It has been a while since I’ve made a how to climb trad video. I think what the series really needed next was a collaboration with someone learning to lead. Mike Boyd had done a short lead on gritstone before, but is still very much in the early stages of his climbing. We met up at Polney Crag and had a great day climbing and the video was a good opportunity to highlight the key aspect that holds most new trad leaders back: solid and consistent movement technique.
Trad grades - they are inexact, hard to pin down and cause folk lots of confusion. In this video I discuss how I grade trad routes and how I insulate myself from the controversies that often accompany them. I also offer a grade for Echo Wall on Ben Nevis.
I was worried about returning to the Mournes with Kev to try Tolerance (E8) for about 17 years LOL!
I managed to lead the Gorge Crag project in Glen Nevis. I’d seen this line years ago but various things put me off trying it earlier. It’s in the sun too much in summer, seeps a bit in winter, top pitch seemed to have no holds etc… But Julian Lines encouraged me to get on it. As always with projects, once you start…
In the spring, we have to get our leading head back on. Depending on how you choose your routes, mileage can either train or detrain your confidence. In this video, I take you through how I choose climbs that get me ready for bigger leads as the season progresses.
Doing this exercise really accelerated my confidence in judging whether my trad placements would be likely to hold a fall.
A video on the logistics I use for top rope self belay climbing, which I have used for countless hours over the past twenty years to work on hard route projects. Note that I use the Petzl Shunt which is specifically not recommended for this purpose and I’m not recommending it either, merely showing how I use it since people ask me frequently.
Last week I was in North Wales for Mountain Equipment’s athlete team meet. I had some unfinished business to attend to.
A new film on my YouTube channel now which I made with the John Muir Trust. It's about me making the first free ascent of Keystone (E8) in Glen Nevis in the summer. But although Glen Nevis is somewhere I thought I knew quite well and have spend a lot of time in, I also explore the reasons why this corner of the glen seems so different from the rest of the Glen, and the hills in general. That story is one of land, money and power.
If you would like to know a bit more about the trees I’m talking about in the film, there is more info about them at https://www.johnmuirtrust.org/mountainwoodland
Videos of Robbie’s first ascent and my second ascent on the same day of What we do in the Shadows E10 at Duntelchaig. This was a project we tried together a fair bit during the autumn of 2020 and then came together for both of us last month on a great climbing day.
Trying out the new Laspo Kneepad for the first time the other day, on the E10 project at Duntelchaig.
One of the things I’ve been meaning to do for a while is make a video about how to kneebar and what makes a good kneepad. I made my first kneepad in 2008 and have a pretty big selection of them. As with rock shoes, I still do tend to use all of them once in a while for different specific use cases. All kneebars are different and getting the right pad makes a huge difference in how long you can stay in the rest and how relaxed you can be in it.
Like many folk, for a few years I’ve mostly used the Send pads which are quite good and very convenient to use and last really well. But I’m always on the hunt for something better and so was excited when I saw that La Sportiva were bringing out a pad. I had actually been toying with the idea of designing and making a pad myself, since there is still no perfect pad out there. Unfortunately the new Sportiva Laspo pad wasn’t available for ages but have just come back into stock. So as well as ordering a set for myself, I bought some in for my shop for you guys to try. They are available now, right here.
I’ve only had a chance to try them once but that went well! There is a crucial kneebar on the E10 project I’ve been trying with Robbie Phillips. With the Send pad I worked up to getting 6 seconds hands off, which was definitely worth it. But trying the Laspo, I could immediately get 14 seconds off which obviously makes a big difference. Just one data point. But it’s a good one! I’ll do a full review of the pad in my knee barring video soon. But so far I think this is the best one I’ve tried.
So often in Scotland with hard new trad routes I have to do the finding and cleaning myself. Thanks to Robbie Phillips I got to repeat this one. Nice route Robbie. Check out Robbie's video of the FA below.
Many people ask me how to get started climbing outdoors. This is what I did, what my climbing heroes did and why it worked.
Celebrating a send with junk never seemed to work for me. I go through what I do instead. The original blog post that inspired this episode from 2009.
I could feel the remaining window of autumn was closing pretty fast to lead my Shuas project. On one hand, I did expect to be good enough to be even close to leading it, so its hard to be frustrated. On the other, as it dawned on me that there actually was a possibility I could do it, I was obviously highly motivated to grab the chance. I arranged with Masa Sakano to climb there on a good forecast and started to get scared.
As I left the house to meet Masa and his friend Ed in the morning, it rained most of the drive over (not forecast). But it was dry at the car park, so we proceeded. In the vlog episode above you can see it turned out to be a desperate day for preparing myself for a lead, with constant start-stops with rain showers.
On my first attempt, I slipped off one of the holds on the technical crux, but thankfully a body length before the runout gets into the slab-hitting zone. Thankfully the gear all held, although I later saw that the cam on the left-hand rope had half slipped out of its placement and had held on two cams. This probably helped me relax a bit. The second attempt I climbed the crux probably better than I ever have and same for the upper crux. I was definitely climbing well for me and feeling fit, light and strong.
Overall I’d say the route is almost as hard as I’ve climbed on trad. It was a long time ago but probably only Echo Wall is harder, since it is more serious again with poorer protection. In some ways, this route is more similar to Rhapsody - both in the region of 8c to top-rope. But this one has ground fall potential from a couple of moves at the end of the crux, and is in a mountain situation rather than an accessible roadside crag. So you may well ask why do I give it E10 when Rhapsody appears to have held its grade at E11.
The short answer is I’m not sure and just being a bit conservative really. I climbed Rhapsody a long time ago and maybe its harder than I remember? I’m also maybe not as bold to apply such a ridiculous grade as E11 as I was in the past. I’m not sure if that is right or wrong. It’s also not that important - someone else will come along and repeat it at some point and will have a more objective view than me. All that’s really important to know is that aside from Echo Wall I’ve not climbed a harder trad route than this.
I will be back to Shuas next summer. Not for anything quite as hard, but there are at least three more routes of E8 or harder that I’ve either cleaned already or know are possible. Its such a great place and can’t wait to get back there. For now, I can move on to several other projects for the autumn and winter, from a base of climbing well and feeling confident.
Oh, one last thing, the name comes from the Soundgarden song which I listened to a couple of times while jogging up and down the hill to try this project. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I’ve spoken recently about depression and suicide and one of many horrible losses in recent years was Chris Cornell who sung the song.
I have made a decision to lead my E10 project in two days time, if the conditions are right. I'm uncomfortable and fearful. But I think it's the right decision and in this episode (vlog #25) I go through why.
Some people seemed surprised by my video of soloing an 8b+ In this vlog I go through why I did it, why it wasn't that risky and why not doing it was a bigger risk than doing it. The footage of the solo is part of the movie Echo Wall. You can still stream, download or buy the DVD from the shop here.
An extract from the movie Echo Wall, free soloing Darwin Dixit 8b+ in Margalef, as part of my training for Echo Wall. The full movie is still available in the shop to stream/download/DVD.
Vlog #18 The first of my Binnein Shuas projects for the summer went down! This one is around E8 7a. Loving climbing at this place so much.
I first saw Creag Mo as most folk do when you’ve just come off the ferry from Skye and drive over the pass from Tarbert and drop down into Glen Scaladale. It dominates the lovely vista across Glen Scaladale to the Isle of Harris hills. I could see straight away that it would have massive new route potential for me. But given the weather luck we had on early Outer Hebrides trips, it was actually some years later when I first stood at the foot of it.
I went there with Brian Hall to check out potential new routes for a BBC film (which eventually became The Triple 5). I wanted to inspect the massive horizontal roof in the centre of the crag and Brian belayed me for hours as I aided across it and gave it an initial clean. That line was my first new route on the crag, climbed with Tim Emmett for the BBC film: The Realm E8 6c, 6b.
A few years later I returned on a very quick trip with Calum Muskett, we added another couple of great E5s, and cleaned and very briefly tried three other new routes but didn’t have time or weather to see them through. Two of them became The Mighty Chondrion E7 6c, 5c with Masa Sakano and then, a couple of weeks ago, The Hard Drive E7 6c, again with Masa.
The name ‘The Hard Drive’ came as a mark of respect for a friend Andy Nisbet who died in the mountains earlier this year in an awful accident, along with another friend and brilliant climber Steve Perry. Andy meticulously collected and processed new route information for the whole of Scotland for decades, feeding the information into the excellent SMC Scottish climber’s guidebook series with accuracy, attention to detail and outright obsessiveness that is rare. There was also the 1000s (not a typo) of new routes which he climbed himself. If you are not familiar with him as a character, I made a short film about him a few years ago, in which he took a terrifying whipper off a new winter route as I was filming/taking pics.
Every time, without exception, when I would post news of having climbed a new route on social media, I would get a reminder email from Andy immediately afterwards to make sure I sent him a description for the SMC journal and the guidebooks. Incidentally, the new Outer Hebrides guidebook is just recently published and we sell it in our shop. So I have come over years to associate climbing new routes in Scotland with Andy, and my first thought on completing this one was that it would my first new route with no contact from Andy. Andy was also known for his white knuckle driving around the highlands and I was told by someone else that he never had less than 12 points on his license (apologies Andy if I am perpetuating a myth here!). So I named the route after an appropriate sounding pipe tune by Fred Morrison called The Hard Drive.
The third route I’d looked at with Calum was the smooth wall of immaculate rough gneiss just to the right. On my trip with Calum, I couldn’t see a way to make the line work and gave up. But out of curiosity I swung the rope across and had another look. Perhaps the ‘no pressure’ play on it helped, but next thing I found a way to make a desperately thin traverse right just after the crux of The Hard Drive to reach the line. I devised several different sequences for the upper crux which were all desperate and I could only link one section if it was less than 10 degrees with a good wind. As soon as the wind dropped, I just couldn’t hold on to the ‘holds’.
Keita leading pitch 1 of Mega Kagikakko E7 6c
Visiting Japanese climber Keita Kurakami, after climbing his new line Mega Kagikakko E7 6c, 6b, 5b, had a play as well and he found an improvement on my method that further sealed the deal for me to return to the island immediately. We both agreed that the line was kind of similar to and perhaps a bit harder overall than The Walk of Life E9 6c, a route we have both repeated.
Masa kindly offered to return with me soon afterwards, even if it was an uncertain bet whether I could be ready to lead it. For a couple of days, he and visiting Naoki Komine dodged showers on the sea cliffs while I sessioned the project in gaps in the drizzle. On the fourth day of our trip, it became clear that it would be a washout from the following day. So despite the continuing drizzle showers, we walked in determined to take any opportunity going. Naoki took a small fall on Drive Station, E5, when wet holds forced him to use an alternative undercut which promptly came off in his hands. After that there was a beefy shower and it looked like the game was up for me lead. But it was immediately followed by 5 minutes of sunshine. By the time I had my rock shoes on, it was raining again. What followed was a somewhat bizarre and stop-start ascent that briefly got to the ridiculous stage with me swapping feet on a decent foothold before the crux, watching the holds start to get wetter. Take a look at the vlog episode to see the outcome.
Myself and Keita on the FA of From The Depths E6 6c, 5c. Another top quality new route we added to this cliff.