate thin 7A traverse in the big cave.  Almost every time I've been there it's been humid and smeggy, even when everything else is in great nick, and I'd just about written it off as something I'd never do. On the Sunday it was better than I'd ever seen it, in fact, even the perma-smeg Cave Beast 6A was dry enough to finally do, so after a wee circuit I spent a fair bit of time piecing the moves together under the watchful eye of crag guardian "Buddha" Dave Wheeler. I got to the point of having proper goes from the start, but soon the skin was sore and returns diminishing so I bailed, frustrated. As soon as I got home I checked the weather and the tides for the next few days and put the lamp on charge.  Two days later I was back in the cave after work and it was still in good nick, so I fired up the lamps (I'd borrowed Rich's for some extra lumen power) and got it sent.  The next day the temps shot up and a warm wet front rolled in and the cave would have been back to smegsville.  You've got to cash in.

Dancing with my shadow on Fingerlicker.

Rich on a new problem in the Corridor at Cummingston: Feel the Lumens 6C+(+?). Apparently it has "the nicest hold to pull on in the whole district."  I suspect that means a minging rat crimp.
Photo: Rich Betts

Ya Flamin' Galah!

Despite being fairly keen, I’ve always known that I’m not really a proper climber.  Since university I’ve opted to follow the path of a ‘normal’ life: 9-5 jobs, fiancée, house and all the trappings and commitments that come with it.  I’ve not spent months away on trips, I’ve not climbed around the world, I’ve never dumpster-dived and lived the dirtbag dream.  I climb when I can, but realistically that’s only on weekends and certainly not every weekend, and normally just day trips in the North of Scotland. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.  I’ve made all my decisions consciously and gladly, but as we all know: one door opens, another one closes.  I don’t climb E5, and I still haven’t done Malc’s Arete, but I have the important things: happiness and security and a loving relationship.

But of course, sometimes you’ve got to feed the rat.  A few years ago I started to realise that the breadth of my climbing experience was really shallow: UK trad, Euro sport, Font boulders, that’s pretty much it. No Yosemite, no Squamish, no Todra, no Ton Sai, no Arapiles.  So, I decided enough was enough and started canvassing opinion among friends to see if anyone wanted to go away on a month-long trip somewhere, anywhere.

In steps Mr Energetic, aka Rob Greenwood.  He replied to my message saying he’d been thinking of a trip to Australia, to the hallowed walls of Arapiles and the Grampians.  Was I keen? 

Now, I didn’t really know Rob that well.  We’d met years ago when I lived in Aviemore through his then girlfriend Helena, who I knew from uni.  He’d stayed at mine a few times on winter climbing raids, and I’d stayed at his a few times on North Wales raids, and we spent a week together on Pabbay and Mingulay in 2011, but that’s pretty much it.  We’d stayed in touch down the years and I’d followed his escapades through various blogs, tweets and facetubes: Yosemite, Patogonia, Canada, the Himalaya, Alpine endeavours, and in the last few years his move to Sheffield, his gritstone wrestling and his fruitful quest for 8a glory.  Comparing his CV to mine doesn’t bear thinking about, but he’s a positive chap and seemed ignorant of my punterdom, so I agreed.  Australia!  Ya little rippa!

Leave was arranged, flights were booked, cars hired.  Other than a vague bubble of awareness of a photogenic roof called Kachoong and a beautiful orange wall full of hard sport routes called Taipan, I didn’t really know anything about where I’d agreed to go.  I bought some guides and surfed the web and very soon started to salivate. 

Life and weather meant that my prep in the month before leaving was almost exclusively shuffling sideways on the Tom Riach boulder, but I also managed my two hardest sport redpoints so felt vaguely positive.  Little did I know that 90% of my time in Oz I’d be trad climbing so really I should have been, well, going trad climbing.

I won’t bore you with the details of the trip, but will try to summarise some highs and lows in bullet form:

·         Long flights = lots of films.  Brief review: The Railway Man (sad but good), Fantastic Mr Fox (Wes Anderson, therefore genious), Notting Hill (awww), Zero Dark Thirty (gripping), Les Miserables (catchy show tunes), A Million Ways to Die in the West (Family Guy in a cowboy hat), Edge of Tomorrow (meh).  I’ve forgotten the others so they must have been crap.

·         Camping in The Pines, legendary climbers doss.  A pole from our £70 tent from ‘BBQs Galore’ in Horsham snapped on the first day.  

·         Arapiles = sandbag.  Australian grades = arbitrary number. Ego = bruised.

·         Grampians: more striking lines, more scenic locations, but possibly fewer routes for punters like me.

·         Lots of amazing routes that start to blur into one.  On average you could sum up most Arapiles climbs as: steep, physical and very safe.

·         Surprisingly cold nights.  Should have brought a bigger sleeping bag.

·         Really friendly locals in Natimuk (the nearest village to Arapiles), with a strong ex-pat British scene.

·         Rest days visiting the swimming pool in Horsham for a shower, drinking coffee and eating cake in Nati Cafe.

·         Lots of the classic harder routes seem to go sideways, which were always ‘fun’ to second.

·         Pines life hanging with Rob, and Ben, Kath and May Bransby: cooking on the campfire, Ben reciting potty-mouth gangsta rap over breakfast, trying to make brews on the worlds crappest stove, 8 year old May singing all the way up the classic 13 Muldoon.

·         The crazy wildlife: kangaroos, wallabies, stump tailed lizards, possums, echidnas, koalas, wedge-tailed eagles, yellow-crested cockatoos, galahs, australian magpies, and a long-distance siting of a platypus (apparently).

May Bransby chillin' at Taipan, part way up a tree.

Ben Bransby chillin'  at Taipan, part way up Fisting Party.

It would be fair to say that from a climbing point of view, I found it pretty hard going.  It’s hard to know what on earth Australian grades mean and how they compare to British grades, but I’d be surprised if I climbed any trad routes harder than E2/3.  I did grow to really enjoy it, but to begin with I found the steep traddy style pretty intimidating.  C’est la vie. I came across very few sport climbs in the onsightable/holiday redpoint bracket but that was probably because a large chunk of the Grampians was still closed after a big fire.

I had a great time, climbed some amazing routes, and had the pleasure of watching Rob and Ben climb some even more amazing-looking harder things.  For me though, and I know it’s a massive cliché to say it,  the best thing about the trip was the people and the places: getting to know the Bransbys; spending more time with Rob and trying to understand his wild positivity and unceasing optimism; being somewhere totally new: new climate, new plants, new horizons.

Rob on Archimedes Priciple, Eureka Wall.  Possibly the most perfect single pitch trad climb in the world?

Thanks Rob, ya flamin' galah!

Rob rather pumped after Have a Good Flight lived up to it's name.

Sierra Blair-Greenwood

Uncle Tom

It's funny how knowledge cascades and fashions form.  Tom Riach, the conglomerate erratic boulder up near Culloden has been the flavour of the season for Inverness locals this summer. I blame Nick Carter, who worked out that he could fit in a good session in the three hour gap he has between dropping and collecting Lily from nursery, so he started going down and getting keen, and then he told someone, and they told someone, and they told someone, and so on.  I've not long started a new job so at long last have free evenings in which to train, rather than fester in strange B&Bs.

As a bouldering boulder it's not really very good, with no real lines and nothing above 6B+, but as a local's training venue to try and get some fitness it's pretty handy.  The traverses of the South West and North West faces are both good problems and contrast nicely in style, with SW being a bit steeper on bigger holds and NW being very thin and fingery.  Being on conglomerate it's pretty friendly on the fingers too, unlike Ruthven which has also become popular among sideways shufflers in recent times.

Another sweaty after-work lap.  Photo: Alpha Mountaineering

Over the last two summers as we've been getting more familiar with the boulder a number of Tom Riach challenges have emerged, so here's a rundown of the current classics.  Grades are complete guesses, but are based on an assumed consensus of the Stone Country and UKC grade of SW Face being Font 6C+. I've done it so many times it feels about 6A, so have no idea:

• SW Face traverse R-L from a sit start, finishing up arete, aka 'There' - Font 6C+
• SW Face traverse L-R from a sit start, finishing up arete, aka 'Back' - a bit easier, maybe Font 6C?
• There & Back (SW face R-L then L-R, sit start) - F7a route grade?
• There with Butcher Finish (SW face R-L, finishing up Butcher Lefthand, rather than easy arete) - Harder than original, so Font 7A?
• NW Face Original (R-L, stand start, finish up arete) - Font 7A (route grade F7b?)
• NW Face Deziree's backwards way (L-R) - Font 7A?  I've not tried it.
• The Link (sit start SW face R-L into NW face R-L, finish up arete) - F7c route grade.  
• The Knil (reverse of The Link) - F7b+? I don't think it's been done yet.

I was well impressed when Nick did The Link for the first time back in May, as I was still falling off NW Original.  But as the sessions kept coming I started ticking through the list until The Link was the obvious challenge left.  Murdo tried it when he was tired and reckoned it was hard, but then came back rested and did it quickly, mooting a route grade of about F7c.  For me it's about 45 moves long with a couple of pretty poor rests and the crux right at the end moving past a cool 2-finger edge. Brilliant power endurance training.

Before I go to Australia for a month of climbing I told myself that I had to do Giza Break at The Camel and The Link at Tom Riach.  I nailed the former on my second session in early August, but the latter held out over quite a few sessions in sub-optimal conditions until last night and the first breeze we've had here in weeks.  

Hopefully now I'll be partly ready for the ego-bruising sandbag grades Australia will throw at me.  Or not.    

Unawares

Way back when, on a showery day in March 2010, I clipped the chains of  The Warm Up at Am Fasgadh.  I'd been trying it over a few visits to the crag that winter - the first winter that I made a point of dropping out of winter climbing and knuckling down to all-year rock climbing. It meant quite a lot to me as it was my first 7b and I saw it as a personal justification of my decision to quit the winter game.

Later that day I had a quick play on Curving Crack, a 7b+ which is the first section of the 7c Primo, scooching off right to an intermediate lower-off.  It felt absolutely untouchable.  I think I made a comment on this blog at the time, saying that it was the first time I'd been on a route and not been able to do all the moves in isolation.  But something about the route attracted me and I decided to work at it as a project.  Like many of Am Fasgadh's routes it's short and powerful, intricate and technical and there's not really anywhere to rest. Almost all the hard moves are on sidepulls and layaways so it's all about footwork and body position.

Since then I've put quite a few sessions into trying Curving Crack.  I was briefly distracted in the 2012/13 season when I tried and eventually did The Shield, but in total I must have spent at least 12 sessions over the four winter seasons trying it - far and away the most time I've spent on one route.  It took me a while to pin down a sequence for the crux, and then the problem was having the fitness to execute the moves.  I could do it in overlapping halves, getting to the quartz jug and clipping and going for the next move, then falling off, resting and going to the end.  It's been like that for the last few years.

Today me, Murdo, Ian and Tess sneaked up to the crag while it was still in it's summer hibernation, tucked beneath it's blanket of bracken.  Showers washed over the West coast all day so this was the only dry rock for a long drive in any direction.  We're right on the cusp between Summer and Autumn now, still with some heat in the sun but the air is cooling and the hill slopes and leaves have a tinge of gold. We were all hoping that a stealth attack so early in the year would find the crag still slumbering, and with it's guard down it would allow for some rare successes.

Over the last few months I've been trying to concentrate on endurance and fitness as I'm off on a trip to Australia in October.  Usually at this time of year I'd be starting to think about the approaching winter bouldering season and trying to get strong, but instead I've been keeping up the circuits and foot-on fingerboard routines from the summer.  I've noticed some good results over the last month or so, doing the long stamina routes of Giza Break (7b/7b+) at the Camel and The Clansman (7a+) at Moy pretty quickly, and getting pretty close to doing The Link (7c?) at the Tom Riach Boulder.  In addition to this a fairly regular dose of fingerboarding will hopefully have added some steel.

To illustrate, here's a photo of the door that I have the key for to Rich's board in his garage.  Clearly no 45 degree power bouldering for me this summer.

I'm not sure what it was, either my training or catching the crag unawares, or a combination of both, but something worked because earlier today, and I still can't work out how, I managed to climb from the ground to the lower-off without falling off. You absolute beauty!

The Perfect Day?

How do you know when it's the right time? Is there ever really a right time?  I guess if it ever was, it was now.
Deep breaths.  I try to pack some more chalk into the gouge in my fingertip, to hide it.  It's not there.  Helmet on. Eyes closed, I go through the sequence once more in my head.  When I open them I turn to take in the view, the deep green sea and the bay.  And then I feel it: rain. Surely not now.

*************

Rewind a year and a half.  On a routine internet scouring session I stumbled across this photo on Neil Morrison's Flickr page:

The caption read: "a fine challenge for someone who likes blank slabs".  My ears pricked.

I emailed Neil to find out more and one rainy Friday a few weeks later I headed out to the beautiful coastal village of Diabaig nestling in it's sheltered bay, donned my boots and struck out.  Up on the hill above the peninsula's isthmus, beyond the honeypot Pillar and Main Wall, lie two amazingly contrasting and aptly named crags. Ugly Crag; steep, bulging, brutish.  Pretty Crag: slabby, smooth, short. Pretty Crag has a couple of VSs and an E1 on it, but an obvious gap in the middle where a hanging crack is guarded by a smooth wall of blank, pristine gneiss.

   

(Photo: Sarah Jones)

My love of slab climbing began with some of my first ever climbing experiences in the esoteric limestone quarries of Somerset.  Open, delicate movement, snaking the centre of gravity between minimal points of contact, and as a grade-chasing beginner I enjoyed the inverse relationship between protection and grade. I guess in the Peak District and elsewhere these kinds of short bold slabs are ten a penny, but up here in the Highlands, and more specifically the North West Highlands, they're few and far between.  Had I just struck upon the line I'd always dreamed of?

Initially I assumed it would be a top-rope rehearsal job, but then when I was there and looking at it I could see a thin crack that might muster a runner to protect the blank section before the safe top crack.  I changed my mind, and decided I should try to onsight it.  Time passed and 2013 came and went and the slab stayed in the back of my mind, but circumstances meant I never had a chance to return.  Finding a partner that would want to go out to this esoteric backwater was a bit of a struggle as there's not masses of other stuff that would keep them entertained.  Also, a selfish part of me didn't want to go there with someone who would clearly waltz up it after I failed, stealing 'my' route.  Childish, I know.  So, after weeks of favours, chores and bribery I managed to persuade my fiancée Sarah to come out and belay.

Now, Sarah has a complex relationship with climbing.  Actually, no, it's very simple.  She doesn't like it.  When we first started seeing each other, in the dark and distant past, she put on a good show of pretending that she did, and I dragged her up quite a few classic Scottish routes: Eagle Ridge, Agag's Groove, Ardverikie Wall, Cioch Nose and numerous horrid cold wintery things (which she enjoyed more than me).  But she doesn't need to pretend any more, she's got me. Hence having to resort to bribery and corruption to get a belay nowadays.

Psyched to be here!

Finally back at the crag at the end of May, it looked steeper and blanker than I remembered, but I'll just nip up the E1 to warm up then get down to business.  Or that's what I thought.  When I promptly fell off the top of the E1 I suddenly realised that I might be biting off more than I could chew. It would be easy if it was a couple of degrees more slabby, but it's actually too steep to just smear feet and rely on friction, it's proper face climbing.  So I realised three things: 1. I'm very bad at crack climbing, 2. the E1 is more like hard E2, but more importantly, 3. the potential new line would be significantly harder than anticipated.

An ethical dilemma arose: onsighting/groundup is good.  Top-roping is bad.  But then, as far as I was concerned, it would be a first ascent of a necky, tenuous route of the style and in the very place I really love. Regardless of how, doing it would be a special experience. Perhaps if it was elsewhere, where there are more and better climbers doing this sort of thing I would step aside and let someone else do it, but since it's in the remote North West that might mean it never actually gets done.  And perhaps if there was an obvious good gear placement round the crux I'd be happy to go for it and take the inevitable falls, but there's not and I think you'd be into ankle hurting territory. In the end I thought sod-it.  Headpoint project.  Wahoo!

That day I just abbed it as Sarah was getting bored, but I went back on my own with the shunt the next week and established just how thin the bottom 6 metres are.  The protection here is hard to see but OK: two No.3 Black Diamond Micro-Stoppers in a shallow crack, and although they've responded well to tugging from the ground I'm not sure if they'd take kindly to a fall from the last hard moves into the bottom of the hanging crack.

More time passed and I did some proper climbing: Neist, Elgol, Super Crag, Lochan Dubh, but the route still nagged away as an enticing challenge.  I had to get back.  But who with? Everyone was busy.  Sarah? That would take some serious bribery.  But then I remembered the lovely new restaurant Gille Brighde that's opened in Diabaig. Perhaps if I offered to pay for dinner she'd acquiesce to another belay?  Hooray! She agreed! Surely this would be the last possible time I'd get her out there, so this had to be it.

The top of Pretty Crag and the end of Ugly Crag in the shade.

On Friday I went back and played again on my own and was shocked by how hard it still felt.  But slowly I pieced it together, and although I didn't link it in one go I felt that I had the best sequence and knew the gear well enough.  Sunday had to be the day.

*************

We huddle in the open as the rain shower passes over but there's blue sky beyond and a breeze and other than interrupting the bubble of self-belief I'm trying to inflate around myself, we're unscathed.
I'm nervous.  But excited and energised.  And nervous. On my first go I get off lightly, getting through most of the crux and getting the wire clipped in the bottom of the main crack before a foot scuffs and I'm off.  3 seconds earlier and it would have been very different. A silly mistake, all down to nerves.

Strip the gear and go again.  The first committing step through to the smear, the razor crimp, the four foot moves, the finger tip in the crack, the second razor crimp, fumble the wire, clip, balance, good finger-lock, smear, better finger-lock, wire, and then the glory of the crack and it's cams of joy and I'm on top.

And then, of course, it's over, and the impenetrable wall you've built and couldn't see past is gone.

On the walk back to the village and dinner we disturb an otter down by the shore, a compliment to the black-throated diver we watched in the loch on the drive down that morning.  Back at the car, I look back across the turquoise bay and see Pretty Crag glowing white in the evening sun.

Info:

Pretty Crag, Diabaig Peninsula
We, the Drowned 10m. E5 6b**  

Gaz Marshall, Sarah Jones. Headpointed 14th July 2014

The blank slab into the obvious central hanging crack.  Gain the port-hole feature and place small wires in the incipient thin crack just above, then step right and tiptoe upwards to reach the safety of the main crack.

Of course, the grade is a guess.  It felt technically harder than Firestone, but it's only 10m high and the top 3m are very safe and relatively much easier.  I think you could hurt yourself if you fluffed the last few hard moves and I think the style of climbing would make it a very hard onsight.  But I'd love to be proved wrong!

Oh, and the pretentious name is after the brilliant book by Carsten Jensen.