Here are a couple of photos from the Pas de Chevre which runs underneath the Dru North Face. I don’t usually take the ‘big camera’ out skiing, and have never done any ski photography as such, but today I had the heavy beast with me as I wanted to photograph a mountain face for a future book project ( I like photographing mountains and rocks. They don’t move as fast as skiers!)

However, whilst I was there I snapped a couple of shots of powder gangsters Charlie Boscoe and Ben O’Connor Croft.

Skiing conditions are still very good in Chamonix right now, and we have blue skies too. What are you waiting for?!

PS: Parts 2 and 3 of my training plan blog will be published soon.

Hope you enjoy these shots.

Ben dropping in hot and blowing shit up like a powder gangster...

Charlie shreds the gnar without even trying.

Some people take a while to get shready. Ben, on the other hand, was born shready...

• For more info on Chamonix conditions for both skiing and climbing, follow Charlie’s blog: chamconditions.blogspot.com

A couple of days ago a friend of mine asked me about my climbing for next year, and I told her my training was due to start on the 22nd of January (right now I am having a break from climbing). She was surprised that I had planned my climbing that far ahead and that specifically, and, after a few minutes thought, she asked me if I could design a similar specifically tailored training programme for her climbing. I said yes I could, and I will.

But first I think I will need to make a few suggestions as to how she will need to build up self-discipline for climbing training, given that right now her life is pretty hectic, and she doesn’t train for climbing at all.

Training for anything requires a huge amount of self-discipline. Training eats in to your schedule, training makes you tired, training can sometimes be boring and training can sometimes be pretty solitary. Self-discipline is what you need to surmount those obstacles, but perhaps before you start training for climbing, you need to train your self-discipline?

Stick to the plan and one day you may have arms like Jimmy Big Guns here. After several years of unsuccessful attempts on a desperate 8b in North Wales (Melancholie) Jim committed to the route properly, dropped his weight and got it done. Well done Jim! See photo below.

Being realistic:

When one decides to start training, it is sometimes done with a rush of enthusiasm or psyche. This psyche is not self-discipline, and a distinction must be made between the two things. Your psyches tells you that you can train 6 days per week. Your psyche tells you that getting up at 6am and going for a run in the cold and dark mornings of January is totally within your capability. Basically, your psyche is full of shit. Even if that psyche can last for a couple of weeks, it most probably can’t last for long enough for you to finish a real training programme for climbing.

In order to determine what constitutes a reasonable level of training that you will be able to commit to (right now), it is essential that you look at your lifestyle now, and see how much climbing you already do. If you currently climb for one afternoon every two weeks, is it realistic that you will switch that to climbing/training 5 days per week for 5 hours per day? No. (Unless of course you are swapping another serious sport for climbing – say you were a competitive runner or similar).

Take a look at your current daily schedule. What do you do? How do you spend your time? Where are you going to find this time for climbing training?

Time is very much like money. It disappears very easily, but is very hard to save up. Saying you will find an extra 2 hours per day, but not thinking where you will get these two hours from is like saying you will find an extra £200 per day, but not earning any more money.

Your psyche may tell you that you can not spend so much time with your husband/wife, or that you can manage on just 6 hours sleep when you are more used to 8 hours, that you will skip that session in the pub with your mates, but realism tells me that you will fail in your training plan.

Before writing your training schedule, write out your current schedule, and then decide how much you can tweak it to accommodate your new climbing training. Base your new realistic training plan on how much time you can afford.

Getting up 30mins earlier than you are used to twice per week to do a finger board session is way more realistic than getting up 1 hour earlier 5 times per week. Depending on your current level of self discipline this may be a reasonable suggestion. (Are you lazy? Do you get stuff done? Asses your level of self discipline and tailor your initial climbing plan to suit. Go easy on yourself at first if you are not used to being self disciplined.)

Taking an extra hour at lunchtime on a Wednesday to go to your local wall, then working that extra hour that evening, may well be a more realistic long-term plan than skipping your Friday night dinner date with your gorgeous girlfriend… You get the idea.

Tactics:

There are lots of time saving tricks and longevity helping tricks that you can do to help you kick start your training plan. This is where your initial psyche can actually help you. You will probably need to buy a finger board, and put it up. If your training plan involves a change in diet, then you may need to un-stock (yum yum) your kitchen of unhealthy foods, and stock up on recovery drinks / dried fruit / whatever you have written in to your plan. If you are going to be using a climbing wall regularly, this might also be the time to buy that season pass. If you are aiming to lose weight, then this is the time to do your calorie planning etc.

This post isn’t suggesting any of those things specifically, it is just suggesting that whatever is in your plan, you should use your new-found and most likely temporary psyche to make your training as easy as possible for the next six weeks/months/whatever. Buy that thera-band, chuck out those bars of dairy milk, put up that fingerboard… get ready.

Building Up:

Self discipline is like any sport. You build up and get better. You may find that you have made some choices, chopped out some crap food, done your finger board exercises and increased your climbing grade, and after 6 weeks / 12 weeks /whatever, you feel good and have got in to a routine. It all seems normal and you feel you could even up your training slightly. In effect you have trained your self discipline. After 6 weeks of getting up at 7:00 instead of 7:30, you may find you can get your ass out of the sack at 6:45, giving you an extra 15 minutes of punishment on your fingerboard.

But don’t push too hard too fast. Make a plan. Stick to it. Reap the rewards.

Training is about pushing yourself to increase ability. If the weight is too heavy to push, then it’s not going to work. Don’t make your initial training plan a 250kg bench press. Even Jimmy Big Guns can’t press that much!

Jimmy Big Guns on Melancholie, 8b, Lower Pen Trwyn

Eiger article published in Marmot Life Magazine

Marmot publishes a Marmot Life Magazine every six months and the new one is out now. The magazine is a really well put together publication, which obviously has a commercial angle, being a brand magazine, but in the main focusses on high quality editorial content.

The last issue had a great piece by Britain’s most accomplished sport climber; Steve McClure, and this issue has a large profile of German climbing legend Stefan Glowacz, as well as a brilliant piece on the first free ascent of the Harlin Direct route on the north face of the Eiger by Robert Jasper. I also contributed to this section of the magazine with a short piece on the history of the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, with a few photos from my ascent last spring.

• You can read the whole magazine online here: Marmot Magazine

Robert Jasper is an amazing climber, who I had the fortune to climb with briefly in North Wales earlier this year. At home in the mountains, icefalls and of course on rock, Robert has made many first ascents and hard repeats in the Alps, including the first free ascent of No Siesta on the Grandes Jorasses about ten years ago.

Here’s a nice video of Robert knocking out an 8c sport route in the Basler Jura. Not bad for a mountaineer!

And it is with this in mind I look to the next 12 months and to some very exciting plans.

The last year has seen me based in Chamonix in the French Alps, which has been truly fantastic. World class climbing of all disciplines has been on my doorstep, and this is a luxury I am not going to give up quite yet.

My two most memorable routes from 2011 were certainly the North Face of the Eiger (check out my UKC article) in the spring and the North Face of the Matterhorn (check out my writing) in the autumn.

In between these two routes I did a whole host of rock climbing, including ticking a line I had been after for a while in Wales (UKC News). However I didn’t achieve my main rock climbing ambition of the year, which was to climb 8c. You can’t win them all.

I am now looking forward to next year, with some plans to climb with some really exciting people. Nick Bullock and I are hoping for some major sea cliff action in the summer, and Rob Greenwood and I are hoping for some big mountain action in the autumn.

Squeezed in between that will be more attempts at becoming a sport climber.

But until the climbing season starts – I just would like to say… it’s snowing in Chamonix and that means… POWDER SKIING!!!!

If you know James McHaffie, you will know that he is a half decent climber, and generally a pretty okay bloke, although he doesn’t have the best luck with cars.

He’s always got a smile (see below) and has been instructing for quite a few years now. If I was looking for someone to drag me up a cliff, I’d choose him. Mainly because he’s pretty cheap. And he’s dragged me up loads of cliffs before, so I know he can do it.

• Here he is: Jamesmchaffie.com

Please pass the link around so that James gets lots of work instructing, which means he can afford a trip to climb Silbergier in the Ratikon with me next summer (back to that being dragged up cliffs thing again).

Enjoy this photo:

Here, professional instructor James McHaffie is indicating that he will take a maximum of two clients on his rock climbing days. You can book him on his site: Jamesmchaffie.com

Here he is: Jamesmchaffie.com

But for the time being I’m having a short break from climbing. I’ll be popping down the wall a couple of times a week to keep in reasonable shape, but not training or striving for a specific goal.

For those interested, and especially members of ‘The Mill’ back in North Wales – here’s a photo of Jonny on the private training wall in Chamonix. The two system boards are on electric motors that can be adjusted to any angle. There’s a large campus board, a few hangboards and a new large board about to be built (steel in place) and a bouldering area at the back. Behind me is also a full gym, with exercise bikes, weight machines etc.

A superb facility.

Naked Jonny at the private training wall, Chamonix

We were probably off-route, but the angle and the terrain meant that you could climb anywhere, albeit with a degree of trepidation. I was tired. I wouldn’t say exhausted, as I know, through experience, just how far in to exhaustion it is possible to push. Still, the going was slow. My stomach churned with nausea, my head boomed with altitude. We’d not slept the night prior, and I’d come straight from sea level. I felt weak.

The rope snaked out ahead, Rob above me. We were moving together with a lot of rope between us, as protection was so scarce it came only every hundred metres or so, and even then it was poor. For much of the time there was nothing but our tools holding us to the face, no gear to be had. Brittle, paper-thin ice was splashed over the rotten gneiss. Crampons ripped and axes shifted behind loose rubble. The climbing was easy, perhaps Scottish III, but we were tired, a thousand sunless metres behind us testament to that. We stopped briefly to take stock, still unsure how far there was left to go.

Succinctly we voiced our concerns to one another, our words zipping down the rope like telegrams; If one of us fell, we’d most likely both die. We were tired. We needed to push on to try and reach the descent before nightfall. We must heed caution.

And so we continued. Unbeknown to us a party had fallen from the route we were on, just the day before. Seven hundred metres they fell. One died, the other sustained horrendous injuries. We didn’t know. We carried on climbing.

Up ahead Rob had discarded his axes and was climbing bare-handed, he’d decided that although his hands were freezing, it was less tenuous than climbing with tools. The thought never crossed my mind, and I continued mixed climbing up the rotten rock. I lifted my axe and suddenly both my feet ripped down. I slid, just a short way, maybe four inches. The low angle of the wall meant my single axe was enough to keep me in balance. I kicked my feet and carried on. Fuck.

There was no point retreating, not that we wanted to. A thousand metres of suffering lay below us, ropes catching on loose rock, poor abseil anchors, traversing. With only a couple of rope-lengths to the summit ridge, the easiest way to retreat would be to ascend. We carried on climbing. We wanted to, but also, we had to.

I hoped Rob wouldn’t fall. He, I’m sure, tried his best not to. I thought about why I was there. I noticed my feet were a little cold, but not too bad. I felt a bit sick. My mind wandered, until it concluded that this was, in fact, a very dangerous place. Thinking of danger, I remembered that my face still hurt. Lower down the route I’d been hit by a brick-sized piece of ice, dislodged by a climber above. It hit me square in the face, bursting my cheek, and splashing blood on the ice, like red wine on a beige carpet. I was nearly knocked off and nearly knocked out. Rob said it looked okay. The bleeding had stopped after another pitch.

Jesus. Why was I there? What exactly was I getting out of this, I wondered. Nothing. I was tired and it was cold. We’d been out of the wind all day, but now, as we approached the ridge, it had picked up. At least its chill numbed my aching face. I thought about a woman I might be in love with. And the children we might have one day. I thought I might tell her. I knew I wouldn’t though, of course. The rope tugged, I kept climbing.

A couple of days later, Jon asked us how the route was. “Fine” we said. “A bit loose, but pretty easy”. And it was.

The Matterhorn. Photo by Rob Greenwood.

The weather played ball (just about) and master photographer Jon Griffith snapped a load of shots of my ugly mug on some classic routes at the Cornish venues of Sennen, Land’s End, Bosigran and Gurnards Head. The photos are for the next Cotswold catalogue, and I think I am on the cover, but unfortunately not climbing, there was a few ‘lifestyle’ shots.

Jon was shooting with a 5d MKII and a couple of different lenses, both from the top and from abseil ropes, and I was climbing. The routes we did, I either climbed in a one-er, or climbed with a couple of pauses hanging on the gear as Jon repositioned. It was really good fun, and Jon was a legend to work with.

The hardest route we did was up the side of the hotel after Jon locked himself out of his room! But I also nipped up Ghost at Bosigran and Mastadon at Gurnards Head, both classic E3′s and both Extreme Rock ticks. I’d done them before, but you can’t grumble at getting to hang out on pieces of rock like that and getting paid for it.

Some photos from the shoot (all photos copyright Jon Griffith):

Jack on Mastadon at Gurnard's Head

Hanging about at Bosigran

Night shot at Bosigran (1am finish!)

Despite quite bad shoulder impingement I managed to climb 7 days out of 9 and have a great time in the boiling sunshine.

• More info on Céüse here on UKC and here on Rockfax.

It was fantastic to unplug from the internet for a week. The weather was so hot that it was only an option to climb in the shade of the late afternoon, meaning mornings were a splendid mixture of coffee, relaxation, shoulder exercises and poetry writing. How lovely.

Neither Jude or myself were on top climbing form, but we both managed some classics and had a brilliant time on the perfect solid limestone. I was still onsighting up to 7c, so can’t really complain too much.

Jude lowering off Femme Noir

Jude climbing the classic 7c Femme Noir. A toughie!

My focus was to tick a line at Craig Dorys that I had my eye on, as well as do a couple of classic routes, and to add in some catching up with as many of my friends as possible in the evenings. It was a success all round.

The first day Maddie, Ian and I all headed to Craig Dorys and Maddie and I set about the new line, The Bigger Bang (UKC Report). Ian was, unfortunately, slightly worse for wear after the previous nights excesses at Crazy Rob’s house. Luckily for me I went to bed after 7 pints, so I was okay. Ian left early to go to a reggae night and Maddie and I carried on climbing.

I got to test my (as yet unpatented) ‘tent pegs and chain’ abseil anchor. Maddie was well psyched…

Maddie looking slightly apprehensive as she abs in to Jacuzzi Zawn off some tent pegs!

The route went okay, with a bit of cheating in the form of a bit of preplaced gear. Why not. Craig Dorys eh. You can get away with murder down there!

Anyway, after my go, which I enjoyed immensely, Maddie had a shot and after a bit of upping and downing and umming and aahing, she tied on and gave it a proper go and fell off on the last hard move on to some small RPs.

Maddie tying on before her big lead attempt...

Evening came, and we were knackered, so we opted to head back to Llanberis for a curry. Unfortunately the car had broken down, so Rob the champion came and picked us up (what a legend) and the farmer’s brother was duly called and said he could get us a new water pump and sort us out the following day.

Car abandoned, curry eaten, forecast checked. It wasn’t looking good for the next day.

Chris Doyle on his 8b Project at Pigeon's Cave

As forecast, the next day was wet, but we headed to Pigeon’s Cave on the Orme, and thrashed around on overhanging greasy limestone. Chris tried his project which looked really good, but very hard. And Pete tried The Crack Project, which also looked nails. I flashed Koo for a ‘warm up’ and then proceeded to fall off the last move of Koo Koo about three times in a row and gave up as it started properly pissing it down. Nice!

Pete Robins on The Crack Project at Pigeon's Cave

Anyway, that was all a bit damp, but good to see a bit of Ormes psyche from the team.

The next day we nipped back down the Lleyn to get my mum’s car from the farmer, and we headed to Vatican Zawn.

Rob, Calum and Maddie in Vatican Zawn

Being on a tight time schedule, we only had time for one route per team, and Maddie and I decided to do the classic E3 Path to Rome. It’s a great route and one I have done many times before, but as this was Maddie’s first trip to the Lleyn, it was a ‘must do’ for her.

Maddie making short work of Path to Rome

Rob and crew did some sort of variatio on another E3 that had some ‘terrain’ at the top. Rob pulled off a block and then danced around on the remaining house of cards for a bit, before finally committing to a 4b move and topping out through the hanging gardens of Babylon to glory.

And then it was back to France, all too soon. Oh well. Sport climbing it is then!

I have one more project left in North Wales that I would like to do, and I think it will wait until next spring now. We shall see. Next on the horizon is a trip to Ceuse and then maybe some alpine north faces.

Cheers to all in Llanberis who made the visit special, including: Wraith, JBG, Young Ollie, Crazy Rob, Mandi, Alex, Pete, James and everyone else. The village seemed super psyched!

Smash it in guys!