Summer 2008

Long, long time since I updated - I'm not dead, just very lazy.

To start from my last post - I gave up on Sabotage for the summer in around June, having fallen off of the last move or two due to sweatyness countless times. I've only had one session since and got to the same place so I'm feeling confident that once my finger heals up I'll do it quick.

Casey repeating his own Totality in June

My second home for the first half of the year

The summer has been pretty on-off for everyone this year considering the weather but myself and Chris managed plenty of days out dodging showers throughout. Early on in June we bracken bashed up to Glen Ogle where I nabbed my first 8a with Off the Beaten Track just as the rain came in.

Not long after this I came down with the shingles which floored me for a while right before going off for this summer's cycle trip - this time through Skye and the big hill circuits in Applecross and Lochalshe. I was with a non climber, Calum, the whole time - cycling through the North West with no chance to climb anything bar a quick rest-stop scramble is pretty damn torturous! Having not cycled for quite a while myself and cycling with a very fit enthusiast it was a pretty soul destroying trip but good all the same.

The Cullin ridge

Swirling seas at Reiff, but no climbing

Calum Powering up the Bealach Ratagan, still fresh after the Bealach Na Ba

Another day myself and Chris went for a wander up to the Loch Sloy boulders and found ourselves some good new problems - there are still plenty of things to go at all grades in the glen and the climbing is of good quality - it's a bit spaced out though.

Chris nabbing the second acsent of great wee problem at Loch Sloy

Another place visited was Craigmaddie - I had high hopes for this venue and felt a little let down by what we found there. While a lot of the problems are good quality, there just isn't a - lot to the place, though I'd recommend at least one visit

The main trip of the summer came with a visit to St. Bees head, the Bowderstone, Llanberis and Gogarth in a week-long road trip.

Chris on the fantastic Fisherman's dyno at St. Bees Head

First up was St. Bees Head - the bouldering here is absolutely fantastic. The rock quality is very good and the number of problems is great - the vast majority of which ranging from v2 to v7 so an excellent playground for everyone. The atmosphere is really relaxed and calm too - get down there and give it a bash! Don't go for the routes though as apart from a select few they are horribly sandy and unpleasant.

..and cranking hard on Power Pinch at the Dumby-esque Bowderstone

Next up was a wet weather day at the Bowderstone. A bit of a hardcore boulder that has a distinctly dumbartonish feel to it. I highly recommend power pinch to anyone visiting - both methods for it are excellent. If it's raining in the lakes then it will be fine here - the roof is permadry i think.

Having fun on the brilliant Cromlech boulders - a good option when the cliffs are sodden

The most psyched man in the world going for the top on Dawes's Cromlech boulders classic

The plan was for a-lot of trad to be done in the pass but with incessant showers and badly seeping walls we never got the chance to get on any of the numerous classics that we had planned on doing - not even on the slate. When the valley is wet definitely get on the Cromlech Boulders - many of the problems are superb at all grades too with plenty of superclassic things to get including Jerry's roof. Only a frustrated decision to drive out to Gogarth saw us do any trad at all. After taking eons to finally find Wren Zawn we jumped at a break in the weather to get on A Dream of White Horses, hoping that it might just keep dry for us. By the time the first pitch was in the rain had come in again and made the going slow and a bit unnerving. In the end we topped out in the dark and smirr after taking some serious time on the sodden and slippery last pitch. An instant favourite day. All this and it was Chris's first summer multipitch and hanging belays.. It was a miny epic and won't be forgotten for a long time!

Recently I started getting into Dumby again properly and decided to work on In Bloom and sent it on my second day:



Cheers to the wee dudes in the video for the encouragement and entertainment!!

The downside to this being me slightly tearing an A2 in a ring finger. While I should be pretty happy about having done something I thought was way beyond me I'm pretty pissed that I've managed to injure a finger again just as the bouldering season has come in and all the folk from Uni are starting to go down to the rock again. That and the weather is now good....grrrrr.

Aside from that nothing much else happened except a short trip to Font at the start of September, which was brilliant. (which I will write about and post pictures from in a couple of days on another post),

Happy climbing,
Stewy

Exam Time Sabotage

The bouldering season for the year is slowly coming to a close now. Hot sunny days have swept in to replace the cool weather, in has swept the trad and sport season and with it my hopes of doing my current Dumby project have been largely brushed aside.

I've been working Sabotage on and off now since Novemberish last year but have only gotten seriously into trying it since getting back from Switzerland. It's long and quite powerful - and being pretty weak I had to work at it and try to come up with a sequence that made it do able for me. It's the first climb I've ever become obsessed with doing - usually I just decide that things are too difficult, or too frightening / dangerous for me and don't bother trying or putting any effort into them as a result. Sabotage has been different some-how, I decided to put some effort in and quickly made the decision that I was going to do it, no matter what. It's all I do at Dumbarton just now and going there has taken priority over quite a lot. Usually I'm a bit of a wall rat but I've only been a handful of times recently. Studying has ended up being the night before the exam as I end up climbing or training instead (not sure that's any different from normal though!). I've been training much harder, eating correctly and struggling to keep my mind from visualising the moves - in the short periods of time where I am actually revising I frequently end up staring into space for periods just thinking through the sequence over and over, occasionally thinking of ideas, but generally just thinking. Laying in bed my mind is like a video stuck in a loop. I can't escape it.

At first the start was impossible to me, the cut loose ridiculous and the ending a mystery but after trying so many different sequences and just throwing myself at the moves over and over, It feels all too do-able now. Siege tactics work. Of a big help, as it often is at Dumby, was just sitting and trying to think of ways to make it easier for myself - I no longer make the powerful cutloose from the sloper, nor do I use Dave's rock over method at the top among other smaller things. This has made it longer, but less strength orientated and so more suited to me.

I've fallen from the top couple of moves now about 14 times from the sitter, almost every time that little bit closer and often falling due to sweaty tips, but with the conditions getting worse I think I may reluctantly be forced to give up till next winter and start going sport and trad climbing and generally start enjoying the fine weather rather than despising it. It's a painful decision to make as I have it so damn wired now and I really don't want to lose that efficiency and knowledge, nor what may be the only chance I have of doing what might be the hardest thing I ever climb.

Cheers for the now,
Stewy

Swissy n' Dumby n' stuff

A few weeks ago now after having blown myself off in public I decided to go to Dumbarton as usual. I was there alone (clearly I had alienated myself from everyone) and sitting under the Mugsy roof being thumped by high winds and sporadic rain with Oasis' Little by Little lyric "Why am I really here?" bouncing back and forth through my head. Sitting under that roof waiting for the rain to pass I got to stair down and study my project of well over a year - Totality.

Ross H on Totality 7B+

It's a tricky and crimpy problem that had for a long time thrown me off right at the last move. Sitting there wondering just what I was doing out there instead of being at the wall I eventually spotted a wee pocket - just big enough to get two of my scrawny fingers in - beside the last move that I had somehow never noticed or seen anybody use before. It gave me a bit of interest in staying past the current shower to have another go. At first it seemed like a long shot but using it allows a better set up for the last move and success. Definitely worth a try for anyone working the problem.

On another day at the Rock (one of many before Swissy) some new Pongo sit-start beta came up: a visiting American climber has found a particularly good finger lock/jam in place of pinching the block. Neil McNair had the fright of his life when he tried the beta that day and held the flange for the first time. He topped out a short while later a happy man. At first the jam felt ridiculously painful and unlikely for myself and others but since then I've played with it some-more and have found a way to do it for my small fingers that is not quite so sore (initially I thought I'd need a local anesthetic to pull on it). Ben is just bearing the pain and pulling hard - on one day he fell off the normal pongo part but now is being defied by the jam.

It was my nineteenth birthday when I found the way for me to use the jam and I thought I was going to have an excellent birthday with such a great line ticked. Not so. I pull through the jam, matched the flange....pulled through pongo....got to the top out (which is graded at roughly 3+ by the way) and proceeded to fight and thrutch unable to do the easiest part of the climb. I pumped out and dropped off after a few minutes with the most pumped arms I've ever had. I think I might well be the only person to have ever fallen off here for every ascent of every variation of Pongo and no-one will let me hear the end of it... (I was feeling really old and decrepit and must have forgotten where/who/when I was at the top...at least I like to think that's what happened)

Ah well - next time I'm there! The jam does make the problem significantly easier and the grade of 8A no longer applies. I would think that 7B+ is more accurate though it may well be 7B?

Dumby sunsets are an excellent end to a day

So last week Ben, Mike, Danny, Chris and I where all in Magic Wood for a 9 Day bouldering trip. Having only climbed in font before on a similar trip it was quite a contrast: where font is warm, sandy and accommodating to those that just want to climb tons and tons of cool stuff Magic Wood was cold, snowy and project orientated which is a bit less of a holiday to me. In saying that it was still extremely fun and I can't wait to go back next year. There is a lot of very inspiring lines and plenty to go at on fantastic rough granite.

The weather was pretty damn baltic - down to minus 6 at night and the whole place was covered in snow and ice for the majority of the trip. The cold was pretty disheartening at times but lovely when the sun showed its face. Mike and Ben have pretty much said everything on their blogs so have some of my pictures they didn't use :)

Chris Everett giving it 100% on La Traversata 7A/+

Ben Litster giving the beta on Neverending Story part 1 8A+And pouring some soul into Jack's Broken Heart 8A+Mike Lee Hooking up Supernova 7C/+

Cheers and until next time my you send/ climb/ ascend/ summit/ latch, match and dispatch/ crush/ fire/ send to hell/ complete/ finish/ top out on/ do/ obliterate/ tick/ whatever your projects soon!

Stewy