PHOTOS: Salvan Smash-Fest
The last couple of weekends I have been at Salvan as well as a few other local crags. It’s been a whirlwind of catching up with friends and cragging.
Here’s some photos!
The hut under the main crag - with routes up to 9a+ - gorgeous!
Me on the classic 7c+
Maddie on the classic 7c+
Ug smashing in another hammock session!
Maddie on a 7c flared crack. I dug deep and smashed this in the boiling temperatures; greasy finger-locks are us. Maddie came back for a rematch a few days later and also smashed! Go Maddie!
Bouldering with Ug and Maddie – Psyched!
Last weekend I had a lovely day in the forest with Ug and Maddie, picking wild strawberries and raspberries, being hung over, playing a guitar and finding and cleaning and climbing a cool roof crack/chimney thing. The beast went down to all three of us in one direction or another, with a variety of methods used. I favoured the good old ‘invert’ and seemed to really like using my own ankles as handholds. Ug just punched its face in and Maddie put in a fine performance of determination and came away unscathed and with the crack in the bag.
Other more normal, documented problems were also climbed, and all that after a 4am finish due to ‘Chamonix Nights’ the previous evening…
Maddie on one of Ug's special 'Warm-up' problems... the girl can crimp!
Me on one of the best problems in this particular forest - a lovely 7b/+ ish sit start roof groove thang. Nice (Video below).
Maddie showing her guns on the 7b/+ thing.
Get Your Psyche On!!
So yesterday I shed a tear for North Wales, as I wrote up two reports for the front page of UKC, both about my best mates, both about Wales.
- Report 1: Caff makes a big bang!
- Report 2: Throbber links some very hard things together.
Oh how I miss it! Looking forward to September and a visit back ‘home’.
Anyway – back to the point – ‘Get Your Psyche On!’ And right now I have got mine on. Oh yes!
I know that James McChav is a totally amazing climber. I have witnessed this first hand on many occasions, and some of the things I have seen him do have proved to me that he is in a league or two above me.
Is he the strongest climber I have ever seen? No way. Is he the most technically talented climber I have ever seen? No. Is he the craziest, boldest climber I have ever seen? Nope. So what is he? He’s a war machine.
James has made the first repeat of The Big Bang (9a). How? By smashing it to pieces. By getting up at God knows what time to do 400 pull ups before a day out in the Welsh hills taking people mountain camping, and probably doing 200 sit ups and 200 push ups in his tent whilst everyone else is sleeping. By calling in at the Cromlech boulders time and again after work and doing laps and laps and laps until he was totally exhausted and his fingers were bleeding.
By saying no to that beer and that cake and that chocolate bar.
And by never, ever giving up until he had smashed it right in.
I have seen James do this on many, many trad routes. It’s the same thing, but over a different time period. This redpoint has taken him a while. Training, fighting, struggling. The same fight goes on when he’s on a trad onsight. He steps on to the rock and you just know he’s up for going the full 12 rounds, right to the bitter end.
After just 5 minutes on the phone with James I am more psyched than I have been for a good few months.
Better get on that finger board… and get back on that 8c I have been trying at Flaine. I am going to go and every time I am going to be ready for the full 12 rounds. Ding Ding!!
James – I shake your hand and I congratulate you again. And I hope the psyche that you have passed on means that before the year is out you will be shaking my hand too! Thanks!
Me on Delerium Tremens (8c) at Dalle d'Oiseau Rare, Flaine. I have had three short sessions on this route and feel it is definitely on for a redpoint, even though I pulled a hold off just after the crux! A bit harder now, doh!
POEM: Ode to a Skylark
I like poetry as well as climbing and beer and things like that. Just now at the dinner table I was moved to read again one of my old favourites. Here it is.
Ode to a Skylark
|
| Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! |
| Bird thou never wert - |
| That from Heaven or near it |
| Pourest thy full heart |
| In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. |
| Higher still and higher |
| From the earth thou springest, |
| Like a cloud of fire; |
| The blue deep thou wingest, |
| And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. |
| In the golden lightning |
| Of the sunken sun, |
| O’er which clouds are bright’ning, |
| Thou dost float and run, |
| Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. |
| The pale purple even |
| Melts around thy flight; |
| Like a star of Heaven, |
| In the broad daylight |
| Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight - |
| Keen as are the arrows |
| Of that silver sphere |
| Whose intense lamp narrows |
| In the white dawn clear, |
| Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. |
| All the earth and air |
| With thy voice is loud, |
| As, when night is bare, |
| From one lonely cloud |
| The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed. |
| What thou art we know not; |
| What is most like thee? |
| From rainbow clouds there flow not |
| Drops so bright to see, |
| As from thy presence showers a rain of melody: - |
| Like a Poet hidden |
| In the light of thought, |
| Singing hymns unbidden, |
| Till the world is wrought |
| To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: |
| Like a high-born maiden |
| In a palace-tower, |
| Soothing her love-laden |
| Soul in secret hour |
| With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: |
| Like a glow-worm golden |
| In a dell of dew, |
| Scattering unbeholden |
| Its aërial hue |
| Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view: |
| Like a rose embowered |
| In its own green leaves, |
| By warm winds deflowered, |
| Till the scent it gives |
| Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves: |
| Sound of vernal showers |
| On the twinkling grass, |
| Rain-awakened flowers - |
| All that ever was |
| Joyous and clear and fresh – thy music doth surpass. |
| Teach us, Sprite or Bird, |
| What sweet thoughts are thine: |
| I have never heard |
| Praise of love or wine |
| That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. |
| Chorus hymeneal, |
| Or triumphal chant, |
| Matched with thine would be all |
| but an empty vaunt - |
| A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. |
| What objects are the fountains |
| Of thy happy strain? |
| What fields, or waves, or mountains? |
| What shapes of sky or plain? |
| What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? |
| With thy clear keen joyance |
| Languor cannot be: |
| Shadow of annoyance |
| Never came near thee: |
| Thou lovest, but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety. |
| Waking or asleep, |
| Thou of death must deem |
| Things more true and deep |
| Than we mortals dream, |
| Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? |
| We look before and after, |
| And pine for what is not: |
| Our sincerest laughter |
| With some pain is fraught; |
| Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. |
| Yet, if we could scorn |
| Hate and pride and fear, |
| If we were things born |
| Not to shed a tear, |
| I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. |
| Better than all measures |
| Of delightful sound, |
| Better than all treasures |
| That in books are found, |
| Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! |
| Teach me half the gladness |
| That thy brain must know; |
| Such harmonious madness |
| From my lips would flow, |
| The world should listen then, as I am listening now. |
VIDEO: Andrew Lansley Rap
Well, it would seem that whilst all eyes are firmly fixed on the Murdoch circus, Lansley has started to privatise the NHS.
Sorry Andrew. We noticed.
- Guardian article here: The Guardian
So it’s about time to give more voice to this rap:
VIDEO: Long Board Girls Crew – Carving the Mountains
This summer is probably going to see me involved in some climbing filming, either for some web clips, or for a slot at the Kendal film festival, or maybe a festival next year.
I have a few climbing projects on the boil at the moment, and hopefully I will get a couple of them ticked this year, and they might make for a reasonably interesting film, who knows.
But what I would really like the film to capture, more than climbing or adventure or anything like that, is just the pure fun and good vibes of going climbing.
With that in mind, here is a really good fun video, and if the footage of my climbing makes someone smile like this video made me smile, then that’s mission accomplished in my opinion!
I give you the Madrid based Long Board Girls Crew!
And if you liked that, there’s loads more on Juan Rayos’s vimeo page, including my other fav: Winter Night Longboard.
Back in Chamonix after a trip to the Frankenjura
Last weekend was a DMM road show event in the Frankenjura in Germany, so I rocked up and met up with some friends from Wales and did four days of cragging, which was brilliant.
Here’s a couple of photos of Pete from the weekend.
Pete 'Throbber' Robins redpointing the short 8a of Leftfield at Marientaler Wande
Pete 'Throbber' Robins narrowly missing out on the onsight of Katapult (7c) at Gossweinsteiner Wande
We mainly did classic routes in the 7th grade, as it was a short trip and also very, very hot, (with a few flashes of 7c’s between the team), but Pete and I did briefly try Master Blaster – a very bouldery 8b. Pete blew it with the glory jug in his hand. Unlucky!
My favourite route was the classic Kurt Albert route of Fight Gravity, which I did on the last day, very tired and longing for cake and beer. It was super good fun, even though I felt like my arms were hanging off!
The Frankenjura is such a great place to climb, with Kellerbier and lovely cakes never too far away. It was also really nice to meet up with Sarah Seeger, a fellow Marmot climber after I had climbed a little bit with her in Wales earlier in the year.
- You can check out more info on the Frankenjura in this UKC Article
Massive thanks to Ben from DMM – he was the man of the weekend and he did a very good job. He did very well.
Anyway – after the Frankenjura, I managed a short and extremely hot session in the Schwäbische Alb! Yeah! A quick try on the infamous ‘Snail’ was great fun and I am psyched to try it again.
This 30m route is a superb bit of limestone, graded 8b (it’s a tough one…) and it has a heart breaking last move. Brilliant. You can see a photo on 8a.nu
The Schwäbische Alb is a quiet climbing area, a little bit like the Frankenjura, in the south of Germany.
Now I’m back in Chamonix and the weather is lovely. I am super psyched at the moment for sport climbing and have loads of projects to try. The list is never ending.
To get psyched I just watched a video of Fred Rouhling on Salamandre (9a+) which is just down the road from me…
Parthian Shot Article on UKC
I’ve been working on a piece on the classic gritstone route of Parthian Shot for about two weeks on and off and have just published it here on UKClimbing.
Thanks to everyone who helped me with the piece – especially Niall. Great feedback.
I enjoyed putting this one together and I wonder what will happen to the flake. Talk of bolting it on or leaving it be has been going on ‘behind the scenes’.
For me, it would have been something right at my limit with the flake intact, and I guess I won’t be attempting it without that good hold!
But, having never done the route, and only ever having half-dreamt about doing it, I don’t really think I have strong opinions either way. Interesting to see what happens.
I think I might top-rope it when I am back in the UK – just to see what it’s like!
A few weeks ago I blogged about an old friend of mine Chris Akrigg having a bike accident. (See previous Post).
Chris has just released his video of the accident. Chris is riding at an old local crag of mine – Earl Crag in Yorkshire. He falls from the top of the far left buttress, which is directly above the line of ‘Mindbomb’ the very tough Dave Pegg E7. Ouch.
- You can follow Chris on his site: ChrisAkrigg.com
Rock climbing in Chamonix? Really? Yep.
So I was on the Marmot Rocks trip in North Wales a couple of weeks ago (UKC News), as I am a Marmot sponsored climber. (More on that trip later).
I was chatting to fellow Marmot climber Lucy Creamer about my fairly recent move to Chamonix, France. She seemed pretty convinced that it wasn’t a great place to live for rock climbing, and that it only offered alpine mountaineering. Fortunately for Jack ‘hung up his crampons after the Eiger 
‘ Geldard – she is very wrong.
There is clearly loads of alpine granite in the area, which is world class, but there’s also loads of cragging, both granite and limestone. Not to mention bouldering.
Anyway, I arrived back in Chamonix a couple of days ago and the very next evening went out with ‘Ug’ to see his new boulder near his house. This thing, right next to the road, had probably never been climbed on, offers around 15 problems on all faces and now has at least two ‘projects’ for Ug to get stuck in to. The one in the below video is very hard and will probably be 8B. There were lots of moves on it that I couldn’t do.
Anyway – just a few snaps (not pro photos) of bouldering and sport cragging from the local valley below – and an invite to all my UK friends to come visit!
And for those who want to check out Bionnassy – the ‘hard sport climbing crag’ of the area – a few photos on Grimper.
And not a glacier in sight!! Cool!
