planetclimbing.org - frontpage feed

Dave MacLeod Climbing - Big Rock opening, Milton Keynes Sept 18th

2010-09-01T19:50:00Z

On September 18th myself and Tim Emmett will be at the opening day of the new Big Rock climbing centre in Milton Keynes. We’ll be running masterclasses in climbing during the day (my classes start at 10.30am). You’ll have to give the centre a ring (quickly!) to book these.

In the evening, starting 7.30 we’ll be both be hosting an evening’s climbing entertainment talking about our respective backgrounds in climbing, BASE jumping and then telling you our stories from The Great Climb. It should be a fun day - see y’all there!

Big Rock’s site is here. And their facebook is here.

Dave MacLeod Climbing - Irresponsible

2010-09-01T15:34:00Z

The trauma of Saturday’s efforts has put my ankle injury back a bit, so it’s no climbing for me for another wee while to give the wound a chance to knit again. Unfortunately, I think it could get in the way of finishing my big trad projects of the summer. But never say die…

Who cares? At least I got through Saturday. I didn’t really tell anyone, but the whole of last week passed in a preoccupied state of worry that I wouldn’t be able to climb on the day. On the Wednesday morning I got out of bed and it was too painful to put on the ground for the first half hour. I guess the responsible thing to do would have been to say “I’m injured, so I’m out”. But I was remembering Paul Pritchard’s story about his and Johnny Dawes first ascent of The Scoop on Sron Uladail in 1988. As they faced failure to get past the capping roofs Pritchard said “In this sort of situation Dawes could be counted upon to throw caution to the wind and just be downright irresponsible”. Thanks for the inspiration guys!

Johnny Dawes about to take a rope snapping winger on the Scoop first ascent 1988. Pic: Paul Pritchard (via Mark Mcgowan's flickr)

For now it’s back to reality, an avalanche of work needing done, my bathroom won’t plaster itself and my book won’t finish itself. Here we go...

James Pearson - Australia The Movie - EPIC

2010-08-18T18:09:48Z

Thanks Cedar...

Australia Climbing Adventure_THE MUSICAL_Total Eclipse from Cedar Wright on Vimeo.

Dave MacLeod Climbing - Stressed about stress

2010-08-11T01:04:00Z

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.

Online Climbing Coach - 5 ways to sabotage your training session

2010-08-11T00:14:04Z

If you wanted to learn how to mess up your training and stay as crap as possible at climbing, or better still injured and disillusioned with your sport, you could learn any of these five habits that you’ll see in fellow climbers all the time. Guaranteeing failure to improve at climbing is a lot easier that guaranteeing success, which is why so many people manage it with the following:

1. Wait until you are tired. Slower reactions and lazy movements will add more peak forces on working tendons and joints, giving you more microscopic tissue damage. So you can add the same damage as you would with a heavy training session, even though you burned out after a short time and gave up. Because you only measured the training load as route grades X volume, you wont notice the extra damage and fail to rest long enough. Repeat for several sessions and you have an overuse injury.

2. Listen too closely to fear. Could be fear of falling, or fear of failing. Doesn’t matter. The research shows that we are driven by fear of loss. It worked well at the time our brain architecture was being designed by evolution, a few years back when something stealing your food or worse still eating you meant it was game over. But the trait causes some big problems in modern life. Like in sport climbing when falling is safe but still feels terrifying. We are scared of the wrong things and worse still when we expose ourselves to them in the wrong way (too much too soon) we become hypersensitive to them. A crippling negative feedback cycle. Slow, incremental exposure to scary things like competitive situations, pressure to succeed when you’ve invested a lot in a goal, or even just taking a lob is the way to conquer. Try and shortcut it or skip the training and go straight for the performance and you’ll fail spectacularly.

3. Do the same as last time. Humans love routines, so this one couldn’t be easier to slip into. Successful training is about maximising the total load on the body across the different energy systems, muscle groups, techniques etc. Working on one while the other rests allows you to fit in more stimulus per unit time. If you do the same routes, on the same length of wall, same angle, hold type pattern of session intensity you’ll manage to overtrain a few systems while detraining the rest. Worst possible place to be. Ever wondered how olympic athletes absorb 10 times the number of training hours you do, but have less time out to injury?

4. Compete like it’s a competition. It rarely occurs to amateur athletes that there is a difference between competing in training and competing in competition. Mainstream sports are pretty messed up, but if there’s one thing they are good at it’s knowing where the difference lies. The (superficial) goal is competing in competition is to win the game, be the best, outdo the other guy. So you have to bend over backwards, go that extra mile, ignore pain, tiredness and not look over your shoulder, just focus on the finish line. Competing in training is about learning from the other guy. So the point is for you to watch them, not for them to watch you. But if they are watching you while you show off your skills, they can catch up faster by assimilating what you do and adding it to their individual strengths.

5. Get angry. I don’t mean simply release the tension of a big effort with a power scream - that’s fine. I mean get ANGRY! Kick the wall, tear your hair out, have a rant at the hold that moved, the heat, the grease, the duff beta you got off me and the guy who was watching and made you feel nervous. That will distract you nicely from the things that might actually make a difference.

Dave MacLeod Climbing - A turnaround of fortunes on Harris

2010-08-08T14:19:00Z

My world for the last 5 days - the overhanging landscape of spiky rock on Sron Uladail

Just back from another intense week of preparations for The Great Climb on the 28th on Harris. After the Skye Pipe Band gave us an entertaining ride back across the minch on the Calmac, I drove back to Lochaber like a zombie and crawled into bed.

I have a route to attempt! The most overhanging section of the entire cliff proved the exception to the rule that I’d encountered so far. Every other line I’d looked at worked apart from short sections that were blank, loose or wet. From a previous abseil from the top of the cliff, looking in from a distance I thought a 12 foot section on theses overhangs also looked devoid of holds. But it was so steep I needed to come back with more gear to back-aid across the roofs to get a closer look.

When I did just that on Monday I couldn’t believe my eyes! A line of fingertip flakes and slopers leading out across the big roof to gain the next flake system. The line reminds me of the famous Spanish route Kalea Borroka in Siurana, but even steeper! It’s going to be a mind-boggling adventure climbing this thing. I really can’t wait for the 28th. Pitch 1 looks like the best pitch of E7 I’ve seen anywhere. After a hanging belay, the very first move of pitch 2 is the hardest of the entire route. I could only do the move one out of four tries. But it’s just a very long reach at 50 degrees overhanging. That’s pretty much the same angle as my board so I’ll make a model of the crux section to train on. After that it’s more hard bloc across the roof to get the next flake system and a spectacular climb up these in the most exposed position imaginable. I’m not sure yet but this pitch seems like it will be hard E8 or maybe into E9. After that there are three more E6 and E7 pitches through more spectacular terrain. So it was a turnaround of fortunes compared to the last trip. No doubt it wont be the last. But such is adventure climbing!

Brian Hall begins the highly skilled job of working out logistics to get a sizeable team of climbing cameramen onto the most overhanging cliff in the British Isles.

Brian follows me down my lines. This is one of the least steep parts of the route, but you can see from the other rope hanging free why it’s difficult to clean and remove loose rock from 600 feet of cliff this steep. In other climbing meccas around the world, bolts would be considered the only way to do this without a major epic. Being British, we opt for the major epic.

My rope snaking through the overhangs gives you an idea of the terrain I hope we can climb on the day.

Old fixed gear I removed from the cliff last week which marks the battles, successes and failures of climbers past. The owners of this gear would read like a who’s who of adventure trad climbers of the past few decades!

...So now I have a week or so to squeeze in more training before the whole team Rendezvous on Harris for the week leading up to the live broadcast. I think it will be a good show.

Dave MacLeod Climbing - Crackoholic & Core DVD review

2010-08-08T13:55:00Z

Crackoholic

Thanks to this DVD, I will soon be going to Sweden to climb granite. Wow! I live in a place surrounded by brilliant climbing, so although I love seeing film of new climbing venues, it has to really stand out these days to make me sit up and say “I HAVE to go there!”. Crackoholic sold me instantly on it’s stunning looking granite crags, idyllic setting and even more idyllic climbing scene. A lot of climbing DVD’s tend to focus on the single-minded determination of one climber on their project, or the American style bouldering with Hip Hop and very loud spotters. Great, but there is obviously more to climbing than just this. I don’t like much Hip Hop, or very loud spotters (spotters at the places I boulder generally only say ‘baaaa’ once in a while’). So it was great to see a climbing film that drew us back to all the other great things about climbing - mental control, relationships and inspirations flowing between climbers. And somewhere different!

Not limestone, not bolts. A great film about trad climbing. Everything about Crackoholic just made me want to be out cragging. Perhaps it’s something I’ve missed because I’ve spent the last three years dragging myself to remote mountain crags with arduous logistics for long and lonely adventures. This film brought back to me the sheer joy of just going cragging. Stepping out of the car and straight onto the rocks. Maybe it was the idyllic setting, the entertaining characters in the film (the locals of Bohuslan in Sweden, together with footage of Leo Holding on Savage Horse E9 6c, Neil Gresham and other visitors).

Every shot seems to be in a golden sunset with crisp orange granite. Are there really so many sunsets like that? No wonder the climbers in the film look so happy! The tour of the area’s best trad routes and history was surprisingly interesting for a non-local and certainly would show off the routes to climbers not going there for the hardest climbs. Not to mention the cottages right under the cliffs, the barbeques between redpoints, and did I mention the sunsets?

But I was obviously really interested to see the hard routes. For a start the DVD is a bit of a misnomer, there seems to be more bold face cliimbing and skyhooks in evidence than taped up hands and big cams. Minaret E8 6c looks like one of the finest grit-style aretes anywhere. And the footage of the falls and successes of the two young guys that do it was interesting and dramatic. The ‘main man’ Stefan Wulf looks like he is enjoying Savage Horse E9 for vary different reasons to Leo, who looks in his element of his trademark ‘skin of the teeth’ style, missing edges, falling backwards but staying on. This and various other E8s are all superb stuff and duly noted in my list of ‘must climb that someday soon’.

Need I say more - If you are a trad climber and you didn’t enjoy watching Crackholic, I’d be stumped as to why not. Copies are in the shop here.

Core

Like ‘Progression’ but with more edge. In recent years when it comes to bouldering/sport climbing movies coming out of America (but showcasing the finest destinations for climbing on the globe), there has been ‘Big Up’, and everything else. Big Up do the most famous climbers, the very hardest routes (even if they are still projects) and whatever creates the strongest desire to get out there and ‘send’ in the viewer. In the ‘everything else category, there is great variability. There are have been some awful bouldering films. And I get the feeling folk will be wary of them and stick to ‘Big Up’ or more recently the Sender Films because they have well earned reputation in this genre.

If you like this type of film, but you are one of the ones who might be wary, you would be missing out in not seeing Core. Chuck Fryberger has produced a film with just as high quality shooting, with an edge that Big Up might be getting too ‘mass’ to pull off now. It’s clearly not such a big production as something like Progression and centres around a handful of destinations. But almost all are good. The ‘edge’ goes a bit far for me at times, and it takes a good few minutes into the film to get amongst the action. But the rest of the film was fairly well packed with great climbing.

The stars are mostly world class and certainly look it on the rock as well as being interesting characters. The section with Nalle Hukkataival is fun and impressive to watch his display of ‘next generation’ power. He also has a fine ‘elbows out’ moment of pumping, scared and desperately slapping before lobbing off from 8 metres up. Illuminating. But he had just climbed 8 metres of Font 8c to get there! There are several other well known climbers who it was nice to finally see some footage of. Kilian Fischuber looked every inch the great athlete he is and Michele Caminati was a pleasure to watch of the rock. Born to climb is the word. Fred Nicole was the highlight for me - I’d love to see more of his climbing on film, not to mention the man himself. He always seems to draw the sport of climbing back to its simple, pure and satisfying form. A great person to be able to feel you can relate to if you live ‘off the beaten track’ of the climbing scene.

The contrasts between the simple movement of Fred’s ungraded but obvious nails roof, and the style of the rest of the film with shades, Ferrari’s, foot off dynos and nice beats could have been plain weird. But it works! Definitely on the pile of rest day DVDs for the next sport climbing trip…

Still got some copies left in the shop here.

James Pearson - The Little Devil...

2010-07-23T08:07:55Z

1 hour on the metro and bus / 2 hours in Berlin airport / 1 ½ hours to Frankfurt / 1 ½ hours in the airport / 11 hours to Singapore / 1 hour in the airport / 10 hours to Sydney / 1 ½ hours in the airport / 1 ½ hours to Melbourne / 6 hours in the airport / 1 ½ hours to Hobart.

Aided by my lack of sleep over the last 72 the travelling time itself was not such a big problem and I slept for a lot of hours on the various planes. However the entire journey was probably the worst I have ever had due to my blocked sinuses from my illness the week before. Every time the plane took off and gained altitude it felt like my head was going to explode! Each time this feeling lasted for around 2 hours, and really was agony, so much so that I was almost sick from the pain.

Every flight was the same, but each flight I took was one closer to being there, and finally I arrived in Hobart, met my friends and drove to our accommodation - a small cabin down near a beach on the south of the island.

The next week was to be a non-stop whirlwind of epic proportions involving monstrous hikes, monstrous cliffs and monstrous monsters... but unfortunately I can’t share too much of it with you at this time due to exclusivity commitments with Sender Films – but rest assured, all will be available in glorious Technicolor detail later this year... Check it out

What I can share is as follows...

After escaping from the Jungle, stumbling into a fine dining restaurant stinking to the high heavens and covered in dirt, taking a few rest days, partying to surprisingly good drum and bass and enjoying the company of new friends, everyone felt like the time had come for a little more climbing... and what better way to end our trip than with a quick ascent of the Tote!

Situated at the end of Cape Hauy, the Tote is accessed by a pleasant 2 hour stroll (a walk in the park compared to the last few days) through lush vegetation along an ever thinning peninsular. Towards the end the trail turns rockier and steep cliffs develop on either side leading to the crashing waves hundreds of feet below. Eventually you get to see what you have been waiting so long for... and it does not disappoint – The Totem pole is simply majestic, and if truth be told, a little intimidating!

We had begged, borrowed and stolen all the info we needed to be able to access the route – essentially an awkward scramble down took you to a ledge level with the top of the pole, where 2 shiny bolts made the ab to the base and the following swing across the chasm a very pleasant experience – that is until the first big wave rolls in leaving you soaked to the skin! The last thing to remember is for the second not to detach from the ab-line, for reasons that will soon become clear...

The first pitch in its own right would rank as a 3* route anywhere in the world, even if you do have to climb the first part of it over wet rock with soggy chalk. The rock quality is excellent and strange, often in cut ripples and flakes are a joy to climb. The crux comes at around 2/3 height and is a surprisingly balancey affair that keeps you on your toes. This leads into pleasant jugs to the prominent belay ledge and the first chance you really get to appreciate where you are and what you are doing.

The second pitch is simply superb and in my opinion is possibly the best route I have ever climbed – I can’t remember another pitch that made me smile this much. For almost 40m you climb one of the most striking, perfectly situated arêtes on the planet; the rock quality is amazing, the holds impeccable and the moves fascinating. Protected for most of the way by slightly spaced bolts which can be supplemented by trad gear as you approach the top, the route feels go-ey enough to be really enjoyable, but never dangerous.

On arriving at the ledge just below the summit, you are greeted by a further 2 shiny bolts making belaying a breeze. After bringing up the second and quick cruise up to the summit to pose for the necessary hero shots (well it would be almost rude to come all this way and not stand on top of the damn thing) the final exciting chapter is ready to begin. Fixing the ab-line you have patiently dragged up the whole way, an exciting 20m Tyrolean lands you back on the mainland with huge grins still firmly plastered to your face.

A day later I was stood in Hobart airport waiting for my plane back to the mainland and contemplating the events of the last week. Tasmania had been an incredible experience that had tested me in new ways and taught me many new skills. The main objective of the trip had been a great success, we did what we came to do, and got out alive – but the thing that had made the entire trip worth it, was those few hours of bliss climbing the Totem Pole. What a route!!!

Online Climbing Coach - Basic technique - saving energy on trad

2010-07-20T22:46:26Z

I’ve not posted on basic technique for a while, so here is something that my own summer of trad has been reminding me of recently. In trad climbing, the actual climbing bout is not just a little bit longer than sport or bouldering, it’s WAY longer. 20, 30 60 minutes instead of seconds up to a few minutes on many sport climbs.

The implications of this are very important. Most of us train for trad on short steep sport routes in climbing walls - this is fine - we need the endurance for the crux sprints even during long routes. But the movement is very different on trad.

The amount of time searching for handholds, footholds or gear, or resting takes up the vast majority of the total climbing time. Actually making moves is quite fleeting between long periods on the same holds. If you’ve ever edited a piece of video of a climber doing a long trad route you’ll readily appreciate this!

Let’s go through the pictures (BTW these are from our Triple 5 trip to St Kilda - nice route eh?):

A rare moment of actually making a move. Note bent arms, trunk close to the wall and shoulders pulled back in tension. On a climbing wall route, you move almost continously by comparison and your body tends to adopt this sort of position a lot - like maybe 60% plus of the time.

So what? You get into the habit of staying in this position. If you can’t find the hold or need to clip gear, you just freeze in this position and sort it out before continuing seconds later. Because the climbing bout is short, it doesn’t matter too much. In fact, the moves are probably hard enough that it’s actually more efficient not to set up a full resting position, just to go back to ‘progress’ mode a few seconds later. Next photo >>

In trad, not only will you have to make these stops between moves many times more than on a short climbing wall route, but they might be of much longer duration. So the climbing style has to change. You can always tell a very experienced trad climber when the adopt the position in the picture 2 almost immediately when they have to stop on a pitch. The hips are in, back arched and leaning back on straight arms. The maximum amount of weight is on the feet, but you can lean back a bit to scan the rock ahead more effectively. Next picture >>

The other common position in trad is when searching for footholds. In this case, the shoulders are in, drooping from straight arms and the bum is out to give a clear view of the footholds.

If you haven’t been tradding for a while, you often have to remind yourself to take these resting positions immediately by conscious reminder and accentuating them, so you fall back into the habit. If you haven’t developed the technique at all, long steep trad pitches will feel a lot harder than they should. But even a delay of a few seconds in assuming these positions will really add up as you might use them 100s of times in a single long pitch.

Dave MacLeod Climbing - Sron Uladail 1, Dave nil

2010-07-20T21:31:00Z

I’ve just done my first climbing session in 8 days after a week long trip to Sron Ulladale. The session was back home on my board! There’s nothing worse than moany blogs and I do try not to post too often about the many many failures I have trying to make Scottish new routes come into existence. But as Claire and I agreed the other day (day 4 of sitting in the car watching the horizontal rain), people often don’t know what goes into opening new hard trad routes in the mountains.

I’ve been to the outer Hebrides nearly every year for a decade, on most of those trips, climbing in the mountains of Harris, namely Sron Uladail, has been ‘plan A’. On all but one trip, plan A has lasted less than 10 minutes off the Harris ferry and we left the Harris mountains to their lashing by wind and rain and headed for the relative shelter of the Lewis sea cliffs. Although serendipitous, I’ve found many of my favourite places to climb there and the sea cliffs never felt like a plan B once I was there.

This time it was the Sron or nothing - I had a job to do. The brief: find a good, preferably hard and unclimbed route on Sron Uladail that myself and Tim Emmett can climb in under 6 hours on live television and get it cleaned. Easier said than done.

Having studied my crag shots, I did the big load carry from Ahmunsuidhe and abseiled over the big drop armed with a 600 foot rope, brush and a lot of hardware, just before the rain started. My first choice line was seeping copious drools of water from the back of the roof and was out of the question from the word go. Hmmm, what now? I hauled up the line, fed it all back into the bag, moved 30m left and repeat. Option 2 had no protection and being 35 degrees overhanging for a couple of pitches would be nearly impossible to clean and inspect. By day 3 I was at option 5 and still at square 1.

The live TV issue kind of dictates having at least a fighting chance of getting to the top on the chosen route. For me, anything harder than about E9/10 always involves a remote chance of success for any given attempt. Sure, the ultimate chances of success across many days and weeks of attempts rise to something sporting, but on this occasion we have 1 day, 6 hours to make it happen. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the crag wasn’t so overhanging or so ravaged by the elements. I could absorb more of the potential problems through preparation.

I was determined not to leave Harris no further forward, so after two days of torrential rain and wind I jogged in as fast as I could in a brief lull in the storm to check out another potential line, some grossly overhanging blank grooves left of the Scoop. As soon as I’d dropped the ropes and headed off down over the first overhangs I found to my dismay that the brief lull was just as the storm readjusted to a westerly, blowing straight across the crag. Pretty soon I was having a right gripper. The tail ends of 3 or 400 feet of my two static ropes that had been hanging below me were now blowing in great arcs horizontally in space despite being sodden from the rain and very heavy. As the wind rose and rose I realised it could get dangerous to be on the wall quite rapidly switched to ‘escape’ mode. Plan A was to continue back-aiding down through the roofs until I could be sure the ropes would reach the slopes far below and then bail to the cliff base. But it became obvious that even with my weight on them in a free abseil the ropes and me would be blown out away from the slope and If I attempted to go down the rope I’d probably suffer a very spinny-dizzy death being tossed around on the rope ends. So I went back up.

I was terrified the wind would get so strong that things would start to get out of hand - being thrown around on ropes running across crystal sharp rock edges. Every time I released a piece of gear I was thrown sideways into space by the wind, with the sickening sound of ropes scraping along overlaps above. I learned to jumar up rope a lot faster! As the pro-golfers over at St-Andrews bailed back to the clubhouse for a beer due to the high winds, I flopped over onto ledges in a waterfall and hauled up the sodden ropes, cursing the Scottish weather as I staggered off along the ridge to Ullaval into the gale.

The rest of the week alternated between long hours in the car watching the rain, or long hours of the above dangling in it. The upshot was that I have still to settle on an ideal line to attempt. Here’s to the next trip going a little better!

In the meantime, I’ll be trying to gain back the fitness lost on my ‘climbing’ trip...

The lovely outlook from the Sron on the good day - It’s amazing how transformed the Hebrides are in nice weather. More so than other parts of Scotland I think.

An ancient wire battered in by aid climbers 40 odd years ago. I removed this relic (it practically turned to dust in my hands). There wasn’t really a placement for in the seam - I think that fear, a strong arm and a good hammer had a lot to do with it!

4 days of the same view

I thought I was being paranoid about the sharp overlaps of sheared quartz and gneiss until the slightest glance of my hand along one gave me a 4cm gash.

climbing.com - Hot Flashes - 2010 Arco RockMaster Champions and Legends Winners

2010-07-19T19:54:00Z

7/19/10 - This weekend saw competition greats gathering in Arco, Italy, for the RockMaster 2010, one of the most prestigious competitions in the climbing world.