wasting my life 1 sloper at a time

"you are a unique snowflake"

2011-06-17T11:07:00.002+01:00

"you are a unique snowflake."

Well you're not and I'm not.

If you weren't given the gift you can't get the gift so the best you can do - if your goal is important - is work as hard as you possibly can, pay attention every hour of every day and then maybe, maybe if you've done enough and been smart enough you'll emerge from the muck of mediocrity to shine a bit brighter than you shone before. Then, upon reflection you might decide your goal is a bit more important so you'll start paying attention every minute of every hour of every day. You'll find people who are better than you and you'll take an empty cup when you meet them. Their example will destroy or inspire you and if it's the latter you may stay and learn. You might imitate, doing as they do because you've already accepted that you do not know best - if you did you'd be leading the group they were trying to join. Perhaps being exposed to their superior ability will drive you to work harder than you thought possible, or necessary. Maybe you'll overcome your self-imposed (or worse, society-imposed) limitations and shine even more brightly. Wow, you're getting it: positive reinforcement for hard work and suffering. So maybe you give your goal even more significance and you begin cutting away the ideas and the expectations and the people who you believe prevent you from achieving it. Now you become a real selfish prick, and you begin paying attention every second of every minute of every hour of every day, and you sustain your awareness for weeks and months at a time. You no longer think yourself a unique snowflake, you're a steel-edged blade shaped like a snowflake and you're spinning at warp speed. You're the biggest fish in the pond. You're a badass. Now you have options.

-Mark Twight

Aiming at Nothing and Hitting Your Mark

2011-05-30T10:16:00.003+01:00

I am currently sat in an office with 5 other people, we inhabit this space for 5 days a week and as you sit doing your mundane, unimportant tasks it slowly eats your soul. I walked in this morning and began the pleasantries, i asked who had had a good weekend, "mmhhh it was alright" was the unanimous reply. This is a concept which baffles me. You give away 5 days out of 7 for minor monetary compensation and then on the 2 days on which you are free you do nothing worthy of mention.

Well i am not prepared to fall into this trap, i took my weekend by the scruff of the neck and shook it until it gave up all it had.

It was a weekend of several different chunks of joy and it began with a glorious lie in, a late rise is infrequent nowadays but with rain forecast until 11ish i had no other option. Midday rolled around and i was up and heading for the Newstones. On arrival i had the entire crag to myself so set about a pleasant solitary circuit before having a short session on my new project, its strange, I've been going to the Newstones for 5 years and have only just seen this line, stranger still is that it is next to a problem i climb all the time. I failed but had a very pleasant time.
I sat down took off my shoes and checked the time on my phone, i had a text from Eddie, he was Chapel bound and wanted to know if i was up for a session. I was planning on a continuity session anyway so i packed up and headed to Macc. The idea of an easy continuity session soon disappeared as i got stuck into my hanging arete project. This had seemed tricky last week as i couldnt make the heal hook stick, today was different, the heal stuck and i was victorious.

Time to head for my old mans house for food and football. Fajitas and Barcelona is always a winning combination and indeed i was not disappointed, it was the finest footballing display i have ever seen.

Sunday saw an early start in the Dale and the Cornice was the destination. We had a quick warm up which consisted of lapping a pleasant 6c and then the plan was to jump on Clarion Call, unfortunately it was occupied by the only other people on the crag so we jumped on what we thought was Armistice Day another 7a to the right CC. Adam made a valiant flash attempt and then dogged to the top, i made a less valiant attempt and found the middle section difficult but managed to work out a way through it. It felt hard and after Adam checked the guide again it turns out we were on Whose Line Is It Anyway a 7a+.
Greg turned up, jumped on it and did the crux section in a much better way so i stole his beta and jumped on for my first rp attempt, i fell on the big move to a good side pull which is the last move of the cux section, i lowered down and rested. Next try i arrived at the big move and stuck it, mega, it was game on, the last section is fairly steady until the last move, which for me was a heart breaker, its a blind deadpoint slap for a good flake, on its own its an easy move but at the end of the route it feel much harder, i arrived at the move and spent no time thinking about it or about the pendulum fall you would take and just lay one on, i hit the flake and all was good.
Im new to this sport climbing/rp'ing malarkey and have no idea what i can rp in a session, i was very happy to get a hard 7a+ on my second rp.

Greg wanted to head to the Embankment so we headed off. We passed Maxs Wall and a stopped for a play on Max to the Wall. Greg shot up it placing the draws and i had a quick play to learn the moves, after a rest i tied on and shot up it, i found myself at the 2nd to last move without much left in the tank and just chucked for the hold, to my surprise i caught it, i then then went to pieces, panicked and dived for the finishing jug, i didn't catch it and was left with a plummet. We left the draws in and wondered up to the embankment for Greg to try a route that had spat him off last week, after a half hour of him falling off this and giving up due to fatigue we wondered back down to collect the draws we had left in Max to the Wall.
By this time i had cooled down and started to feel stiff and tired and was resigned to dogging my way up the route and getting the draws back, but i decided that if you don't try you don't achieve so tied on and went for the lead. I fumbled the bottom half and arrived at the crux feeling weak (the crux is a press off 2 side pulls to a good edge) and didn't expect to make it, but i did, clipped and plowed on to the top.
Victory is sweet but unexpected victory is all the sweeter.

"Nothings better than aiming at nothing and hitting your mark" -P.O.S

All that was left was a solitary walk out of the dale, happy and contented i replayed the events of the day as the sounds of Dessa played through my headphones.

in a nut shell

2011-05-27T10:26:00.001+01:00

Kylie Wheeler, the 2006 Commonwealth silver medallist in the heptathlon, said of working and training: “You do have to put your life on hold and you might not have as much time as you would like with your family and friends, but when you get to stand on the podium, all the sacrifices are worth it.

Deciding to try

2011-05-27T08:28:00.002+01:00

How hard should you try?

I know people who climb at the weekend and train twice in the week and they think they are committed to training/climbing and that this is a satisfactory amount of effort to put in to improve and achieve there goals in climbing.
I was one of these people and i believed it, and maybe it is enough effort to get better, but, what if i went the extra mile, put in that little bit extra effort, what would i achieve then?

With the arrival of the games next year i checked to see what kind of day you have to have to become the best in the world and unsurprisingly it puts myself, and everyone else, to shame.
With full time jobs, full time training and friends/family commitments they still manage to be the best in the world, this is a truly humbling thought and makes me feel very very slack.
The most effort i have put into climbing (or anything else for that matter) was the 6 months before i went to the forest, on a good week i would do about 6 hrs of training and climbed after work and at the weekend. At the time i saw this as an acceptable amount of effort to put in but since it was interspersed drinking, smoking and missed sessions, i am left wondering how much better i could have made a very successful trip.

I feel it is now time to shake up the game and start to put in some real effort for a decent amount of time.

Currently I'm in the very fortunate position of being able to dedicate a massive amount of my time to climbing, no girlfriend, no family commitments, an easy job which is neither stressful nor strenuous, 24/7 access to superb training facilities and quality climbing on my doorstep. This could all add up to great things and since this situation wont last forever and i feel that now is my best, and possibly last, chance to really achieve something i can be proud of in my life.

OK, so that last bit is a little over dramatic but that thought may be a good thing, this fear of mediocrity i now have can only serve me well in my ensuing challenge.

C,T,E,S,R.

2011-05-23T10:07:00.003+01:00

The days roll on but little changes, climb,train,eat,sleep,repeat, this is the motion to which my life is currently flowing and will hopefully continue to flow for the foreseeable future.

The lime loving has continued in the last couple of weeks and surely it must be here to stay as i enjoyed a day at Masson Lees quarry. Despite the fact that its a hole in the ground, despite the fact that getting brained by falling rocks is a distinct posibility and despite the fact that 1 wall is apparently held together by sikka we had a good day. We began on the easy side of the quarry but due to the fact that dodging falling rock is not on my to do list we quickly moved to the safer side. The highlight of the day was a route called Grand Theft Auto which took a line up a corner with excellent moves through a small roof at half height, one of the better routes i have done and certainly one of the best in the quarry.
The day after dodging death at ML we headed for Litton Mill end of Water-Cum-Jolly but after the walk in it began to rain, trad and wet lime dont mix so fled for drier pastures. The rain persisted and then increased but Adam had a 2 day ticket so was eager to find something dry so we ended up at Cow Dale. CD is a small steep crag just off the A6 and stays dry in the rain, however, it is normally wet until May but with the recnt dry spell it was bone dry and ready to go. We spent a good day climbing the 2 easier routes, i bagged Much Monkey Magic on my first RP after a quick dog up it and missed out on The Philandering Sons of Magic Women by a whisker, dropping the last hard move(which isnt very hard)due to being tired.

The usual sunday depression at the thought of having to go back to work was alleviated due to a week off. The plan was to go to wales for a bouldering trip but due to a dodgy forecast and a lack of funds i stayed at home. The training plan deemed a rest week was to be had however this was not exceptable, a week off was not to be spent sat around doing nothing, so i went climbing instead. The week was a mix of training, soloing in the day and a cheeky trad session with Adam at Turning stone Edge. TSE is a nice quiet crag with some good lines, the best of the day and maybe the crag is Master of Suspence which we both got 2nd try after first taking the plumit.

I am now a 3rd of the way through the training plan and all is going well, im not feeling overly strong but i am definately feeling fitter and that is objective at the moment so it is working. I spent friday and saturday setting the new problems for the next base period and have come up with a few crackers im looking forward to getting stuck into, i will have to be patient though as this week is a rest week with only a couple of very easy sessions thrown in.

Im now back at work, nightmare.

The End of Salvation Marks the Beginning of a New Love

2011-05-10T15:07:00.005+01:00

Salvation never arrived, it was sabotaged by the heat.

Since a bad workman blames his tools the true reasons for my failure must be found.

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.

This is a much better way to think about the way in which the bouldering season ended. Had i knuckled down to training and climbing through the winter i would have had no need for salvation and all problems which i put on the list would have been ticked with time to spare. I guess its another wasted winter.

The misery and disappointment of another crap winter has not lasted long, Why? Its trad season, the season of fear and potential doom, the season when the slip of a foot could be the difference between glorious victory or a helicopter ride to Staffs general.
The year has begun well, an early spate of after work soloing has got the trad head back into gear and some easy mileage days on the classics has got me back into dragging a rope and placing gear. There is, however, one difference this year and it will be a major change in flavour of the summer. Each year i give the limestone a couple of tries to see if i am going to like it, this never ends well, my hatred for the white stuff takes about 4 metres to rear its head and the lime is then left alone as we head back to gods own for the summer. This year something has changed, a monumental shift has occurred, i like the lime.
This perverse happening began with a trip to Chee Tor and continued with a day at Dovedale on Sunday, on both these occasions i walked out of the dales having had a thoroughly good time. These events have left me in a state of confusion, why has this year been the one in which the lime has had some appeal? i can put it down to 3 things...

1) Tom told me to go climb some limestone.
2) I am doing whatever Adam wants for the summer so as to alleviate my guilt of doing only the things i want to do when the winter arrives.
3) The gear is mega.

Which ever one of these is the reason i don't much care as it has happened and that is all that matters. I am now facing a summer of 3 star classics on the limestone.

The futures bright, the futures white.

Salvation Weekend 4

2011-04-25T11:56:00.002+01:00

Unseasonally hot weather has persisted and it is destroying the salvation mission. Arriving at curbar at 7.30 in the morning in shorts and t-shirt was not a good sign of what was to come, greasing of strawberry's on the first move set the trend for the rest of the day. After a play on the trackside bloc i headed up to the pit to try Early Doors, i knew what was coming but convinced myself that it would be cooler in the pit and that conditions would be OK, i was half right.

The pit was cooler but the conditions were still grim. I have got ED wired to the top but each time i hit the slopers my tips had become void of chalk and i could feel the grease fighting to keep victory at bay. I managed to have 1 good try when i slapped over the top and hit the first finishing crimp but poor planning had left me clueless as to the location of the victory jug, needless to say i hung on until grease took over and deposited me on my arse in the pit, nightmare.

The sun was now creeping into the pit and the slopers had begun to bake, it was time to chase the shade so i packed up and headed for Burbage South. 3 things were on the list for Burbage, 7Ball, The Rib and Desarete. 7 ball was superb, a truly brilliant problem and it was happily dispatched. The other 2 were a different story. It was now at least 20 degrees and just walking to the problems left me a sweaty mess and misreading the guide had left me to believe both these problems were a grade easier than they were, suffice to say these problems did not fall.
The morning was done and i made my way to High Ned to meet Tom and get some trad done. The rest of the day was spent bumbling along the edge picking off easy routes and enjoying the sun.

Sunday i was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Dales. Adam demanded we go to Chee Tor as the he thought the grit would be to greasy, i told him grit is never to greasy but he wouldn't believe me and next thing i knew i was wading through the river heading for the misery of peak limestone. Chee Tor is your usual broken, dandelion filled crag, but to my surprise i quite enjoyed it. We plowed our way through some low E numbers and had a generally pleasant time in the cool conditions provided by the towering walls of the Dale.
Despite the polish, the dusty holds, the holds that break and the filthy crimps, this limestone stuff does have 1 redeeming feature, the gear is mega, once you sink in a wire there is no doubt it will hold so it allows you to concentrate on the climbing, this doesn't happen as often on grit.
I think that these lime days need to be treated as a training activity, this way i am more likely to get something out of it.

All in all the weekend was a failure on the salvation front but was a success on the fun side. 2 weekends to go and its not looking Rosy.

Salvation Weekend 3

2011-04-20T09:35:00.003+01:00

Summer has arrived, i know this because i have eaten a meal prepared using the most advanced cooking methods known to man, BBQs in April, what more can you ask for?? Well i can ask for some seasonally average temperatures, yesterday it hit 25 degrees on parts of our fair isle, double the monthly average. With a heat wave weekend and a failure to get out of bed early enough the glorious 4 day weekend saw little in the way of crushing.

Friday i headed to Stanage with Adam. First up was a session on Zippys but once again it defeated me, adding it to the list of last move problems i headed up to the edge and spent the rest of the day climbing trad with Adam on a deserted plantation.
Saturday-Failed
Sunday i headed to Ramshaw for another trad day with Si, nothing hard got climbed but my trad head now seems to be back in working order and i had some very pleasant leisurely trips up a few routes i hadn't done before. Si wimped out at about 5ish whinging about his fresh jamming scars, unsatisfied with a short day and with a desire to crush something i headed to the only place that fits the bill, 4 hrs later, feeling thoroughly abused, i locked the doors to the Chapel and walked back to the car.
Monday i headed for the Skyline for some soloing action, mileage was the call of the day and i made it most of the way down the skyline, re climbing the many fine lines that, thankfully, seem to get overlooked by the hoards. A gluten for punishment i headed back to the Chapel for a session.

The middle weekend of the salvation period was not a success but i have high hopes for the remaining 2. This weekend will see a return to early starts and WINNING.

Salvation weekend 2

2011-04-11T08:38:00.003+01:00

With blue skies as far as the eye can see and the warm morning sun kissing the gritstone boulders of the Plantation i stood at the top of Crescent Arete on an otherwise deserted Stanage Edge. Stanage in the early morning is a glorious place to be, before the masses turn up and destroy the tranquility, before the bird song is replaced by the clanking of hexes and calm still beauty of the edge is ruined by the baying masses, the early bird does indeed get the worm.

Hoping to follow up last weeks success' with another scalp, i quickly warmed up in the hope of hitting my target before the sun managed to creep to far up the hill and started baking the slopers. After half an hour i put the mats under Captain Hook and pulled on. The first try wasn't a success, i made the slap for the first sloper, bumped my heel up but failed miserable on the slap for the nose, it didn't even feel close. I had a play with the moves on second half and did it from the middle sloper to the top. After a 2 song rest it was time to try again.
I matched the starting hold and gazed back along the sloping lip of the bloc, the sun was now hitting the slopers and the crystals were glistening in the light, a disastrously beautiful thing, it had to go soon or all would be lost to the grease. I pulled on, did the first move and then reached under the roof for the sharp half pad hold, instead i grabbed the slopey pinch but plowed on regardless. The slopey pinch is the poorer of the 2 holds under the roof but it seemed to put me in a better position as i slaped for the first sloper, i stuck it and felt good, a small readjustment and i threw for the nose and held it, it was on. I knew that if i made it to the nose i would do the problem so it was time to prove i was right. With my left hand on the nose my right shot out and caught the the hold which ends the hard climbing and with a grinding mantle i managed to top out the Captain. Another scalp in the bag.

I sat in an empty Plantation, basking in the glory of success, i was pleased that i had got this problem quickly, firstly because i knew i could do it and its nice to prove to yourself that you are capable of the things you believe you are capable of. Secondly i managed to keep as much skin as possible. As i sat with a grin i looked down the hill, the next target for the day sat in front of me in a veil of shadow, Zippys traverse.

Pads down pull on, fail. Work moves remember sequence, fail. 2 song rest. Pull on, get sequence wired, reach the last hard move, 4 inch's from glory, FAIL. This is how Zippys went and not wanting to loose all my skin i gave up. I know i can do Zippys it just needs a bump of the heel hook and i would have been victorious, it will fall in April.

The time was now 11.30 and time to meet Adam. We headed for Bamford for a quiet day, however the whole world had the same idea and the place was rammed. We jumped on some classics and had a very pleasant day, i felt like my trad head was on its way back and in a couple of weeks i should be back up to last years dizzying heights and be scaring myself stupid. Adam had the call from her who must be obeyed and we called it a day. Now, what do you do after a good bouldering session and a cracking day of trad? well its obvious, you go to the chapel to beast whats left of your fingers. a quick 2 hrs and i was well and truly wasted with skin that felt like it was having pins stuck in it, lovely.

A near perfect day.

Salvation Weekend 1

2011-04-04T10:10:00.002+01:00

This weekend was the first chance to salvage the season, it went well, ish.
Saturday saw some very fine weather, weather which makes you wanna lie on the mat and do very little except complain about poor conditions, but this was not the plan. First port of call was the Newstones, a nice circuit to get warmed up followed by the sitter to S&M. After a very pleasant circuit i had a try at a new line i had seen the week before, its a left hand entry to Itchy Groove, it feels completely independent and has some lovely moves. I worked out the moves into the groove but failed to hold the groove, not wanting to loose any more skin i headed for S&M.
I have done S&M a few times and it is a delight, almost a perfect problem, but i had never done the sitter, which adds a couple of good moves. Surprisingly i got it in a couple of tries, i sat at the top for a couple of minutes soaking up the rays of the setting sun then headed for the objective number 2.

Gib Torr is a small crag with a strangely large amount of quality problems, The Fin is one of them. I have had a turbulent relationship with this piece of grit, it has spat me off the last move so many times i have lost count. Hopefully today will be different but my first few tries were poor so i had a word with myself and decided i would have a 3 song rest then 1 last try before i had to head off. The 3 song rest seems to be the key at the moment, after i had taken it i found myself holding the last move and very ungracefully topping out.

Weekend 1 of 4 was successful and i am 25% of the way toward salvation.

A wasted winters possible reprieve

2011-03-29T11:29:00.003+01:00

Another bouldering season is nearly over, its still hanging on, clawing at the ledge of its 6 month window in a desperate attempt to avoid the plummet.
The end of the season is about tactics, you must choose the right crag and the right problems but above all you gotta get your lazy arse out of bed before midday in order to capitalise on the fading amounts cold that are left as the summer rears is horrible, sweaty, friction destroying head.
Adams cries of trad season are building steam and i have valiantly tried to resist but the ropes are slowly making an appearance and we have already had 2 days of trad already, its March for christ sake. However, yesterday saw a twist in the plot, trad was a goal up and looking for the victory but in the dying seconds of the 93rd minute bouldering smashed 1 in to force extra time. This extra time came in the form of Adam moving house, so with the misses and 2 kids to move from 2 houses into 1 it means he isn't out for the next 3 weeks. This is the last opportunity to salvage another very poor bouldering season, an opportunity to settle some scores and above all the opportunity crush some of the planets second finest rock before the midgies and the heat usher in the season of fear.

5 bouldering seasons have passed since i began to play the game, so far not 1 has been truly successful on the achievement front. Don't get me wrong i have had a whale of a time and got some good ticks both for enjoyment and for numbers but there has been a consistency problem, it seems that when ever you start going well something happens and the momentum is broken. So far this is how the winters stack up-

1/2- First 2 winters were as to be expected, i lived about an hour from rock and climbing wasn't as frequent as it should have been.

3- I decided to move to Leek to be near the grit and you would expect this to be the start of some serious effort on gods own, alas the winter was spent dragging my 1960 style house, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Countless days were spent mixing plaster and smashing tiles under perfect crisp conditions.

4- Last winter was the winter of snow, snow and more bastard snow, there is only so many times you can try tetris before it starts to grate. Between the snow and the rain i nearly managed to pull of a good season but dropping the last move of my 5 hardest projects meant that the May rolled around and the season was a failure.

5- This should have been the winter to end all winters, the crushing was almost guaranteed. There was a dry and cold winter forecast, i had just come back from a month in Font and my 5 hard projects were there for the taking. However there was no victory, no glory, no crushing. I hadn't counted on, nor was i ready for, the burn out i would feel on returning home from the forest, i had spent 6 month going hell for leather in the chapel and on the grit, i was notching up about 10-15 sessions of climbing and training a week. I came home and took a well deserved rest for November, December saw me back at the climbing and training with the view of tree's in a far and distant March slowly coming into view. The dream got shattered, the money train was derailed and the rot set in.
A friend of mine went to Font a few years ago and came back proclaiming that it was by far the greatest climbing area in the world and then promptly gave up climbing. He felt he was wasting his time with the limited amount of quality problems to climb locally. This seemed like madness, how could you give up on the grit??????. After my March trip was cancelled i discovered what he had felt. Font is so good and so far beyond anywhere i have climbed (even the grit, but sshhhh) that i felt that the amount of work i need to put into climbing to be any good at it wasn't really worth it unless my vision was firmly fixed on the tree laced hills of the french forest. It wasn't, so i pretty much sacked off training and climbing for the next 2 months.

So here we are, 4 weeks until the mats get put away, time to man up and get it done.

2011-03-17T22:03:00.002Z

Another weeks training in the bag. New problems for circuits on the boards this week,30's circuits were to easy but the 45's tonight were ok. Poor session on tues, shoulder was a bit crunchy and i need to set some better moves.

This weekend we are heading for the Pass, sat on the Wavelength and sun on some trad somewhere, tremadog or heading for the coast if the weathers poor.

Ticking the list

2011-03-13T19:38:00.004Z

Another seccessful week. It all started with some good training sessions, Mon and Thurs sessions were massively improved on last weeks and all the problems were completed without much trouble, this was a big difference to last weeks failures. Tuesday was a quick session on single moves which feels like it isnt enough but one must keep faith in the plan.

The forecast for the weekend was a bit sketchy but i was sure that if the wind played ball i would be able get out both days, would the faith be repayed?

Well, saturday was overcast but dry so i headed out for the Roaches with 3 boulders in mind. I havn't been to the Roaches in a couple of months, i have been hitting up the eastside, so it was nice to get back on the classics. I warmed up on the lower and upper tier boulders and it didnt start well, i had a pop at Nadins traverse, fail. I had a pop on dirt nap, fail. Things were not looking good and the list of 3 seemed far away, i walked to the first expecting very little. First on the list was Pipe Entry, the sit start to Down Pipe. I had a few tries to remember the sequence and it was time for a proper go. All went well and i sailed through the crimps and up to the sloper on the lip and slapped for the top of the pipe and got the knee bar in, a bit of grim mantling later and i was on top of the bloc with the sweet smell of victory filling the air. Things were starting to look up.

From Pipe Entry i continued down the ridge to Doxeys. Last year i fell off the last easy move of Drowning Pool 3 times in a session, safe to say i wasnt pleased and never went back. Would today be the day? My first few attempts were poor and i wasnt hiitng the first sloper properly and therefor wasnt getting through to the pinch. I tried it from 2 moves in and got to the top first try so i knew it was a within reach, i sat on the matt and had a rest, after 2 offerings from Mr Scarab i chalked up for what would hopefully be a good attempt. I hit the sloper well, matched, slaped left and moved upto the pinch. I was once again through the hard bit and all that was left was to top out, so i did. Crushed. Nothing finer than finally slaying a nemesis and a classic one at that. I was 2 for 2 and heading down the skyline.

On the way i had a quick play on Tryptich Groove, i had tried this 3/4 years ago when i had just started climbing and failed miserably, this time was different and 2try it was in the bag, nice, i moved on.

Sidepull Wall was the last problem on the list. I had looked at it in passing before but never tried it, i gave the holds a quick brush, donned the velcros and pulled on. After working out the beta for my right i was ready for some proper attempts, for the first few i tried to use the intermediate seem but it is poor and i decided to just reach up and through to the side pull, when i did i managed to tickle it, game on. I knew i was on for ticking all the problems on the list and that glory was only 5 moves away, it only required 1 good go. The next go was it, i reached up to the sidepull from a beautifull sloper and stuck it, topped it out. Victory.

3 on the list and 3 ticked, a very successful and suprising day.

Today saw rain in the morning and the forecast from the eastside was no better, i abandoned plans to meet Adam and stayed in bed. By 2 the rain had cleared and the sun came out so i dragged myself out of bed and headed for Newstones for a quick circuit. The Newstones were rammed so i quickly blasted through the normal problems and one i hadnt done before and made my way to a considerably quieter Baldstones. In the solitude i managed a quick repeat of Stall and again fell off the last move of the Fin sitter, this would have capped a fine weekend but with very thin skin i called it a day before they were destroyed.

As i made my way back to the car i decided the weekend wasnt quite compete and went for 1 last problem. Disgracefully i have never been to the Nth Cloud and since it is the home of Swivel Finger i made my way there. The rock on the Nth Cloud is exquisite, possibly the finest example of gritstone i have ever climbed on and Swivel Finger is a problem deserving of quality rock. In the fading orange light which enveloped the crag i lapped Swivel Finger, if its worth doing once its worth doing again and SF is cetainly worth more than 1 accent.

The perfect finish to a cracking weekend.

week 1 ends with sunshine

2011-03-06T22:11:00.002Z

week 1 of the training plan is done and dusted. Its nice to get back into the swing of things and even nicer to finally have a structured plan which i know will bring results and not a muddled cluster of ideas i have knocked up which may or may not be successful, this time the plan is tried and tested and the only thing which will stop progress is straying from the path.

Saturday was forecast to be dry but as i drove hopefully toward the Roaches the weather got worse and worse and i soon turned around and headed for the board. I had set tricky problem on Monday which went 2nd try ad i set another couple of easy projects forth next rainy day.

Today started out overcast and grey but by the time we reached the first boulders there was blue in the sky sticky grit under finger. We were making our way down froggatt ploughing through the problems in the woods. We did a few nice solos but most of the problems were still green and we had to give them a miss. The first decent dry problems were around Renegade Master. I had looked at Thuggy Bear last night and fancied giving it a bash and to my surprise i got it first time, my first 7A+, felt pretty soft and more than likely it isn't 7A+ but it was a pleasant enough problem. Next up i ticked a nice short slappy 7A. Next up was Rambeau, this is a problem i look at everytimei climb trad at Froggatt but never have a matt, well today i did and were it not for a crap sequence i would have got it, its one to save for next time.

a perfect grit day

12 months to go

2011-03-01T23:18:00.002Z

Well, its all been a bit quiet of late, at the end of December i worked out i didn't have enough coppers in the jar to head back to the forest, this was a devastating blow and had some serious repercussions, countless days of sitting around chilling, catching up with friends and generally getting fat and weak.
Without the promise of pristine sandstone and perfect movements the desire to be locked into a life consuming training regime is a difficult one to preserve. Once you fall out of the habit it is easy to say that training will start again tomorrow, but tomorrow turns into next week and next week into next month, I needed to do something to stop the rot, i needed to respark the burning desire to improve and to once again have that sweet feeling of victory that is only gained by standing on top of your stone nemesis.

Up until this point i have climbed with friends, watched videos, practised foot work and climbed on gods own. This apprenticeship in climbing has done me well and i feel i have made some good progress and when fit i am climbing at a satisfactory level, but satisfactory is not acceptable.

With this in mind i enlisted some professional help. Last Tuesday i booked the day off work and made my way to Sheffield to meet Mr Randall,he has been employed to turn me into a beast and he's got 5 years to do it. The day was good, actually the day was excellent and i was impressed with what i got from it. 3 hours were spent dissecting my climbing and deciding what needed to be done, then we had a sit down session to decide the outline of a 6 month training plan. After this i bid farewell to Tom and headed back to the car.
As i walked out of The Edge into the street i felt a that strange feeling building inside, by the time i got to the car it had peaked, the feeling which had been lacking was back, the desire, the blinkered view of the world which i had before the forest was back.

Its time to train.

No forest for the wickedly poor

2011-02-11T21:46:00.003Z

Well its been a while, and unfortunately there is little good news to report. At the end of December i had to concede that returning to the forest wasn't going to happen, due to a very poor financial situation, this did not please me. I had just got back into training, after a rest month, and had some solid goals to strive for, i knew that in 3 months i could get strong enough to crush the problems that got away in October. I was prepared to be locked away under the board, to be once again solely focused on the pursuit of power, early mornings, late nights, training everyday with eyes fixed firmly on the sandstone perfection of Fontainebleau.

The disappointment of cancellation left me with very little motivation, even crisp days on Gods Own didn't really appeal and seemed like an almighty effort. I barely touched rock in January and spent most of my time catching up with friends, which was nice change as the last 7 months had seen little other than training.

Snow good, start the crush

2010-12-17T23:08:00.003Z

Being buried in the Chapel is always a joy, and 3 weeks have seen me back to strength on the 30, so last week was time to put in some work on the 45. This didn't go well, i got turned over, its a good job that failing is the name of the game indoors or this may have caused some frustration. Climbing on the board is the only activity i have ever undertaken where defeat is a desirable, even enjoyable, outcome. Strange.

The weekend has rolled around again and the forecast was promising sub zero temps, a good wind and the snow was to hit only the edges of the country, the good folk at the BBC clearly deceived me and an hour ago i opened my curtains to be greeted by a fresh flurry of snow.
This weather would put most people off, these people will be filling up the walls all over the country tomorrow, chatting with friends, pulling on plastic, eating cake and drinking tea. This will not be happening in my world. At 10 tomorrow morning i will drive to the Roaches, pack my brushes into my pad and start walking. My destination is to be Tetris. This is a perma-clean boulder and even after the days of snow it seems to stay clean and since the snow has now stopped i am holding out hope.

Fortune favours the brave.

All quiet on the western front

2010-12-03T22:09:00.002Z

6 months of manic training and a month of glory in the forest took there toll, i got back and felt burnt out, it was time for a well earned rest.
I got out most weekend in November but there was no syke, no desire to crush and certainly no commitment to train. Most of my time was spent catching up with friends and doin lots of "chillin". The month wasnt a complete waste, between dosing on sofa's i managed to edit Slopes, which im pretty pleased with, and started to film my next project. The new film is gonna be a western grit highballing film, i have enlisted the climbing skills of Tom, Eddie and Adam which means the static tripod shot is being temporarily suspended and the glory of zoom and tracking can be employed.

4 weeks of slackin is enough for any man, last week it was time to kick back into gear, i had a couple of chapel sessions which proved to be better than expected, i wasnt as weak as i thought i would be after a month of ale, cakes and pies. Last week i did however take 4 rest days which lets face it is still slacking so as of monday it will be back to full throttle training mayhem. What is the point of this new training mission? well its the best thing one can train for, the forest. On the 24th of feb i am heading back for another 3 weeks of crushing.

The snow has arrived, its everywhere, loads of it. I hate snow but this year it may have a saving grace, snowballing. I am heading out in the morning with Tom to begin building a platform below Thin Air. Im not sure how well it will go as the snow seems to be very dry and powdery so it may no compact and stick together but we will see.

Day 28-31

2010-10-31T08:35:00.003Z

Thursday i headed back up to Cuvier Rempart to look at the big 5, well 3 of them. Since i had been climbing well and making quick work of the things id done i thought i might, with an epic fight, be able to get 1 of these prized blocs in the bag, how wrong i was. I failed to get off the ground on 2 of them and made a single move on the other. Chewed up and spat out. Ignoring failure i headed for Ou Are You and Baisers Voiles, i didnt do to well on OAY, but i made some good progress on BV with only the grinding slopey top out stoping me, 1 to come back for. Then i returned to Bleas Art as the right finish was the only thing in the area i wanted to have a pop at so headed over, once again i was spat off. Not a good day for crushing. To finish the day off I headed over to Rocher General to get Boule Et Bill on film.

Friday/Sat were spent getting a bit of mileage in and enjoying the last couple of days in the forest, not spending time trying and failing but spending it doing and enjoying.

Today is the last day, i need to make tracks for the ferry at 3pm and its damp out so im not sure if the rock will be dry but i will head out to find out once im packed up. Buthiers is the choice as i will have a car full of things i cant afford to have nicked and i can park close the climbing.

I spent alot of time this summer couped up in the Chapel trying to get strong for this trip. Was it worth it? Well it seems to have been a very successfull trip and although i havnt climbed alot of massive grades i have climbed hard things very quickly and increased my flash grade. It is the first proper climbing trip i have been on, other trips have been 10 days max. I think you learn alot about movement when you can climb everyday for an extended period on rock which requires both strength and technique to climb and i feel i am a better climber now than before i arrived, i have fitted nearly a whole winters boulderinig into 1 month. I dont think i will be taking a sport climbing trip for a while and i will certainly be heading to the forest for the next few trips.

I have now got 4 months untill i am back in the forest, it will either be for 2 weeks, or, if i can sweet talk my boss, for a monsterous 5 weeks. So now its time to get back in the Chapel, back under the beastmaker and back to early morning sessions and get stronger to crush the unfinished buisness i now have in the forest.

But before that, its Grit season.

Tick list

7b
Bleau's Art
Onde de Choc
Marginal droite- 4th try

7a+
Égoïste assis
Mémoire d'Outre Tombe
Boule et Bill
Lady Big Claque

7a
Égoïste -Flash
Soupçon -Flash
Le Pouce- 2nd try
Musclor- 2nd try
Narine à Voile - 3rd try
La Daubé- 3rd try
La Rampe
Coup de Vent direct
Insistance

Day 25-27

2010-10-27T17:55:00.002+01:00

Monday morning and the alarm goes off, its 7am, its still dark outside and its cold in the caravan, i can see my breathe escaping from under the duvet, at last its cold. Out of bed and i bundle some gear into my bag and head out into the dark. Somehow its colder inside the caravan than it is outside. Im heading to Apremont to do battle with Marginal Droite and Onde Choc. At 8.30am i was stood under Marginal Droite chalking up, by 10am i was stood, vitorious, on top of Onde Choc.
I crushed Marginal Droite first try, i found a side pull i had missed the week before and with the crisp early morning conditions the top slopers were much better. Before i moved onto Onde Choc i had a quick go on the normal version Marginal, it went well and i made it to the last move, all that was left to do was to mantle it out, i think it might go.
Over to Onde Choc. With the new heelhook beta i had harvested i made quick progress. 20 mins work and it was in the bag. Onde Choc is brilliant, so briliant i did it another 6 times, if it worth doing once its worth doing again and again and......

I wasnt expecting to get both these problems done so quickly, i had lay in bed the night before imagining the perfect day, imagining the feeling of being stood on top of these blocs and now i was, vicory filled the early morning air, i love the smell of Fontainebleau in the morning, it smells like victory.

By 10am the days climbing had been completed, time to brake out the backup plan, i headed over to Apremont Sully to try Parenthèse. It was now about 11am, the cool morning conditions had gone and the sun was now beating down and as i slapped up the slopey arete of Parenthèse i was greasing of each time i reached the crux, not wanting to loose skin to bad conditions i packed up and had a look around the rest of Apremont Sully, i came accross Le Pouce.
Le Pouce goes from a sitter, through some undercuts to a big move to a sloper and a pinch then a mantle to finish. First try and i hit the undercut in the wrong place, completely missing it. Second try i crushed it and was stood on top happy but annoyed i had missed out on another 7A flash.
Today had been one of my best days bouldering and it was only midday, i spent the rest of the day cruising around Apremont.

Tuesday, the spirits were high as i headed for Dame Joanne and the glorious Angle Parfait. I was stood under Angle Parfait before the sun had hit the tree tops and i was still stood there 2 hrs later, Angle Parfait is hard. I kept failing to hold the high right hand hold and after failing on the same move about 50 times i gave in, accepted defeat and headed for Mounoury to get on Oasis.
Oasis is a class problem, it slightly overhanging, starts off a small pocket and a smaller undercut, it then makes a big move upto a sloper, then a bigger move to another sloper, then out right to, thats right, another sloper. Surprisingly i liked it. Its hard but i was making progress and managed to tickle the 2nd sloper a couple of times before disaster struck, split tip. The start of the problem is the steepest, i had to really pull hard on the sharp left hand undercut to get off the ground, with thin tips the sharp hold cut through what skin i have and i was left with a small split in my middle finger. Game over. There are a couple more things i wanted to look at in the area so i spent the rest of the afternoon checking out future prospects.

After an unsuccessfull day yesterday, this morning i headed to Cuvier for a play on Holey Moley, hoping the week of crushing would be kicked back into gear. I was looking forward to HM, it looks cool in videos ive seen, quite like a Chapel problem so i was syked to get on it and quite certain of success. I was disapointed to find that it starts with a horrible stretched awkward move, i sacked it off quite quickly. I then climbed La Daubé, which i had climbed in my first week but not filmed. I then got spat off L'Angle Incarné and L'Anglophile, i made good progress, falling 2 moves short of the top on both but ultimately not getting either done. Crush week was starting to look like it might not be as prosperous as i had invisioned, i headed toward what i hoped would be the saviour of the day, Bleaus Art. What a problem, steep, slopey, slappy and crafty, love it. 20 minutes after first pulling on, it had saved the day.

Spirits were high once again and on the way back to the car i stopped at Cuvier Rempart to have a look at fridays contenders, they certainly look good.
Back to Apremont in the morning to mantle out Marginal and claim my biggest scalp so far.

Day 20-24

2010-10-24T14:43:00.001+01:00

Wednesday rolled around and still no pay from work, "funds would be clear by thursday" i was told, this didnt help the situation and with the petrol supplies quickly disapearing into the cars of panic buying locals, who were using it for such futile persuits as getting to work, i was hoping either the stike would be over or that there would be some left by Thursday. Another local trip was called for and after yesterdays close call on The Ramp, failure only due to play being stopped by rain, i went back to settle the score.
The standing version went 2nd try and i was feeling good so i started working the extra 2 moves added by the sit start. The sit start didnt prove to be a problem, as it only adds 2 easy moves, and 2 tries later the problem was in the bag. I then looked at Master Edge but with thin skin the move to pull on, using some sharp edges, was to much for my battered tips to handle so i spent the rest of the day mooching about.

Thursday and i had been payed and there was a tanker filling the petrol station when i arrived, i filled up and made my way into the forest, it was the turn of Apremont and Apremont ouest. The main aim of the day was Egoiste, i had looked at it in January but it was wet and unclimbable, hopefully today would be different. After looking around and warming up i walked over to Egoiste and got to work. Egoiste goes at a soft 7A and with it being slightly overhanging, slopey and an arete i was pretty sure it was gonna go. After bagging my first 7A flash on Soupcon i got syked up to make this my 2nd. The greasy slopers tried to stop my progress but i pulled through them and reached out for the side pull crimp and made the final slap up the arete with my right hand, a bit of foot shuffling and i popped for the top and held the swing, heel hooked, matched and mantled my way to glory. 2nd 7A flash of the trip, mega.
Time for the sitter. The sitter adds a grade but it is an easy one and after 10 mins of work i had the moves dialled, i took a 5 minute rest then dispatched the sitter.
Now in a good mood, having crushed the days main objective, i moved up to look at Marginal Droite. I was impressed, this is a perfect problem. I put the mat down and had a pop and quickly popped off, this might be a little more difficult than i thought it would be. I pulled on again but this time found myself at the top staring at the finishing holds, but i bottled it and threw for an intermediate instead of the top and popped off and tumbled to the ground only just landing the mat. I packed up vowing to return with my other mat as i know this is gonna go, i just need more foam.
I made way to Apremont Ouest and Onde Choc. After 3 weeks i am still amazed that there are so many brilliant problems in the forest, and here i was, stood beneith another one. I only had 5/6 attempts at OC but i got on quite well, throwing up for the last high left sloper. I have since harvested some better beta and will be back on Monday for another try.

Friday i was still lacking in skin so i decided to have an easy day and explore some more esoteric areas in the hunt for hidden gems. i Headed for Gorge du Houx, Mont Aigu and Long Boyau. I knew that GdH was home to the classic Gargantoit but i was blown away by the 2 other offerings i found, Titanique and l'Arete. If time allows i will be back for these 2, however i think they will have to wait for my next trip. Next up was Long Boyau which had a nice grit style slab and cracking looking prow, the prow may be worth coming back for next time. I walked down the hill from the prow, over the path, and into Mont Aigu. The plan was to look about and try to conserve skin so i pottered up some easy problems, any sign of ripping of a handhold and i jumped off and tried again. i then turned a corner and saw Montee Divine. A slabby arete, I couldnt resist. Mat went down, i chalked up and 20 secs later i was stood on the top, flashed. 3rd 7A flash of the trip, 2 of them soft but soft 7A is still 7A so i will take them.

Unfortunately i had left my camera in my car on friday so Saturday morning i headed back to Mont Aigu to get Montee Divine on tape. Not as simple this time, it took me several attempts to get it done, its amazing how much more you try when you have something to loose. After bagging MD i made my way to Franchard Ermitage, there are a few things here i will come back for but nothing that jumped to the top of the list. Further down the valley is Franchard Meyer. In Franchard Meyer i found a line which barged its way well up the list, Tendance, it is like a harder version of Crescent arete, its the perfect boulder problem(another one).

The elbow problems i briefy had have now disapeared and only really showed up for a day but today i developed another random pain, "Font Foot". I had the same symptoms in January, a sharp stabbing pain above the arch of my right foot. It happens everytime my heel rises off the floor and can only be made more comfortable by scrunching up my toes and walking on the outside edge of my foot. Fortunately it doesnt effect my climbing so i will just have to hop to the boulders.

Today im having a rest day to grow some skin. There is now 1 week left and its time to step it up and try to get some bigger numbers in the bag. I have 5 7B's on my list for the next 7 days and since the temperatures look set to stay far to high i am taking some action to battle the warmth. For the next week i will getting up at 6am so i can be at the blocs by 7 which should give me 3 hrs of good conditions before the sun warms things up to much.

Tommorow im heading back to Apremont for a battle with Marginal and Onde Choc. May the crushing commence.

Day 16-19

2010-10-24T13:03:00.001+01:00

After a cracking day on friday spirits were high and expectations had begun to creep up a few notchs as the temperature had began to creep down a few degrees. Rocher Fin was the destination for the day, but under darkening skies the outlook seemed grim and after an hour walking around the forest, getting very lost, i gave up all hope of finding Rocher Fin and decided to try to find the car and head else where. Eventually i managed to find the main path and was cursing my stupidity at getting lost on a straight path when i spotted a sign directing the way to Rocher Fin. A 20 minute walk in had taken me an hour and 20 mins, fool.
After cruising around for 20 mins picking of some of the easier problems and ignoring the rain drops, who were clearly on a reccy mission, i headed over to Memoire d'Autre Tombe, which although low, has some cool moves, involving crafty toe hooks, to see you through a roof. My flash attempt saw me halfway through the problem before being dumped in the sand. I set about working out the moves in isolation, 10 mins later i had done all the moves and managed to do the problem in 2 halfs. It was then the rain started, quickly i placed jumpers, tea towels and my chalk bucket on the holds in hope that the shower would be light and i could get the problem done. The shower passed quickly and the holds which had got wet dried quickly and i despatched the problem in the same fashion. This is 1 of the best problems i have done and it is nice to find a roof problem, which are usually burly, that submitted to some craft.

Due to some crap filming i was back at RF the next morning to do the job properly, quickly i despatched the problem and got the shots i needed and headed back down toward the car stopping at some of the smaller areas along the way. At Rocher Du General my aim was to do Boule et Bill. This problem looked a corker on Bleau.info and when i fund it, it was just as i had hoped. I dislike problems with small crimpy holds they they hurt my fingers, i much prefer problems with slopey/bigger holds with difficult moves between them, BeB is the latter and a corker. Again it took little time to work and complete the moves in isolation, however unlike yesterdays quick accent of MAT todays link was to be an epic. What should have been tied up in 20 minutes ended up taking the best part of 2 hrs and when it was eventually done it was not a very pretty sight, but its not a spectator sport and the job was done. By this time my skin was beginning to get really thin and i was quite tired after wrestling BeB for 2 hrs, i trudged my way to Potala to look around and see what was there, i wasnt expecting big things. I performed surisingly well and bagged a pair of 6C+/7A's in quick sucession. With my dislike of small crimps i was suprised to find i really enjoyed La Porte Du Temps, it begins with a deep drop knee, the right hand goes upto a crimp then bumps again to a jug then, with some heel/toe under cutting shenanegans, you make a cool move to a sloper to top out. Due to a lack of skin and a lack of energy i failed on this problem but it is certainly 1 i will come back to.
Today my skin failed, after 2 weeks of near constant abuse its was done, so it was with very sore, thin, weeping tips i made my way back to the car, which wasnt there. I had parked half way down the car park and on my return the fesa wasnt where i had left it, i looked up and down the row with a horrible feeling deep in the pit of my belly, some french gypsy bastard had nicked my beloved siver rocket. After standing in the place i had parked up wondering what i was gonna do i checked each car indivdually in the hope i had missed mine, there was still only french plates all down the row of cars untill the 2 vans parked at the far end, 2 vans with a car sized space between them, hang on, i walked toward them and with a feeling i can remember but not describe the the back end of the fesa started to come into view, hidden between the vans. I had forgotten where i had parked.

Monday i had to grow some skin so stayed in bed.

Tuesday was pay day and with only coppers in my pocket and fumes in the fesa it was very needed but the goons at work had messed up and i didnt get paid. I had to stay local to try to conserve petrol as the french were on strike and people were panic buying petrol, i couldnt afford any petrol but if they bought it all before my wages finally cleared i would be left with what i had until the strikes finished. I headed to Buthiers to look at The Ramp. The Ramp is a good problem, the meat of which is a slopey ledge that you slap up then mantle onto. Once again i quickly woked out the moves and managed to do it from a stand. Just as i was going to add the first 2 moves, it starts from a sitting, and tick it off, it began to spit. Once again i emloyed the hold covering tactics but the slopey ledge was to slopey and i couldnt get my hoodie to stay in place. after and hour of so of showers i admitted defeat and headed back to the caravan to grow some skin.

Day 12-15

2010-10-16T08:41:00.002+01:00

Tuesday arrived and i headed for J.A.Martin for some circuits and an attempt at L'etrave. I pulled into an empty carpark which meant a nice quiet crag, after yesterdays child polluted session this could only be a good thing. After making my way up the hill and ticking through the circuits i reached the brow of the hill and dropped down the other side to be faced with the almighty arete that is L'etrave, a sharp cut, stepped arete of the finest crafting. On first attempt i thought it was a waste of time and that i wasnt going to touch it but after several more attempts i was gaining the high pinch on the arete and trying to move up for the LH crimp, unfortunately this was as far as i got. There is a move low down where you have to reach high with your RH to a flake then make a powerfull slap up into an undercut, this is the move that cut the session short as it was bringing out the dreaded elbow, a deep pain in my elbow began to develop and it got worse with each slap, not wanting to do any further damage i moved on. I wasnt to impressed with the rest of J.A.Martin so called it quits and headed for Rocher Guichot.
The parkig for RG is right next to the boulders so we were onto a winner from the start and with some lovely slopey blocs and a couple of nice slabs i whiled away the rest of the day trying not to aggrivate my elbow. RG is a cracking little area but unfortunately theres not much there so it isnt a contender for multiple visits but is well worth a look.

Wednesday i went back to a favourite, Isatis. This was 1 of the places me and Tom went to in january and i had fond memories of a crisp cool day with perfect slopers biting the skin with amazing friction, it was the same today the cold had returned and the friction was palying ball, for a couple of hours at least. I bumbled through some reds on my way to L'angle Bens. This turned out to be a mistake, after 10 minutes i once again had a screaming elbow, disaster. I was gutted, the only thought going through my head was trip over, pack up drive to Calais and return home with my tail between my legs. Why do you get Font elbow? because you havent prepared properly, you have let yourself down by slacking off on the most important part of anyones prehab routine, it happens because you let it. I rested for a while then started to tick my way through some easier reds and the pain began to ease, after an hour or so it had faded to a dull ache so i started to work through the white circuit missing any problems involving lock offs on the left arm, i came to the end of the circuit and the end of the day with a mild ache and a sense that i may have screwed the trip, i decided to take another day off.

Yesterday, after a days rest and with the first half of the trip out the way, i decided to take the bull by the horns and test the elbow. The plan for the trip was to climb alot for 2 weeks to get into the groove of the forest and then start trying the harder projects in the second half of the trip. The day had come to begin projects and to crack out the camera to start filming, would the elbow hold up? would any projects get done? would i just get spanked on the harder problems like i had on some 5A problems at Bois Rond? With all these questions running riot in my head i started at Buthiers Cannard to warm up and to get Musclor on film. Musclor had taken me 2 tries when i did it on my first day but today it took several tries to get the awkward mantle top out, this didnt bode well for the harder things ahead. After getting through Musclor i headed over to Buthiers Piscine for Insistance and Lady Big Claques.
I had a quick play on Insistance in my first week but the holds were damp and the top sloper was very scritty and as a result i didnt get very far, this time was different, the holds were dry, the scrit was minimal and i fired it off second try, boom, the day began to change. Next up was the elbow testing LBC. On my last attempts at this problem i had made it to the slap for the big side pull but once again the damp scrit meant i slipped off. Toay wa dry so the mats went down, the chalk went on and my first try saw me eyeing up the pocket but i couldnt reach it, i had forgotten to slap for the big side pull, fool. I new i could do this problem so the camera went on and i stood, was again, beneith the glorious prow ready for another try. This time i remembered to slap for the side pull, i reached for the pocket and the rest was a formality, LBC second try of the day. I was chuffed to say the least and thought that i would spend the rest of the day at a new area getting some mileage in and allow myself to bask in the glory of my morning, i headed for Maunaoury.
After orientating myself in the jumble of boulders i began to tick through the red circuit, i came across Soupcon, an overhanging arete on slopers, perfect. A low awkward start from a big pocket leads to slapping up slopers with your left hand and then a couple of throws to some nice edges with the right, as quickly as i found it i was stood on top, i had flashed my first 7A, mega.
A fine day, my finest day in the forest, i finished it off by wondering around picking off any problems that looked good and finding a few slopey gems that i will be coming back for in the week, with more pads, Irreversable is fookin high.

Days 7-11

2010-10-11T18:38:00.002+01:00

The heat has been a shocker, its October for christ sake. I arrived with hopes of cool, crisp conditions ideal for crushing and what ive got is British summer time, but i must not complain, its not raining.

By Thursday i was starting to feel a little tired and went to Petit Bois for an easy circuit of blues. The problems were a little disapointing and cant see much traffic as they were scritty and dirty but it was a mileage day so i wasnt to fussed, besides it was lovely and cool and quiet. Despite it being an active rest day I had to have a play on La Balaine and Big Jim, both of these problems are superb, however they do get a little bit high and after taking lobs from the last move on each onto my shitty alpkit matt i decided they should be left for another day when i can return with 2 matts.
After the blues i headed for a blast around Dame Jouanne on the old mountaineers circuit. The mauve circuit was origionally used by the old skool french mountaineers to prepare for the snow plodding season and it takes you all around the area touching the ground in only a few places. Its a great circuit with some dodgy traverses on scritty friction slabs, i skipped a few of these as i didnt fancy slipping which would have led to a hefty fall onto some unforgiving ground. After the circuit i had a sit down to take in the glory of the forest, the place was teeming with lizards, they were everywhere and as soon as silence descended they came out of the nooks and cracks to bask in the sun, i tried to catch a few but there quick little fella's. Before leaving i had to go and have a look at L'angle Parfait, i was blown away, this is the best line i have seen in the forest, it is incredible and i will be back to spend a day on it. If i managed to drag myself up nothing else but this for the rest trip i will be very happy.

It reached an almighty 25 degress on Saturday so i took the safe option, i went highballing at Gros Sablon. In my defence i didnt realise everything there was massive but after the walk in, an almighty 20 minutes, i wasnt turning around. Highballing is a treat at the best of times but on the blocs of fontainbleau it is all the more enjoyable, however, with a poor matt and no chalk bag it was a little more spicey than useual. If yesterday was the day of the lizard today was the turn of the ladybird, hundreds of them crawled on the rock and bombarded me like tiny suicide bombers trying to protect the blocs from a foreign invader. This attack coupled with the heat and not having a chalk bag was quite off putting and the harder, higher lines i left.

Sunday is meant to be a day of worship, i sinned, i had a rest day. i can speak no more of the disgrace i now feel at wasting a sunny day in the forest. Forgive me JG i know not what i do.

Today the temps started to drop and it was cold first thing. I rolled up at Roche Aux Sabot around 10am and set about the blue and red circuits ticking happily in the quiet tranquility, it wasnt long before the peace was distroyed by an ungodly screetching. Children, i hate children. 'Seen and not heard' is the phrase that comes to mind. After hours of fighting the urge to poke small people in the eyes i finally came to Red 25. Ahhhhh red 25, a glorius, slopey, rounded arete on which failure is a pleasure as it means i got to continue to climb it. I have worked out a sequence bt by the time i had got it right i was begining to fade so i packed up and left, i had lost the battle but i will win the war.

Day 4-6

2010-10-06T20:47:00.002+01:00

Monday didnt start well, i awoke to the sound droplets bouncing off the thin plastic roof of my gypsy house, i was not pleased. The day consisted mainly of sitting around, well lying around, mumbling to myself about the weather in a typically British manner. About 2pm the air was filled with silence, the rain had stopped, the chance to get a few problems in had presented itself but i thought i would leave it an hour to let the drying to kick in. I waited, thats what i do. After an hour the rain was still holding off so i jumped in the car and headed for La Gorge Aux Chats, on arrival the rock was drying off and the clouds had begun to split leaving streaks of blue in an otherwise grey sky. After a quick run around to orientate myself and a few easy red problems to warm up on, i found 2 superb looking problems, the first was an arete to the right of Rubis Sur L'ongle and the other was Travaux Forces. First i had a bash at the arete, an arete so sweet it would have been rude not to climb it, i jumped on and managed to fire it off 2nd try. The guide mentions that RSLO without the arete is 7B+ but 7A with it, im not sure if the problem i climbed was the 7A version but i cant see how the arete could be reached from RSLO as it goes left from the starting holds and to gain the arete you need to go right. Either way it is a super line.
Next up was Travaux Forces, probably one of the best problems i have ever climbed, a tremendious line with superb moves. You start on good crimps and then move upto, and follow, a diagonal ramp line on slopey pinches, superb. After doing this several times i looked at Plats de Saison a nice slopey overhanging arete. This was a good problem but unfortunately due to a dose of inability i only managed the copout left hand finish, but fear not, i will return to polish it off before i leave. As i sat on top of a boulder looking at a now blue sky i thought this was a good end to a day that was shaping up to be a wash out and then i saw a snake but was to slow to Steve Irwin it.

Yeserday began, once again, with rain but not to be disheartened i waited for it to stop and then headed for another quick drying area, Drei Zinnen. I wasnt to impressed with Drei Zinnen to many spiders and a bit damp, i packed up and headed for L'elephant in hope it would be dry, it was.
I know you shouldnt get wound up by the grades, especially in font as they are all over the show but i cant help it, i need grades, grades keep me happy, grades show me the improvement i am making and grades show me the hard work and effort i put in are not all for nothing. Dont get me wrong, i will keep climbing after i reach my peak but for now i want to climb as hard as i can, thats where i get my enjoyment, climbing a cool lines that are harder than any i have climbed before. Yesterday was not a day when this happened, 5C's i couldnt get off the floor, 5B's i fell of several times and so on and so forth. By 5pm the clouds had started to darken and a couple of spots of rain had begun to fall, this was all i needed to prompt an early exit and i packed up and left, cursing the heffalump.

Today was forecast to be dry and as i awoke the sound of silence filled the air, no rain. Out of bed, down the shop for a baguette and i was on my way to the condom capital of Fontainbleau. I arrived at Cuvier at about 10ish and set about cruising around the blue circuit, i had decided after yesterdays poor show that i should get some mileage in and try not to be disheartened by getting the traditional spanking that the forest gives out. This didnt last long though, within 30 mins blue turned into red, red turned into white and 5A mileage had turned into a 7A assault. Luckily it was not an assault, it was a crushing. La Daube, a slab, in the direct and baking sun, 3rd try. La Rhume Folle, a nice arete, 3rd try. After this i was feeling much better and the thoughts of the L'elephant failures were gone. I pottered around for another few hours then packed up and headed home, a good day.
On my way home the sky was a beautifull shade of red and we all know what that means, red sky at night 8th day on on in the morning.

Day 1-3

2010-10-03T20:32:00.003+01:00

I have been in the forest for 3 days now, has it been worth the wait? course it has.
After an epic 12 hour mission, i arrived at Buthiers. I had been awake for 27hrs but the sight of an endless mass of perfect sandstone blocs was enough to keep me awake. Quickly i gathered what i needed from the car and set about claiming the first scalps of the trip.
After a half hour or so i stumbled upon, Musclor 7a, i had seen it on a utube video and thought it looked quite good so i chucked the mat down and had a go. First try wasnt a great effort, as usual i hadnt bothered to look for the holds or work out a sequence in my mind and i promptly failed. A short rest and a good look at what i was gonna do and i gave it another try, pocket, side pull, sloper, pocket, top, done. I was very pleased with myself after this and even though it is a soft 7A its still a 7A, 2nd try, on day 1 and i would have flashed it if i had prepared properly before my flash attempt. The rest of the day was spent pottering around getting some mileage in and finding the campsite.

It rained friday night and i new everything would be wet, but i was prepared for this, i had a list. Infact for this trip i have 3 lists, a tick list, a quick drying list and a quiet area list. I put the quick drying list to good use and headed for Cul de Chien. As i walked through Sabot i checked for any dry blocs but was unsurprised to find everything was soaked, but this was not my destination so i treked on toward the sand. I reached CdC and everything was drying nicely and while i waited i checked out the Eclipse roof, ridiculous, Total Eclipse seems to have a space of about 10 feet with no dicernable holds what so ever, ridiculous. Safe to say i didnt jump on this and headed back to the boulders to potter about on the red circuit. After completeing the circuit it was time to head back to Sabot to try for something a little harder. On arriving at Sabot everything was still wet so i decided to sack it off and head back to the car and make way back to Buthiers for a look around Tennis.

Today i started at Buthiers, on the black circuit, but there are to many problems which require pulling on filthy sharp plates that for some reason are on the blocs, this is the only thing i would change about the forest, i fucking hate those plates. After sacking of the plates i turned my attention to Lady Big Claques. I managed to make good progress and got to the the slap for the big side pull but couldnt manage to move up to the pocket. Next up was Attention Chef d'Œuvre but on arrival i found that someone has snapped the end of a lapis brush into the pocket at the crux, undeterred i had a few tries anyway, it is hard without this hold and im hoping some kind local will have pulled the brush out before i leave because it is a superb problem.

I plowed on and made way way over the road to Buthiers Tennis for a pop at Fourmi Verte, i had seen a video of it on fri night and it looked good. after several attempts i was getting through the bottom half but no further. On my return to the Cavo this evening it seems i had forgotten the sequence from the video and was trying it a much harder way, i will have to go back and give it another go with better beta.

Hitting up Cuvier tomorrow.

Its hot, its really hot. The friction is poor. I hold out hope that the temps drop to single figures but on the last 3 days it has been dirty sweaty shirts off weather. This will not do, but it could be worse, it could be raining.

Work, train, sleep, repeat

2010-09-13T13:38:00.002+01:00

Work, train, sleep, repeat.

This has been the schedule of my life for the last 6 months and it will soon come to an end. There is only 2 weeks of grind left before i allow my body the rest it so dearly wants, after this i will take myself on the long drive to the proving ground. Has the training worked? will it all pay off?
The 2 training goals i set myself when i was given the time off from work were to achieve a bent arm front lever and to hang the 45's on the beastmaker, last week one of these came to fruition.
After a short Fingerboard session on Monday and a good Chapel session on tuesday i decided to get some footage of the problems in the Hen Cloud woods, after flitting round the easy arete problems i had a go at Sanitarium, when i first did Sanitarium i was a bit gutted that the superb sloping shelf at the top of the problem was far to difficult to hold and i had to avoid it and throw to a water runnel on top of the bloc. No such nonsence was to take place this time, instead of moving through it i lobbed for it, hit it at its worst point and comfitably held it, result.
The light began to fade and the problems i was climbing were on the opposite side of the hill to the setting sun, i decided any further footage would be a waste of tape so i went to have a pop at Touch. To my suprise the moves that had previously been tricky i was now locking off, scratching my head and reaching for the next hold. These moves were easy, i was a bit freaked out to be honest, last time i tried it i was reaching a high point by slapping up, without control, and holding the sloper maybe 1 in 5 times. I was now easily holding the sloper and bringing my other hand up to match the shelf.
I didnt reach new ground on the problem as i have no idea where the next hold is, the wall is a wash with slopey ledges and ripples and there is no easy way to look down the wall from the top. As the sun dropped out of sight over the Cheshire plain i packed up and decided to return with a brush and a rope to clean the top and locate the holds. As i wondered down to my car i was still impressed with how easy the first few moves of touch had felt and with a content feeling that the last 6 months effort was starting to pay off i headed home for a beastmaker session.

I got home, got the chicken stew bubbling and complited a few sets of hangs. At the end of the session i hopefully fondled the only proper holds on the board, i pulled on the 45's expecting to experience the same moment of hang as usual, this momentary hang isnt through strength it is simply down to a change in direction, from up to down. Tonight it felt different, there was a pause, a distinct fraction of time between up and down where stillness was achieved. GAME ON. I chalked up, positioned myself below the board and tried again, but tried properly this time and bang, a hang of about a second.
At this point i thought "YESSSSSSSSS" ive done it, training goal achieved. I always thought that the day i could hang these holds would be the day i started to feel strong but i had a niggle in the back of my brain, is a 1 second hang any better than the fraction of a second i normally achieve?. In gymnastic rings you cannot claim a position until it has been held for 3 secs in competition. Well my competition arena is the hallway of my house and the only competitor is myself, so if i was to claim the 45's i had to nail a 3 second hang and i had to do it now, i rested, stired my stew, brushed the holds and prepared for 1 good go and as everybody knows thats all it takes to get something done. I waited for the second hand of the clock to tick its way to twelve and pulled on. Tick, tick, tick, boom. 3 secs had been crushed but to my amazement i was still dangleing, by the skin of my teeth, to the impossibly slopey holds of glory. At 5 secs i finally came off, i stood alone in the dark hallway of my house with the smell of victory all around me.

This feat means more to me than just being strong enough to be able to complete an arbitary hang on a given hold, it is the culmination of 6 months hard work, it proves that i havent wasted the last 6 months, that the plan has worked. I have definately reached a new level of strength recently which i have proved to myself in the Chapel but this demonstration of pure strength is the crowning glory.

YYFY

Project done

2010-09-06T15:08:00.002+01:00

Good things come to those who wait, but i couldnt wait, i went out and grabbed my good thing with both hands.

Last week i managed to work out all the moves on my project and i managed to climb it once from the ground to the top on the shunt. I had decided to leave it until i got back from font before trying it above pads, its quite high and falling from the top would, according to sods law, leave me with an injury and cancell my trip. Im not good at waiting.
On Saturday morning i was up for 6am and heading for the Newstones to get warmed up, i was set to meet Adam at 8am to take advantage of the cooler temps. As we walked into the woods i was filled with a quiet excitement at the prospect of putting up a new problem, not only was it on "gods own" but it was also a quality line that had sat dormant for years just waiting to be crushed, its day had finally come.

The pads went down and the camera went up, i squeeked my boots, chalked up and set off. The first few moves are easy and i got to the foot jam with no trouble, i chalked up and went for the slopey crimp, it felt much better in the cool morning air, my left foot went up to the smear then the right foot went straight to the slopey rail with ease, all that was left was to reach for the top and boom it was done.

The arete had completed its life objective, it had been climbed. It is now "The Chapel, 6C", i called it the The Chapel for obvious reasons and 6C because it seems a fitting grade, it may be easier in the cold as most things are but i am also going well at the minute so it could be a little harder. There is a problem in the wood called "Sanitarium, 7A+" and i think it is easier than TC but i think Sanitarium is overgraded, but who knows and frankly who cares.

Sufice to say i was made up with my mornings work and in a small way i feel i have left my mark on Peak District gritstone climbing, it is only a small mark and it is hidden on the bottom of the shoes of giants but its there and its my mark.

Eaten but not beaten

2010-08-31T09:31:00.002+01:00

With Tom still in Wales and Adam more than likely changing nappies, hoovering or doing some other horrendous domestic tasks i was left with no partner, it only seemed fitting to have another pop at the project. I wasn't holding out much hope as the last RH hold is a slopey crimp of the greasiest order, the conditions were no better than last time i had tried it, but the strength is back up to full so i figured i would give it a go and see what happened.
I got down to the wood, had a quick ab down the route to clean it off then set about trying to work out the sequence for the last couple of moves on the shunt. I managed the undercut to foot jam to crimpy side pull move with ease this time, it had been a tricky move on the first session but went easily last night which filled me with confidence. After this i had a few scratty attempts at working out the beta for the last moves and after about 10 mins i had cracked it, all that was left to do was link it.
The top section goes something like this, get the slopey crimp with your right hand, then get a high left foot onto a smeary edge, start to stand and bring your right foot to a good sloping rail, from there you reach up with your right hand to the top and victory. The last 2 foot movements are definitely the crux and i greased of the RH crimp twice while trying to get my right foot up, if this was to happen when i boulder it out it would result in a cartwheeling fall onto my head from a height where a head first dive toward the floor is not advisable.
After a few grease foiled attempts i manged to do it from bottom to top. Mega. All that remains now is to go back on sat afternoon with a stack of pads and get it done.

In my enthusiasm i hadn't noticed the inhabitants of the wood biting the shit out of my arms, this morning i sit typing with polka dotted arms, there must be close to 2 hundred bites on my arms and the itching is driving me nuts, but its well worth it as i now know i can get the project done before my trip or before someone else nabs it.

Into the last month

2010-08-30T09:14:00.002+01:00

It feels like only yesterday it was a year untill my trip, at that time it seemed like a distant glint at the end of the tunnel, the glint has now turned into the full blown halogen fuelled glare on the good train bleau, and it is bearing down upon me with break neck speed.
With only 31 days to go i have banished the disasterous month and a half i spent layed out in bed, with a bad back, and am now feeling stronger than ever and i am being fuelled by a disturbing level of SYKE never before experienced in my grit hugging days. Last weeks training held some quite wierd occurences, the big pink sloper on the board is now feeling suprisingly good and moving through it is feeling pretty steady, i put up another 3 new problems using it last week in order to eak out the biggest gains i can in my last 15 traning sessions.
The other suprising development was on the Beastmaker. I am using a 'steady state training' type idea on the board, the idea being that for each hang i try to reach a max of 8 secs, when 8 secs is reached on each rep i stop hanging. Once i manage to complete all 12 hangs for 8 seconds, on 6 consecutive sessions, i up the weight and the process starts again. This is used in gymnastics to condition bicep tendons and i figure whats good for the goose is good for the fingers.
On tuesday, after completeing 6 sessions of 8's last week and the week before, i added 5 kgs and set about hanging. A full house of 8's is 96 secs, i managed 72 secs with the extra weight and i made this by the skin of my teeth, good i thought, that gives a me a target to aim for before i go away, a full house of 8's with 15kgs. To my amazement on thursday i made a full house of 8's, thats an increase 24 secs from 1 session to the next and i also managed 95secs on sat morning. I was achieving these type of time gains when i first came back after injury but to be still making them 8 weeks later seems pretty odd, good, but odd.

After sat mornings Chapel session the rain scuppered my plans, me and tom were gonna do the Roaches E1 challenge, all 26 E1's on the Roaches in a day, but it was not to be. Instead, me, Tom and Eddie headed for the new Manchester bouldering wall. We made it all the way to Manchester only to be stopped by an inpenitrable procession of pink and had to turn around and head for Awesome Walls instead.
This turned out to be a good decision as when we arrived the harder circuit of problems were superb. I normally find at walls that as the problems get harder the holds just get smaller and nearly every problem is set on minging little crimps or pockets. This is a problem for me as i hate little crimps and pockets hurt my tendons, however the good folk at Awesome Walls had seen fit to set problems with lovely slopey holds or bigger holds which were harder to move between, this made me very happy and i found that they were some of the best indoor problems i have climbed outside of the Chapel.

Beaten by the pump

2010-08-23T14:19:00.002+01:00

Another week flies by and i am 1 week closer to the forest, 39 days and counting.

Training went well again this week, more of the same really but i am managing to use the superb pink sloper on the board again and its feeling surprisingly good given the heat and humidity. I set a new problem on the board which mimics La Balance, my dream tick for the trip, and i will concentrate on that in the next few weeks.

The weekend began with me wasting Saturday morning waiting for Tom to get out of bed, we had arranged to meet at 12 at the chapel and head for the new Manchester bouldering wall, but with the sunny weather early on Saturday, i thought getting out on the ropes was a better option. By the time Tom had answered his phone it had gone 12 and the first drops of rain had began to fall, this signalled an end to my plan of hitting up the Roaches. Tom decided to head for New Mills. We had a reasonable session at NM and i led, The Arete E25b, which was very pleasant and Adam knocked of Electric Circus.
Tom tried a right hand finish to Honcho and in doing so nearly brained Adam when he ripped off the bottom of a big flake, it landed in the spot Adam had just exited via a quick sideways dive. We then packed up and went home.

Sunday was a Millstone day. We started of with a quick blast up a couple of embankment cracks, then a pop at Time for Tea. I have done TfT before but i had taken the wrong line and ended up using the jugs for feet and using some small row of crimps higher up the wall for hands. This time i did it correctly and it was good. I made Tom second it on the line i had taken when i first tried to lead it, he didn't like it and said there was no chance he would have led it, to dodgy and insecure he claimed, coward.
We then walked to the bottom of the quarry, Tom jumped on Brimstone E25b, which he really enjoyed and then i got on Gates of Mordor E35c.
GoM is splendid, and on my first attempt i fell from the very last move because i was pumped. In hindsight i should have just dived for the last hold as i ended up taking the fall anyway, i got back on and got it second try by chucking for the jug, which is clearly what i should have done on the onsight attempt.
Next up we headed for Higger Tor to try The File and The Rasp. The File went easily enough with solid gear and good moves throughout. Next up i jumped on The Rasp but once again i got far to pumped and had to jump off. Turns out i had missed a massive juggy flake to my right which would have led to a good rest and then victory, never mind.
We then called it a day and i headed home for a Beastmaker session and a dose of Between the Trees.

Bouldering may get you strong but it does sod all for route fitness. Both of the routes i had fallen of that day would have been walked with a bit more fitness, but these are not the days of route fitness, these are the days of the preparation for the forest.

I wanna see the sunshine after the rain

2010-08-17T15:33:00.003+01:00

Living in Blighty you get used to the rain, alot of rain. You sit by, day after day, watching opertunities to go out crushing washed away in another down pour, but this trip was going to be different. Last week was spent obsessively checking the various forecasting sites and seeking wisdom from the forums, this didnt help. All signs were pointing toward a washout and reports from ground zero gave wet conditions or at very best greasy as hell and not worth the drive. But we had faith.

Pembroke was the destination and with our healthy dose of faith packed up in the back of Adams Focus we headed for the finest sea cliffs known to man. Our 1 AM arrival was met with patchy, cloudy skies and after a quick tent build we got some head down with hopes of clear blue skies in the morning. We would not be disaspointed.
Sat morning was partyly cloudy with a chilly breeze, it looked like it could go either way but we got up and got on it, our first port of call was St. Govens. by the time we had abbed down the crag the clouds were splitting and the heat was bursting through, an hour later we were basking in glorious sunshine. Winner.

St Govens is a cracking crag with a good split of grades and a fair share of classics to throw yourself at. The highlights of the day were

Army Dreamers, a good warm up and about as good as jug pulling gets.

The Arrow, a lovely E2 outing which took in 2 opposing grooves, followed by a finish through a fun jug filled roof.

The Butcher, an E3 arete with good gear and a nice bold crux section which can, and should, be run out to the top. This was my favourite route of the day and should be on your list if you head there.

We ended the day with an unfit Adam having an epic at the top Deranged E2, ropes everywhere, wild slapping and look down from the top of the crag which truly portrayed type 2 fun.

Day 2 was a day of taking it easy, Adam had tweaked his hand on Deranged and didnt fancy pushing his grade so we headed for St Davids and the more plesantly angled sandstone slabs. St Davids is also home to the route at the top of my tick list, Dreamboat Annie.
The slabs of SD are very pleasant and we blasted through a suprising ammount of routes in 4 hours but we left the best till last. At about 4.30 we arived back at Dreamboat to find the tide had receded enough to get on the start of the route. Of all the routes i saw and climbed this was the best. The soaring arete is one of the best looking lines i have ever been on and i wasnt disapointed by the climbing, good moves, just the right ammount of good gear and in a beautifull location.

The last day of the trip was at Carreg-y-Barcud. I had high hopes for this magnificent sandstone slab, but was slightly disapointed in what i found. The routes were good but a little to close to slate for my liking. The climbs were a little bold on slightly suspect gear and with The Trip in less than 2 months away, my brave head was well and truly off my shoulders.
We did however see an attempt on Mean Feat by an unknown youth. He started well but began to splutter at half way, started to shake, and with enough distance between him and his last runner to hit the floor, he called for the abb rope and with difficulty made it back to the ground. At this point i hauled up our abb rope, which he had used to save himself, and packed it away. As i did this he set off up the route again, this time with no abb rope. I hope he was more successfull the second time.

All in all a superb introduction to Pembroke and i am looking forward to going back and exploring more of the southern cliffs. The only down side to the weekend was that 30 mins from Adams we got pulled by the 5-0, Adam shit it as he hadnt dropped below 80 since leaving Pembroke and most was done at about 110. Luckily he was only clocked at 89 so he gets to keep his licence, but get 3 shiney pints to remind him of his weekend adventure. Muppet.

Pembrokes waiting, just friday to deal with

2010-08-13T15:35:00.006+01:00

Its been a good week on all accounts.
Monday i headed for the unforgiving shaded walls of the Ramhaw, but after several routes the wind got the better of me, with the thought of a wind induced slip and the resulting broken leg, i backed off and went home.

At this time last year me and Tom were climbing everyday after work, either soloing or with string attached, this overdose of gritstone leads to confident climbing above gear, it also allowed me to obtain a good soloists head. In this head space i find that my thoughts are only concerned with the moves and the holds ahead. This year the after work climbing sessions have been few and far between due to Tom moving out of my house and seemingly wanting to find a career, madness. This lack of route climbing has seen the loss of my soloing head, this is annoying as confident soloing is one of my favourite things to do in this plastic wrapped, health and safety existence we live.
However, the purpose of this year is not to solo or even to advance my trad climbing, this is the year of bloc crushing, the year of training, the year of the forest.
Tuesday night rolled around and blue skies and pleasant temps came with it, along with a text from Tom with a call to arms and an assault on Hen Cloud. This text was met with a reply of "sorry mate gotta stick to the plan, I'm going The Chapel". Safe to say he was not impressed but with reluctance he agreed to meet me on the Cloud on weds instead.
Tuesday at The Chapel was a good night, i feel like i am making good advances back to where i was and i crushed all of the problems i had set in the last 4 weeks. Another full house of 8 sec hangs was achieved on the beastmaker with the exception of the last one, which was a 7 secs, due to a slight wobble meaning i slipped of the 30 degrees of wooden glory. Gymnastic statics are going well, front levers progressions are now easy, handstands are much more comfortable on the wrists and the balance for freestanding HS is coming along nicely, Planches are ok and L-Sits no longer utilise the 'shitting dog' method.

Wednesday we hit up the Cloud, that hill isn't as bad as i remember. We started on Delstree, which is one of the Clouds belting HVS's, propa HVS at that. The crack was climbed without incident and the sloping topout was lovely, the beginning was a nightmare though, balancey moves without gear where the soloist head was needed but wasn't there to guide me through.
Next up was a route we saw some visiting foreigners on last year and fancied going back for. We spoke to them at the time and they asked the golden question "Is there gear at the end of the traverse?", oh the beauty of on sighting. Anyway we headed for 'Monkey In Your Soul' after Tom had kindly climbed the initial crack, placing the gear, he decided he wasn't fit enough for the traverse so climbed down and handed me the rope. A quick shimmy up the crack, avoiding using the high nut placement as a cheeky handhold, left me at the start of the traverse. The traverse is on good holds for the first half and then quickly turns to a slopey, scritty nightmare, i reached the end of the nightmare fully pumped due to a serious lack of route fitness and decided the only course of action was to lay one on for the arete. Next thing i knew i was clattering into tom after a hefty pendulum, i must remember not to fall from any further up the route when i next try it.
Next up was a quick ascent of 'Chicken' which is a lovely varied route that i would recommend to anyone.
I think i love the Cloud.

Thursday brought another Chapel session in which normal service was resumed, i got spat of every problem i tried. I don't understand people who train and complete loads of problems in the session, wheres the fun in that? trainings about failure, you don't get stronger climbing things you can do. I did however crush a full house of 8's on the beastmaker with ease, very pleasing.

So we come to Friday afternoon, I'm sat in my god forsaken, hell hole of an office, desperately avoiding doing any work while dreaming of the perfect, glorious, mega, fantastic sea cliffs of Pembroke. They will be the focus of the next 5 days. With only 35 mins left to go until i escape i am fighting the temptation to stand on my desk, declare the other office monkeys harbingers of a waisted life and dive headlong out the window onto the flat roof shimmy down the drainpipe and flee for pastures greener. But unfortunately i need my job, so i wont.

devolution

2010-08-10T13:55:00.002+01:00

Back into the groove with added zeal.

Training properly again feel good, and making good progress on the board and the Beastmaker feels even better. On Tue/Thurs i walked a couple of problems which i could barley do the moves on 4 weeks ago and I also hit my first full house of hangs on the Beastmaker, on all 12 hangs i made it to the 8 sec goal. I will continue on the same fingerboard routine untill i get 2 weeks of full houses to allow for some adaptation of the tendons, a type of steady state training i suppose.

Speaking of SST, the gymnastics is going well, front levers and handstands are progressing nicely. Planche progress is slower but that is to be expected as they are a difficult skill to learn. L-sits are coming on as well, but i have not noticed major gains yet.

Enough about plastic and wood, what about the real thing? Well my soloing head is shit this year, im finding it hard to get my flow going. Last year, due to lots of soloing, i achieved a nice flow on the rock, i could remove the thought of falling from my mind and just climb, without the restrictions of fear. I think i might give soloing rest for the summer.

Saturday i headed for a session down The Chapel and then headed out, with greg, to Cratcliff. Greg had T-Crack on the list, and he dispatched it in about 3/4 tries after he had worked out his sequence, which involved a cheating small man solution with unfeasonable high feet instead of the campus move. I flailed and felt knackered after The Chapel, and i had forgotten my old sequence, and it was hot and humid and greasy and err, err, i hadnt had enough breakfast.
We headed over to the cave on the back of the stride to have a crack at the 7A cave problem. I failed on this last time i tried but i really shouldnt have, i dropped the last move which is to a jug, from a jug. This time however i crushed it, no bother.

Chapel tonight, Hen Cloud tomorrow, Chapel again on thurs and then 5 days of climbing in wales, SYKED.

Cleaned and ready

2010-08-02T13:38:00.002+01:00

Another week has passed by and there has been more missed training and climbing.

I missed training in the week because i couldn't be arsed, spending time off with injury allows you to fall back into old grooves, these grooves must be filled this week and the mission must be got back on.

Sunday i did see some rock, i got down to the wood to clean off the projects. 2 of the lines i was gonna get on have dodgy landings and cannot be justified so close to a trip. However the main project has a fine landing. Its a lovely arete with good moves, good holds and standing 5 metres high is a perfect height.
The only thing wrong with the line is that the crux is the last 2 moves, so working them means taking many, many falls from 3 metres up. Now 3 metres doesn't sound to bad but on your own, with only a single layer of foam and bad knees, it is a different proposal.
My trad climbing is always onsight because i like the challenge of climbing into the unknown, however, this is not trad climbing this is bouldering. Bouldering is about working out the moves and then failing over and over and over again until 1 day when everything clicks and you crush your project, with this in mind and after 3/4 hours of hitting the deck i decided to work out the top moves on the rope to save my knees.
I have managed to work out all the moves except the last one, if i manage to get it done i think i may have to abandon my favourite grade, 6B, as this feels more like 7A/+ but at an uncomfortable height making it feel a bit harder.

I'm not sure if i will get it done before the forest, as its a little high and i don't want to risk injury, but i will get the last couple of moves sorted in the next few weeks and see how its feels.

Get keen, get cleaning

2010-07-26T11:25:00.002+01:00

I spent yesterday scrating around magic wood, unfortunately, i wasn't in Switzerland.

The wood to the right hand side of Hen Cloud may well hold some beauties, however they are currently resting under a layer of moss and lichen. Yesterday i started on a nice sharp arete at the bottom of the hill, despite being a little soft in places it was quite pleasant. Next up were a couple of aretes, Pluto's Ring and Mad Lines, both weighing in at E1. ML is a pocketed round arete and the easier of the 2, PR is a sharper arete and is the better of the 2 lines, and well worth seeking out.

I then pottered around the corner and stumbled on a superb problem, Sanitarium 7A+. It starts on an undercut buttress with a side pull and undercut, then a toe hook leads to a lovely slopey hold for the left hand, high right foot onto a good smear, then bounce the right hand up twice on rounded side pulls, this leads to a superb sloping hold which, unfortunately, is only used as an intermediate as the next move is a bump to a victory jug. I was pleasantly surprised to get up it as I'm still feeling pretty weak, I'm not sure its worth 7A+, but it is definitely worth seeking out.

There is possibly a few unclimbed lines in the wood and 1 line, which is suggested in the guide as a project, which involves a good slopey looking arete. This route also involves impaling yourself on a branch if you fall of it wrong, so it may well be interesting. All the possible lines in the wood are very dirty so this evening i am gonna embark on a cleaning mission to free these problems from the filth. There is at least 4 lines in the wood im looking at, 1 is Probably Boysens Arete which is a superb arete with a nasty landing, its also the only one mentioned in the guide as being climbed.
I left the wood with the intent of returning with a rope and a brush, to clean off a few things, and also more pads to try to make the landings a little less damaging.

Next up, Touch 7A+, i have looked at this problem before and it looked good, and yesterday it certainly didn't disappoint. I am a self confessed hater of the crimp, mainly due to having no desire to pull on tiny little holds when there are so many beautiful slopes and pinches to play with. The touch crimps are different, they are rounded ripples which dont hurt the fingers or leave me with the feeling I'm gonna tear huge flappers on my tips. A couple of nice moves lead to the pair crimps then its feet up and a reach to a poor, but equally nice, crimp and then a throw for a lovely sloping flatty. It was at this point i failed, repeatedly, but at just over half height there is plenty of climbing left in this 7m beauty.

Highballing is possible the finest thing in life, i just wish that you didn't have to carry so many pads.

The neverending battle

2010-07-21T13:40:00.002+01:00

During my lay off i lost a lot of strength and acquired a lot of weight. This is now starting to be addressed, the weight is dropping and the power is coming back.

I can test myself against previously climbed problems on the board, however i feel this is not all ways the best test as success depends on not only strength but also on how well i am climbing. I can however use the Beastmaker to judge the recovery of strength, and it works very well for this.

In my fingerboard routine i am doing 12 hangs in 3 sets of 4 with an added 10kg. On my first session back from The Alps i managed a total of 33 secs, a week later my session weighed in at a lofty 79 secs. That's more than a 100% increase in a week which is a quite crazy. As simple as it seems, adding up the total hang times, as a way of judging progress, has only just dawned on me and i will go back through my training diary to see what my strongest fingerboarding session has been.

Chapel tonight.

Return of the Gardener

2010-07-13T14:01:00.003+01:00

Well it felt like along time coming, but last week i managed to get my mits back on the rock, and it felt good.

On a hot sunny day, some 6/7 weeks ago, i decided to give climbing a miss and do some gardening, the front yard was looking like a jungle and i had perspective tennants to entice, so a day off the rock seemed like the clever thing to do. It was not. I woke the next day with a bit of a sore back, it was the normal ache you get when you stay bent over for any ammount of time. However, this pain got worse by the day and culminated in an inability to get out of bed. This led to weeks of pain and meant that climbing was not on the agenda. I did in this time drink many fine ales, eat many jelly babies and consume a small Jamaican harvest, all this led to the addition of 10kg and the loss of all finger strength.

The return to rock was at a superb venue, the granite slabs and walls of Ailefroide, however after only 4 days our trip was cut short, we had to return home due to some serious fatherhood issues for my mate Adam.
I wasnt happy that the trip was cut short but somewhere deep inside the training demons where cheering, they could see a glimpse of the chapel again and they were chomping at the bit to get back under the board and back on the rings to give the body the overdue abuse it deserved.
Dont get me wrong, climbing outside and crushing blocs is clearly the finest achievement available to the climber, but, there is something inside me that loves sitting under the board, feeling strong and crushing problems that require no skill, just power.

Anyway, now my back issues are gone i'm back in the game, but the game i am playing is catch up. I feel i have lost a month and a half to the back injury and it will take a month to get back to where i was, so thats a good 2 months down the pan. This is being remedied with 3 chapel sessions a week, Tue/Thurs/Sat, with Mon thrown in if its raining. The sessions continuous now until the end of September, with only a week break before the Forest.
Sessions will be 1.5hrs on the board, then a Beastmaker session followed by gymnastic work. Board climbing will be very basic problems, no twists, no flagging, no drop knees and absolutely no thumbs. This basic type of problem is good in the summer when i can get outside to work technique. The Beastmaker work is max hangs on the 30's.

The gymnastic work is something i have dabbled with before but never really got stuck into, last year me and Tom had a challenge of who could get the best results from training our backs. I took weights and he took the rings, after a 2 month period we had seemingly similar results, however my gains were achieved with more consistent workouts and more effort. Rings are the way forward.

Gymnastic training will consist of 4 fundamental static positions, front levers, planches, l-sits and handstands. These will be followed by the workout of the day from gymnastic bodies.

Mon/Wed/Fri will be days out soloing on the grit for some milage and weekends will be full of the glories of trad.

Feels good to be back.

Dirty hot

2010-05-24T10:19:00.003+01:00

The summer is most definitely upon us. All last week was spent in the Churnet hiding from the sun under the shade of the trees, but this sun dodging didn't give favourable conditions, nor did it prepare for what was to come at the weekend.
The week was spent at Gentleman's Rock and i got all the easy stuff filmed and started to work 3 harder problems, 50p Problem, lounge Lizard and a 7a+ pebbly groove. All 3 of these are good and should go, but time is running out, temps are going up and i still havent been to Wrights Rock.
The Weekend was hot, dirty hot. I had planned to hit up the Churnet and seek some solace in the shade however my friend J called me and declared he was coming out with me for some bouldering. Now J is the strongest weak person i have ever met, to look at him you would think him capable of crushing to a reasonable level, but J isn't a climber, he is the human embodiment of a baby deer and when he takes to the rock the deer is released. Safe to say he wouldn't see much success on the steep blocs of the Churnet so we headed for the Roaches, mistake.
Hot, greasy, windless conditions where awaiting all that ventured out. I decided that it was a fools game to pull hard on anything so instead just milled about lapping the classic easy problems giving out beta to the to the foreigners who had come from places as far a field as leicester and even Wales.
After a potter about on the upper tier we shot up to Doxeys with hope of a breeze, fail. We rocked up and met a couple of lads who happened to be from the army, J is also ex-army so we got chatting to them and they were good lads. They did posses the trait that seems to be in every soldier i have ever met, you may think bravery/discipline/camaraderie and these may all be present, but the single trait that seems to link all squaddies is a love of getting mashed and if the mash happens to come from Peru all the better.

I am heading to the Grasshopper and Breathe blocs tonight as they are the most shaded areas, Wrights will be in full glare of the sun so i will leave it until later in the week when the temps are meant to drop a little.

3,2,1 in the valley

2010-05-16T22:26:00.003+01:00

Another weekend has come to an end and the horror of another 5 days of soul destroying office monotony are staring me in the face again. However, the promise of the valley will drive me through the days in the air conditioned, florescent jail.

Saturday this week was spent in Chee Dale and i was barely of the floor on the warm up route when i remembered why i hate peak limestone, polished horrible holds and uninspiring non existent lines. Safe to say this year didn't ignite the love of the lime and its now back to gods own.
Today me and Adam hit up the Churnet, we started at Belmont Hall for some trad but after a few unsuccessful attempts at an E3 up a groove we decided to sack it off and seek out some blocs to crush. We headed for Cottage Rocks to warm up and then moved down to Pine Buttress. Adam didn't last long and was complaining about sore skin and whimpered off to the car. I managed to crush Eddies new problem, Lonesome Pine 7A, but it was never 7A, 6B+/C tops. Next i moved up to the arete then moved onto The Toilet bloc. The Toilet bloc isn't to good but there is 1 good line, Toilet Duck 6C+, which i hadn't done, it involves a couple of steep moves on jugs then a pop to a pocket on the front face, a heel hook to a rounded traverse then an dirty rounded horror top out, lovely.
With 2 new ticks under my belt i went on the hunt for more and the place to find them was the Grasshopper bloc, at least i thought it would be. On route i was distracted, a strange rustle was coming from the undergrowth and nearly had to engage Steve Irwin mode. I had disturbed a snake in the undergrowth and i just caught a glimpse of it sliding through the ferns, but by the time i got my pad down and my camera out, it was gone. Never mind, back to the cranking.
The Grasshopper bloc is very steep, much steeper than i thought it would be and the plum line, Duck Billed Platipus 7A, cross's straight through the steepness. By this time i was quite tired but on went the V10's, out came the chalk, the holds got brushed and i pulled on, expecting victory. The problem starts on 2 reasonable rounded edges, you get a high left heel toe and then make a big move back and left through the roof to a crimp. After several attempts i only managed to latch the crimp once and even then i was on the mat shortly afterwards, fatigue had got the better of me and i decided to sack it off and hunt out the Breathe bloc.
After tripping, sliding and falling my way through the forest i arrived at the Breathe bloc. There are 2 problems i want to do on this boulder, Footprint 6B+ and Breathe 7A. I managed to flash Footprint but Breathe evaded me. It starts off 2 dirty sharp crimps, I'm normally not a fan of sharp crimps but this problem must be done, its redeeming feature? a glorious sloper. After the starting crimps you slap up for a perfect sloper which i must use, i hit it a couple of times but decided to leave it for another day, maybe tomorrow.

3 new ticks, 2 that got away and a snake, not a bad day in the valley.

Back to the Churnet

2010-05-14T22:49:00.004+01:00

Tonight's after work session was meant to be a nice plod around the Roaches but i got the Churnet fever and had to get on it.
I started at Cottage Rocks and got the 2 good lines on the main face done leaving only the steep arete on the left side of the buttress to be done. Next up i moved down to the Pine Buttress and re-climbed the centre and right line, not to impressed with the middle line but the problem on the right is good. Ive not managed to get the left hand line done before but today i crushed it. Its the best of the 3 problems and has a cracking dyno to latch the jugs below the top, quality. Headed up to the arete in the trees next but due to fading light and tree cover there wasn't enough light to film, so i decided to pack up and head home.

Mondays Churnet mission will be the arete, the toilet bloc and the Grasshopper bloc if the light holds out.

6 down 18 to go

2010-05-13T23:07:00.003+01:00

Tonight saw the last training session for 2 weeks, which means i am 6 week closer to the forest than when i started.

After 5 weeks of pretty disciplined training, eating and spending i fell off the wagon in week 6. Week 6 saw the consumption of beers, chocolate and a tribe of jelly babies along with a poor showing on the pre-work training and spending on a pair of velcros. However this trend will not be allowed to stray into week 7, week 7 will be the rebirth of bloody single mindedness and the eyes will be back on the prize.

On Monday i will be embarking on a 2 week mission in the Churnet to get some footage for a film about the area. Weather permitting i will be able cover all the areas, including the newer small blocs hidden in the valley. The valley is a superb place to climb and is normally a solitary affair, which i feel is the best way to boulder, however on the publication of the new Roaches guide and quite extensive documenting on UKB it might now see more traffic. This will be my first real effort at filming other people which means i will be able to have some better camera work which will make it a bt more interesting. The culprits will be crimpin Eddie, strong Dave and Greggles.

The weekend will see my yearly pilgrimage to the limestone. I don't like limestone. That's not strictly true, i love going away to Spain, dosing at the crags and clipping pristine rock under a warm life giving sun. I hate chossy, grim, peak limestone, but every year about this time i try to get into it. This weekend we are heading for Chee Dale and i hope it will be the year that it clicks, i hold out little hope.
Sunday we are heading for the Churnet to try some of the trad. The only trad i have climbed in the valley is Soul Survivor which is a splendid route so i hoping the rest is up to scratch.

New shoes drizzle and weirdness

2010-05-10T22:24:00.003+01:00

A bit of a lame duck of a weekend this week. Sat was meant to be spent at Gardoms but an early txt from Adam with a report of wet ground and drizzle put pay to that, instead i headed for macclesfield for a shiny new pair of shoes, the first full price pair i have bought for 2 years as ukc has been a good sauce of second hand pairs. I then headed for the spring boulders as they would provide a quick escape if the rain came. After 5 hours and only a couple of light showers i left the spring with a tape full of footage, 3 new ticks and very little skin. A good day but not what i was after.

I woke on Sunday to blue skies, however i waisted the day. We headed to gardoms but it was green and pretty scritty so we packed up and headed for Rivelin. Im not very good at venue changes i don't know why but i loose my momentum on venue change. I cant work it out, its stupid and another weird thing ive gotta sort out. We lasted about an hour at rivelin we pretty much got spat of Auto De Fe and then went home. I did eat a champion amount of chocolate when i got home though, result.

Couldn't get out today as i had to stay in to give my new lodger her key. I took the opportunity to hit up the beastmaker. After a sanding, to take them back to P120, i did 3 sets of 4 max hangs on the 35's with 20kgs. Then did 2 sets of 4 max hangs on the small edges with 12.5 kgs.

Chapel tomorrow and maybe Bosley Cloud on Wednesday.

Hard rest days and good heavy days

2010-05-06T22:28:00.003+01:00

Another weeks training done, another week closer to the forest.

Monday night i hit up Ramshaw for some filming and had a good night. I got most of the things filmed i wanted to, except the 3 Sharks Fin problems, it was to dark. Mon was meant to be a rest day but i got a little over excited on a couple of problems and it turned into a good little session followed by some max hangs when i got home, this wasnt a good idea as on tues i climbed like a fool on the board. Rest day wednesday. Tonight as i drove to the chapel i was feeling a little sluggish and very heavy and didnt think i was in for a good session but once i got warmed up i felt good and ended up having a good hour and a half on the board. Ive dropped my tues and thurs morning sessions this week but have increased the quality of the 3 remaining ones, full range of movement is a fucker.

Off to Ramshaw again tomorrow night to polish off the filming, then Gardoms on sat and Rivelin on sun for some aretin. Will this weekend see the E5 onsight????

Spanked on the moor

2010-05-02T19:53:00.002+01:00

Some days everything falls into place, you feel strong, the problems feel easy and you crush everything you try. Today was not one of those days.

Today saw my long awaited journey to stanton moor, i had been planning to go to stanton for the last 3 weeks but it always got put off for one reason or another but today we managed to get there. We began at the Andle Stone as a warm up which saw failure on the 6B+ arete, at this point i should have seen it coming. We then moved onto the Cork Stone, i polished off the 6A arete but flailed on the 6C on its other side it felt desperate but i think i was missing a trick. Book of UFO's felt like it would go with a bit more work though but it wasn't to be today. Next up was My Left Foot which was good and i flashed the sitter, i should have packed my bag and left at this point as it was all down hill from here. Overlooked Arete-not even close, Brads rib bloc-nothing, Chicken Ginger-spanked.

Some days nothing works, some days you get spanked by things you should be able to have a good crack at, some days you feel all the effort and the training are doing sweet FA, today was one of those days. But i will not be disheartened, at times like this you must have grit and determination and i am choked full of that.

Saturday on stanage

2010-05-01T22:21:00.002+01:00

Bank holiday weekends on stanage are never a good idea, on stanage popular they are even worse but due to an iffy forecast Adam decided he didn't want to get caught out in the rain at Bamford so suggested we get some milage on stanage. I must stop listening to Adam. He kicked of the day on with Yosemite Wall which i followed with Queesville which were both very pleasant and well worth doing. Adam then shot up Easter Rib which is a boldish rib with some sweet moves and i will be back to lead at some point in the future.
It was now time to get into gear and do something worth while and with my double E4 and an E5 mission still on the cards i looked at Constipation E46a, a very fine arete which had taken my eye last year but i didn't get on it as i didn't think i would get up it. Today was a different story, today i new i could do it, today was gonna be the day i manned up and got down to business, so i climbed up placed the first cam then climbed down, tied on and was ready for the off. The first cam, that would stop you hitting the deck, is quite poor and sits in a worn sandy slot, with little confidence in it i pressed on. Heel toe, high hold on the arete, side pulls, remove heel-toe, left heel hook, left hand up to the break and bomber cams. No bother and without the worrying slap for the brake the guide book had promised. The rest of the route is much easier, with only long reach before your on the top. The bottom half of this route is superb with good moves and shit gear, love it. This got me going and i was syked to get a good day in so we moved on so Adam could try Dark Continent.
This didn't go well as the first piece of gear he placed got stuck and this led to us spending an hour stood about waiting for the route to be free so he could ab down and retrieve it, eventually he retrieved it and then finished up Link which is jug pulling through some steep ground, fun fun fun. As we had walked to DC i had spotted the Asp was surprisingly dry so we headed back to jump on this. I have wanted to do this route since i first saw the picture in the guide as i looks so good and i wasn't disappointed. Solid runners and great moves abound and it is only let down by its diminutive size, but then again its grit so what would you expect. Next up was a pop at Boc No Buttress which follows the asp to the gear then traverses right through pockets to the arete then climbs the right side of this to the top. My attempt at this was halted 1 move before safety and i was rewarded with nice swing. Still searching for my first E5 onsight, maybe next time.
That was it for the day, we wondered down to the car and headed home. Stanton Moor tomorrow and a day of glorious aretes.

Its coming back

2010-04-29T22:27:00.002+01:00

I had a Chapel session tonight and after weeks of floundering i felt good again. The pink sloper was feeling usable and i managed to crush 'pimpin not crimpin' with ease. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks i will get all my strength test problems ticked off and i can set some new ones set.

I was thinking today about the best way to train on the board, would it be 1 problem 15 times and try a new problem in each session or 15 problems once and use the same problems on each session???? I can see advantages for both and might just have to try both ways and see which is the most effective.

Saturdays weather is looking poor so after a chapel session i will have the pleasure of finishing off some jobs around the castle. Sundays forecast is looking better and stanton moor is the destination. There is a new 7B highball arete which look rather tasty so I'm heading for that.

Keeping on track

2010-04-27T22:17:00.004+01:00

Last week i was down the Chapel and Greg turned up, i was telling him about my trip to font and he asked if he could come with me. Without thinking i said yes, seemed in that second to be a reasonable idea. Later it dawned on me that this was a terrible idea. Dont get me wrong, Greg's a good lad but everything about this trip needs to perfect. If I'm gonna spend the next 6 months on a hell bent mission to get in tip top form then i cant let myself down at the last hurdle.
I climb best on my own, i find i can concentrate more when I'm alone, i don't have distractions, I'm not chatting and joking around, its just me my tunes and the rock, perfection. Having someone else on the trip means i would have distraction, compromise and ultimately failure. So i had to bite the bullet and tell Greg he couldn't come as i wasn't prepared to sacrifice 6 months to the fuck it up at the very point that it should all come together. He was cool about it which was a relief.

The board session wasn't brilliant tonight, I'm pretty tired at the moment due to the dirty early morning training but I'm gonna get some earlier nights from now on and see if makes any difference, if not i will stop the early mornings on a tues and thurs.

I'm hitting up Ramshaw tomorrow night for some filming, theres quite alot of good easy problems at Ramshaw so it should make quite a good short film.

Curbar

2010-04-25T20:08:00.003+01:00

This weekend we hit up Curbar on sat and i enjoyed it so much we went again today.
I had been to Curbar 2/3 times before but never ventured past Lepton or got rained off and never really had a good look at the routes.

Sat was a glorious day, the sun was shining the breeze was pleasantly warm and the syke was high. The first route i had my eye on was l'Hora and it was indeed a very pleasant outing. After this Adam got on Elder Crack which looks fookin horrible so as he went dispatched that, belayed by Tom, i stared ambitiously at The Fall. This line looks tremendous and would be superb climb but the essential gear which is at the bottom of the arete is unknown and since it is teetering at the top end of my ability i need to know how good it is, i think i might abb down the arete to have a look at the placement next time i visit Curbar. Next up Tom jumped on Saddy but failed due to his new found love of cycling and not spending enough time on the rock. I was quite pleased as i wanted to lead it and this meant i could jump on it, it went well and i got to the top without much trouble. The right arete of this wall, Top Secret, was the next to fall and it was a very good arete and deserves at least a star in my opinion, especially if Elder Crack gets 3. Mad Hatter was next and it has a horrible top out that i was very pleased i didn't have to lead, as i was belly flopping my way to the top.
Next was a route i had looked at before we had got to the crag but wasn't sure if i would do, turns out it looked better in the flesh than in the guide and i couldn't really turn down the opportunity to climb such a lovely looking arete, Diet Of Worms E46a. It began with a bold wall section which led to a bomber no.4 cam and a then a bold finish up the fine arete. After a cautious start i managed to place the gear and get it clipped and the mood suddenly changed, i was now safe, game on. I plowed up the arete to glory and on reaching the top was filled with the contentment you only get from doing something you didn't know you would do, this feeling is the reason i climb, i love it.
Last trad season i got some good leads done and was generally happy with my performance, the thing which let me down was that after doing one lead that was at my limit i would loose the syke and couldn't get on to another route at my limit, it was as if my brain couldn't handle the stress of continued performance at its limit. This aspect of my climbing was the most disappointing part of my performance and i am determined to sort it out this year, my plan it to climb 3 routes at the top of my game each time i go out this year, this will equate to 2 E4's and an E5. With one E4 in the bag i still had my syke so we quickly moved on to the main attraction of the day, Moon Walk.
Adam wanted to try this route which was the reason we had come to Curbar in the first place so i had to surrender the on-sight to him. He managed to get to the move before the pockets but took a fall. My turn. With the gear left in place i started up the route and reached the point where Adam had fallen, i managed to gain the 2 crimps with ease, at this point i thought the pockets were going to be quite poor and would be the crux, i got the first pocket, jug, i switched my right hand to the second crimp and bumped my left hand to the next pocket which i thought must be poor, another jug, reach for the top, rock in to the lower pocket and i was stood victorious on the top, E4 no.2 in the bag. Syke still going. Time for Moon Crack. I jumped on and failed first time, second time managed to get the gear in but failed. Next try i got up to the crack but couldn't continue any further and fell off. I had to go out on sat night so we had to leave but i will return to try this again. The most important thing was that i had managed to get on to more than 1 route at my limit and this is a big step in the right direction. I found out when i got home that the sequence which i was using wasn't right, next time it will get crushed.

Today we went back to Curbar for a chilled out day ticking some low E grades. We polished off Kayak E2, The Bear Hunter E1, Soyuz E2, Unreachable Star E3. We then had to retreat off Apollo E2 and got chased of the crag by the rain.

Next week i will return to Curbar for another attempt on Moon Crack and have a play on Dark Entries and Forbidden Planet. I will also ab down Mensa and The Fall to check out the gear.

weight- 74.9

A day of firsts

2010-04-18T21:58:00.005+01:00

Today was a fine day and as with any fine day it began with a quality breakfast, mash potatoes and gravy truly is the breakfast of kings. It was quite an early start today and after yesterdays fear inducing battle with 'Old Fogey' i decided on a day of bouldering, plus i had no one to hold my rope.
Today i decided to go on an esoteric mission and headed to Wolf Edge to seek out an arete problem my mate Dave put up in 2007, Project Quantum 7B, i wasn't to sure if i would be able to do it as Dave is a sandbagging king, but if you don't try you definitely wont do it so off i trekked.
I started of by working my way rightwards down the edge getting warmed up then jumped on 'This Is My Church 6C+', it is a wall problem that see's you crucify your way up a wall on mono's to begin with, you then you move up to a lovely slopey edge with the right hand and a slopey pinch with the left, it is then a pop with the right hand to the top. After a few tries i got the moves dialled and topped it out, good problem.
Next up was 'Gollum 6B+, this took me a long time to work out and i was convinced it was never 6B+ but the i worked out that i was using a terrible sequence and after i worked out my new one i got it done, time for nutella and french bread. After a spot of lunch it was onto the main attraction Project Quantum.

I was expecting a normal bald gritstone arete, but when i found it i was much more impressed. It is a very slopey double arete and it looks superb, hard, but superb. On first viewing i was pretty sure that i wouldn't do it but the shoes went on, the pad went down and i chalked up and pulled on. The sequence looked like it went along the lines of, sloper to start, high feet, slap out left for a hold on the arete then move out right with another slap to a poor sloper then the top. After easily reaching the left hand sloper i was so surprised that i got confused, didn't know what to do and came off, but now it was definitely on. I brushed the holds, as they were a bit gritty, and then pulled on to try again and this time instead of falling off i worked my feet up to a good foothold and was eyeing up the poor right hand sloper, i slapped and hit it but couldn't hold it, but it felt good enough to hold if i could get my timing right. 3rd try and i was back eyeing up the poor sloper only this time when i threw for it i hit it and it stuck, it actually felt good, from here i rocked onto the sloping starting hold, hit the top and was stood victorious on top of the bloc, winner.
This is a brilliant problem, a real hidden gem and should be tried by more people. Dave had given it 7B but it is quite hard for me to give it a grade as it fits my style perfectly and felt easier than most of the problems i had already done but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth do you. I texted Dave and told him of my victory and he suggested that i try to see if the sitter would be a on so i did, and it was. The sitter adds 3 moves to the problem, 2 good moves and 1 poor one. The first is the poor one and is a move up to a good hold, the second is the crux which is a change from the good hold to an undercut which then allows you to do a nice move into the start of the stand. This got crushed after a few tries and probably doesn't really alter the grade of the problem which i will guess is about 7A+/B. The bonus is that this could be the first time the sitter has been done which would give me my first 1st accent, mega. After this i packed up and headed back to the car with a mighty spring in my step.
I am currently compiling a set of bouldering videos on the grit crags around Leek and since i had finished of all the good problems on Wolf Edge i went to get some footage of the problems on the skyline. There are only 2 problems i haven't done on the Far Skyline and i set about getting them done. The first is a 6B+ on the right hand side of the crag and once again it thwarted me. The second is a sit start to a steep 7A arete and i was determined this wouldn't beat me and after a couple of goes it got crushed, winner. I then polished off a couple of the other good problems and decided to call it day as i was now knackered, my feet hurt and i wanted to lie down.
I will get the editing done on these 2 videos this week and i will be ready for an assault on a foreign crag next week, were going to Yorkshire.

Weight-73.9

Training, fear then beer.

2010-04-17T21:04:00.003+01:00

After months of god awefull snow we are now truely reaping the rewards of spring with another beauty of a weekend and as is the way of my immensely varied life the day once again cosisted of training and climbing.

The day began with a session at the Chapel and i had a little progress, i managed to polish off one of gregs problems, 'Tighten Up Your T-Nuts 7A/+', which had previously been to difficult due to trying some horrible shortmans tricky sequence. Today after getting the side pull and gaston i dynoed sideways to hit a finger jug and then the big but easy moves to the top. After an hour on the board i jumped onto the Beastmaker to get stuck into my sloper routine, i was only 1 sec away from completeing my first set which was progess and i will hopefully be able to put a tick in the box next to set 1 round 1 on tuesday, god i love the beastmaker, is it wrong to love a piece of wood?

Leaving the Chapel at 1130 i was on my way to Ramshaw to meet Adam and get stuck into some trad and install a bit of fear into a saturday afternoon and fuck me the fear was on its way. I had always looked at superb crack of 'The Untouchable' but it was one of those routes i had never got on so today it was first on the list, i wasnt disapointed. With a low well protected crux and some sweet jamming in the second half the job was done and i was sat on top of the crag with a fine feeling of achievement i always get from doing a route ive had my eye on for a while.
Next up Adam jumped onto 'Gumshoe' and at the crux, where last year i had floundered, he waltzed up it using a much better sequence.This is a superb route one of my favourte on the crag i think, now i need to go back and get up it on the lead.
I then jumped onto an E35c whose name escapes me but it traverses right from the Gumshoe gear and is very pleasant if a bit soft. Traveller was next which Adam dispatch with consimate ease with only a "now what" on enetering the scoop.
We then wondered back down the crag and headed toward an old enemy, 'The Handrail', i had made the traverse to the good holds at the end of the rail before, but instead of completing the last few moves i traversed back again, today was different today i sucked it up and mauled my way up the final short crack with all the grace of a drunken munk, winner.

Adams last route choice of the day was 'Old Fogey' a 3 star route at the very end of the crag. After Adam had tried the route and down climbed, decideding he didnt fancy it, i thought i would have a crack, mistake. A few nice moves see you in a position with gear 4/5 feet below you and facing a move to a break of unknown quality. With feet on very dirty gritty smears i made the long move up to the break, matched and scrated my feet up preying to find and decent break. I was greated with a flared dirty nightmare of a break and facing a sizeable fall, which would see you to close to the floor for comfort, i fumbled in 2 cams, which i wasnt very happy with and had to press on. The next move was a high step rock over of the dirty break and an undercut side pull, i was pretty sure that a fall from hear would have seen me on the grass as i was certain the cams would rip but i did the move and managed to get some thank fuck jugs. Id not been that scarred on a route for a while and it was a good reminder that it can all go very wrong very quickly but luckily i got away with it this time.

Tomorrow im gonna polish off a few problems from the list which need to be put to bed and then get some footage make a couple of short films of Doxeys and the Far Skyline.

Training overload

2010-04-15T22:42:00.003+01:00

The confirmation of my font trip has installed some mega syke and i have altered and upped my training this week. The syke has managed to drag my lazy arse out of bed everyday this week at 645 to complete the 20 minute challenge and some front levers, the 20 minute challenge has consisted of 10 press ups, 10 sit ups and 5 pull ups on the minute for 20 minutes, this is then followed by 5x10 sec tucked flat back front lever progressions. The 20 min challenge hasn't been to bad and i have completed it each day, next week i will be changing the exercises to make it more difficult, i will be doing press ups with elevated feet, v sits, superman's and 6 pull ups.
I changed my Chapel routine as well, i have moved back onto the 30 as i feel the 45 wasn't working my fingers enough, in fact i think it may be the reason I'm climbing like shit on the board at the moment. I also added 14kg to my dead hanging to lower the times of each hang to between 3-5 secs after reading some research on isometric training.

I have managed to get out soloing on the grit Mon and weds this week which is a glorious way to finish the day, Mon i went to the skyline and clocked up around 10/15 routes on beautiful sun kissed rock. Weds i attempted to hit up Ramshaw but after a few routes the wind was a bit to strong to solo so i made a move and went home to cook up a very fine beef curry.

Tmoz I'm heading out to the upper tier for a few routes after work the home for an early night. Sat will see an early chapel session followed by some trad on Ramshaw with Adam and Sunday will be either Stanton Moor or Bamford depending on Adam showing up or not.

Happy monday

2010-04-12T22:12:00.003+01:00

Today has been a superb day, possible the best Monday in recent memory, why? well today i got the OK from Terry to take a month off in Oct so the font trip is now well and truly on. Before today Paul had said he thought i would be able to take the time off but had to get the OK from the top. Paul, being useless, kept forgetting to ask but today i collared him while the gaffa was around and Terry was more than happy for me to take the time off and not just that but i would be able to take half of it as unpaid leave meaning i will take 10 days holiday instead of 20. YYFY.

After my good news i headed out to the Skyline for my first after work climb of the year, it went well but the rock is still very green and a few of the smears are a bit sketchy, this will be fine in a few weeks when the routes have seen a little more traffic. The sun finally went down at around 8.30 and i walked back down to my car listening to the quality beats and rhymes of the 1 and only KRS-ONE and dreaming of the forest.

Tomorrow I'm hitting up the Chapel to get back on the 30 board and then to crush my beastmaker routine.

A sunny weekend

2010-04-11T22:31:00.004+01:00

Another week of training was rewarded by a lovely sunny double weekender. Training this week was a little frustrating as i am still not back to 100% and the only thing i can think that is causing this is climbing on the 45 instead of the 30, i am surprised at this but it kind of makes sense in that i am able to work my fingers more efficiently on the 30. On tues i will move back onto the 30 for a few weeks to see if it makes a difference. The fingerboarding is going well and I'm not feeling any tweaks at all which is superb, i have dropped the last second of the last hang on most of the sessions last week so i am hoping to crush my current routine next week so i can the change it up by adding weight.

The weekend began at the Chapel with an early session which was to be followed by the Big Ron challenge of 100 routes, admittedly not 100 E's, on the roaches. However while i was there Adam phoned and said he had sacked off his shopping trip and we arranged to met at midday for some trad. I started out on 'Headless Horseman' then Adam moved onto 'Matinee', got his rope stuck had to untie then abb down to free it and retrieve the gear as i didn't much fancy it. I then had a pop on the easier version of 'Eugenes Axe' which starts up 'Pebble Dash' instead of the arete but has the same lovely finish, we then moved onto 'Ascent of Man' which i have wanted to do for a while as it looks so good, i wasn't disappointed. After a silly slip on my first try i managed to get it on my second try, i liked this route alot and i will probably go back next week for a pop at 'Ascent of Women'. The trad day was then over as Adam got his arse out and was being a mong, he then went home and i finished of with a few solos.

Sunday i had plans to hit up Bamford with Adam but he was still being miserable so i decided to do my Big Ron challenge instead, this was scuppered when Tom came back from Wales early and we decided on a day of trad was in order. It was a good day which started with a nice repeat of 'Safety Net', then we had a bit of an assault on 'Peters Puffer' E46b. This is cool route and was a good to push my grade on as it was bomber safe. After unlocking the sequence Tom got it 3rd try but i was feeling a bit tired and thought i would have 1 more attempt then sack it off. My 4th try went well and it felt quite easy, it was my 4th route of 6b so i was pretty chuffed. We then wondered down the skyline to avoid the crowds and spotted another hidden gem in 'Cave Crack', Tom led this. I then jumped on 'Acid Drop' made all the moves to the crux but bottled it, the hold seemed just to far away and the fall out zone wasn't really to pleasant looking so i traversed off, FAIL.

Tomorrow I'm going to hit up the crag after work then home for a beastmaker session, and maybe an early morning session on the crag if i wake up early enough, but its unlikely.

Weight- 74.9kgs

keep on plugging

2010-04-05T23:55:00.003+01:00

Had a good Chapel session tonight even though i was still feeling a bit trashed from the weekend. Started with a good warm up then i managed to complete 10 out of 12 sets on the beastmaker, then i moved onto some campusing on jugs which wiped me out and i failed to do the last set of touches because i was knackered. Rest day tomorrow, I'm goin round my dads for a spot of tea and to watch Barcelona destroy Arsenal again.

Monday weigh in is 74.9kg

Keep the faith

2010-04-04T21:40:00.004+01:00

This weekend saw a strange occurrence 2, yes that's right, 2 good days in a row and i certainly took advantage.
Saturday was forecast to be miserable and wet so i made plans to meet J and Strider at the chapel, however when i woke up the sky was showing glimpses of promise so i packed my bag, cooked up the breakfast of champions and headed hopefully to the roaches. On route things were not looking good with soaked roads and damp walls wherever you looked but it would take more than this to halt the mission so i pushed onward. On arrival at the Roaches everything was damp and in no state to be climbed but there was something in the air that said i should persist so i wondered back to my car ate an apple and sat it out. My faith was rewarded and after an hour or 2 the sun was blazing and everything had dried off, game on.
First stop was Boba Fett, again, it was a little easier than the last time i tried it but i still couldn't properly stand on the second smear and with the pebble biting into my finger it was only a matter of time before i had to admit defeat or suffer some finger destruction. This problem will now have to wait until the winter as its getting to hot and i ain't gonna do it without mint conditions, fail.
Next i headed up to the Calcutta Buttress to have a play on "Sleeping With The Flowers", i have had a session on this before and nearly did it so i was quite confident i would do it this time. I started to work my way through the easier problems, all of which i have done before except for "LLD", they all went without any trouble and then i had a try at "LLD". "Limbless Limbo Dancer" is a few easy moves into a big throw to a good edge which has always eluded me as i am pretty poor at big moves but this time it went first try and i turned my attention to Flowers.
"Flowers" had thwarted me at the finish last time i tried it and i was determined to finish it off, this time it put up little resistance as i found a new crafty heel-toe which made matching the arete much easier, then worked my feet up and hit the top, boom, mission accomplished.
Next up was a Chapel session, now its all well and good climbing outside and building my craft but i have to stick to my plan and get strong so it was time for a fingerboard and front lever session. Fingerboard session was good but short, i did 1 round on the 30's with 4kg's added and managed to complete the whole round for 6 secs on each hang, when i can do this for all 3 rounds i will add some more weight.

Today began with poor weather and as i was driving toward Bakewell the roads were soaked and it was spitting, but the faith had proven its worth yesterday so i was sticking with it. Now i must admit that as i was driving through bakewell, on route to Clifftop Rocks, through pissing rain my faith was starting to get a little sodden but it was still alive and by the time i met Adam at the Cratcliffe it had stopped and when we pulled up to the parking for Clifftop we were surrounded by blue sky, result. When we got the crag, which i haven't been to before, we set about dispatching the warm up's. I quite like the crag its only small but the problems are nice and its in a nice location and between the showers we managed to get all the easy problems done. Next we set about working on "Boing Boy" a lovely sit start problem of some edges, up to a superb slopey pinch and then go again with the same hand to hit a jug then finish easily up an arete. After some poncing around and several half arsed attempts i maned up and hit the jugs and finished of the problem. Happy with the fact that i had done what i had come for we decided to make our way over to Rowtor Rocks to have a look around.
I now love Rowtor, i think it might be one of the best bouldering spots i have been to. The reason for this is because there are more slopers than you can shake a stick at. The grit is fine grained and very forgiving on the skin which is fortunate as there are lots of hard problems which will need long sessions which course grained grit doesn't allow. We started of with a nice 1 move wonder problem to the right of quine then we tried the right to left traverse of the bloc. The traverse was pretty slopey and took a few tries to get nailed but once a sequence was worked it was OK and it led to a superb upside down top out which wasn't needed but certainly necessary. We then headed down to some roof problems that adam had found and on first look they looked a bit dodgy with a horrible landing but we had a look around the corner and came across 'Short Seans Reachy Roof' which looked brilliant and climbed just as it looked. I was pretty surprised with the progress i made on my first try and once i had the beta sorted i crushed it next try. There is a harder version which doesn't use the bloc out right and i was close to this but fatigue was setting in i my fingers uncurled from the last hold to leave me on the mats. Last stop was a quick blast on 'Chip Shop Mantel' a nice problem with a slightly necky top out. Yoghurt Hypnotist looked tremendous and on my next visit it is on the list, along with nearly everything else on the tor.

The last week has been very good with healthy eating, good training and it was all toped of with a cracking weekend on the grit. Hopefully next week will be just as good and i will be back at rowtor at the weekend weather permittig, i have the faith.

Forgotten but not gone

2010-03-31T23:44:00.002+01:00

last night i did the first session of my new training regime, a good warm up then 4x4x3 max hangs on the beastmaker 30's then my campus routine. Except for getting well and truely spanked on my campusing i felt it went ok, that was until this morning when an old enemy emerged from the depths. About 2 years ago i destroyed the flexor tendon in my right ring finger and spent the following six months sat around waiting for it to heal. In october we started training in the Chapel again and i had all but forgotten about my dodgy tendon. I have worked out that i can fingerboard without the tendon playing up as long as i have a little rest between reps however the campusboard has once again awoken the nightmare.

My finger felt weird today, i was getting strange tweaky sensations in my forearm muscle but when i tested the tendon, by pulling on a pocket, it was fine. Very strange. So it looks like the campusboard is out the window because its pointless and stupid to train on something when you know it will cause injury. I was using my campus sessions to improve power in the upper body rather than my fingers so undetered i will switch my campusing from the campusboard to the 45 board where i can campus on jugs which won't put much stress on my finger, well thats the plan anyway.
Back to the chapel to test my theory tomorrow and hopefully find a bit of form as the last 2 sessions have been pretty poor.

I weighed myself when i got in tonight and i am a disturbing 78.5kg this is 3.5 kg heavier than i was 2/3 weeks ago, this may be a factor in me climbing like a dickhead in my last few sessions. Hopefully i can get down to 70kg by oct.

To finish on a good note, today i found out that when i renew my mortgage in may it will be nearly half what it is now, i am also showing a perspective renter my spare room tomorrow. This could mean some serious saving can be done in the next couple of years and a mega trip might be on the cards, YYFY.

Weak but trying

2010-03-30T23:47:00.003+01:00

Back into the swing of things but the 2 week break has taken its tole. Not being the most talented of climbers i find that even a short break will see big loses in ability, they return quite quickly but the week or 2 it takes is a frustrating time and i am always fearful that i will never return to the level i was just at. Tonight Chris came down to the Chapel on his way home from his MMA training and dropped some pearls of wisdom. It seems he is in the same place as me at the moment, after being in top form recently we have both had a couple of weeks off and have returned to feel below par he piped up with "its amazing how well you climb/fight when you know your in the best condition of our life". It seems that whatever you do, climbing/MMA/knitting, the same rules apply success breeds success.

On Monday i was going to do a series of basic strength tests and record the results, i will then redo the same tests the week before font to see what progress i have made. The tests did not happen this week as i am feeling considerable weaker than i was 2 weeks ago and i feel this wont give a very good comparison so i am going to wait until i am back to strength.

The lesson i have learnt this week is that when you are going well and feel strong you should never stop, never slow down, you must stay focused with maniacal devotion and continue crushing.

182 days to prepare

2010-03-27T11:37:00.004Z

In exactly 6 months time i will be in Font.

I will be rolling into the Buthirs, after a monster solo drive, for the first session of my trip. I'll get the mats out, fill my bag and stroll once again into the mighty Forest of Fotainebleau.
First off i will set about repeating the red circuit at Buthier Piscine, i will be feeling good after staying a bit stronger in the summer, and having done the red circuit before, the problems will flow and i will complete the circuit without to much bother.
The attention will then be turned toward one of the finest lines of Buthiers, Appartenance. I will be stood beneath this monster arete with a feeling of anticipation, a feeling that the last 6 months went extremely quickly and now was the time i had to perform. I will reach up for the starting holds, place my feet, pull on and then FAIL.

Why will i fail?
Because it to hard? No.
Because i don't know the sequence? No.
Because i spent the last 6 months training in a half arsed manner and not giving it 100%? BOOOOOOM we have a winner

The last 2 weeks have been pretty slack. After a good couple of months back on the board the training was going well, i was getting stronger and making some good progress on some of my projects. But then the wagon hit a massive fucking pot hole, 1 of a thousand that seem to be everywhere, and i was left hurtling toward the road, off the wagon. However the 6 month stick is has now arrived and it time to kick into gear, to get back on the wagon, bitch slap the driver, take the reigns and drive this thing to the forest.

In my life i have waisted many years. I currently stand 182 days away from a monumental month of pulling on the finest slopers on the planet. I could continue to train twice at week in the chapel for the summer, to stay strong, and go to font feeling good after a summer of training and climbing lots of trad. I could, on the other hand, sacrifice the next 6 months to the forest. If i eat well, don't drink, don't smoke, train very hard and manage to stick to the plan, i think i can make some big gains in strength and craft and make my time in the forest extremely productive.

The Plan....
No drinking
No smoking
No death food
Train lots
Climb lots

I think training in the summer can be, and has to be, a little different to training in the winter. I find the holds in the summer to be very, very greasy and problems of more than 3 moves tend to see failure due to greasing of a hold rather than a failure in strength. However, during the summer i am able to climb outside nearly everyday and this improves my technique hugely. With these 2 things in mind i have decided the best way to train in the summer will be to strip it back to the essentials, fingerboarding and campusing. In the winter climbing board problems not only gets you strong, it also keeps your climbing movement going when it is to wet or to dark to climb outside but this isn't necessary when mileage can be got outside.

Fingerboarding

- The fingerbaording will be done on the 30 slopers with no nestle or pinch and with weight added when needed.
- The hangs will be 4 per minute, 0/15/30/45, then 2 minutes rest before the next set. 4 sets of 4 hangs repeated 3 times will complete the workout.
- Hangs are to last no more than 6 seconds, if the first 4 hangs can be completed for 6 seconds then weight needs adding.

Campusing

- Campusing on the big rungs
- 2 minutes between attempts
- Ladder 123 up and down x2
Ladder 135 up and down x2
Ladder 145 x6
Ladder 136 x6
Touches 141 to failure
Touches 1434 to failure

Goals

I have never had any goals in my training other than get strong fool, so here are my first 2
1. Hang the 45 slopers for a minute set of 4 x 6secs
1. 1-4-7 on the medium rungs with both hands.

Regime

The campusing and fingerboarding will be done in blocks of 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off. I will complete my 3rd block 2 weeks before font.

Training will be at the chapel on a Tues and Thurs (and Saturday if the weather is bad or i feel OK at the end of the day). Mon, weds, Fri, sat and sun will be spent climbing trad on the grit. I will also be starting to get early morning sessions on the go either on the crag for a few hours before work or some core work at home.

So that will be the next 182 days of my life, they could be the 182 days that provide the key to tearing down the forest but only if i manage to put my money where my mouth is.

Monday night i will be going down to the chapel to do some basic strength tests so i can gage the progress i make in the next 6 months. They will be the following

-Max hang length on the 30's
-Max hang length on the 45's nestle
-Max pull ups on 30's
-Max pull ups on small crimps
-Pull ups
-Flat back front lever
-Lock of on either arm
-Assisted 1 armer
-Max laddering on big rungs
-Max doubles on big rungs

GET IT DONE

A 50%'er

2010-03-21T21:52:00.004Z

Another week of half trying. Monday and Tuesdays training went OK but not brilliantly and Thursdays was missed due to wine overload on Wednesday night. The eating didn't go well either, with far to much crap eaten for a second week in a row. Sat i transferred more problems into the new chapel problem book and had a half arsed session messing about with J and Strider, the weather was to crap to venture outside. Sunday saw the return of the good weather and with it out came the rope.

Me and Tom ventured out to Millstone for Toms first trad day of the year. These first few days out are not about crushing routes, they are about finding the flow again and moving well on routes of more than 6 moves. I started of with Portland Street which was a very nice climb and provided some good bridging, i seem to be quite poor at this after a few months of sitting under a steep board, i wonder why?
Next up we jumped on the easy cracks in the regent street bay which went without to much trouble. I then jumped onto Regent Street, I've been after this for a while and after seconding it twice today was the day to get it led and it was certainly worth the wait.
The climb is good all the way, from toe to top and i felt like i was starting to move again. Something i am finding this year is that i am feeling very comfortable when my feet a few feet past a good runner. This is a good sign, when above a good runner in a place like Millstone i should be able to run it out as far as i want so long as i wont hit the floor, this is how it is feeling this year, it means i should be able to push it quite hard over the next few months, BOOM. I will have to test this theory on something like Tea For 2, bomber gear with a good sized run out.

I will try to get back on the healthy mission this week and save some money and weight. Highlight of ast weeks training was managing my first lot of 3x10 pull ups on the beastmaker 30's, tomorrow i will start doing them without the nestle.

Awesome night off

2010-03-15T23:09:00.004Z

Didnt go to the chapel tonight but made up for it with a trip to Awesome Walls and a mega session on the beastmaker. On the down side i ate to much chocolate and crisps at work. Will be back at the Chapel tomorrow.

A shit week.

2010-03-14T21:12:00.005Z

A poor week was had this week for the following reasons....

1) Waisted to much money on shit
2) Ate lots of shit food
3) Waisted a perfectly good weekend by listening to Adam

These thing will all be remedied as of tomorrow, the food will be better the training will be harder and next weekend will see some crushing.

On the plus side i found out that i can sell my phone for £113, bonus.

Persistence is a virtue

2010-03-11T23:19:00.002Z

Back in the my second home again this evening and the session was good. I warmed up and then did some pull ups on the BM 30's, these were the best sets so far and i nearly made 3 sets of 10, Monday will see my first successful sets, of that i am sure. Next was onto the board got my power test problem first go which is a good sign and also managed to get the high step on "RATM" with ease, the stretching is paying off.
The main aim for the evening was to get stuck into "Kill Tim Westwood" and this is what i did. I managed to do all but 2 moves in isolation, the last and the first, the last is an easy move but the first is the crux of the problem. The first move is a big wide move from sloper to sloper with a single good foothold which at the beginning of the session seemed nearly impossible, i thought about the video of Nalle doing Ninja Skills, on the video he fails miserably to begin with but through persistence and skills he gets it done. Now the difference between me and Nalle is that he is a wad and im not, now i may not have the power or the skills but what i do have is the persistence, i have a bucket full of persistence. By the end of the session i was hitting the hold and for a fraction of a second i was sticking it. Persistence is a good thing.
Rest day tomorrow and then hopefully a weekend of dry cool weather. My skin is to thin to get any of my projects done so I'm heading for 2 days of trad, sat at Bamford for jet runner and the Roaches on sun for "Nature Trail" and "Clive Cool Head".

Routine now sorted

2010-03-09T23:49:00.003Z

Better chapel session today, i had a good warm up and breezed through my antagonist circuit which was good as the reps and weight were upped yesterday.
The board session started on "RATM" but i still cant keep my foot on however i am easily reaching the hold. I also managed to do the crux move on "Dirty Dirty Techno" but then my heel came off and my hand slipped off the hold, it should go on Thursday. I made a start on "Kill Tim Westwood" but its hard, really hard. It starts with 2 hard moves then a couple of easier ones then finishes with another hard move, i will be working on this, and "DDT", on Thurs so will hopefully be able to get the first 2 moves but to be honest just being able to each move in isolation would be good.
After an 1.5hrs on the board i finished with some work on the Beastmaker, 3 sets of pull ups on the 30's to failure and then 3x4 max hangs on the 45's, which were pretty desperate. I think 3x4 is a better routine for me than repeaters, i am doing 4 max hangs in a minute then resting for 2 mins and repeating, it seems to be less stressful than repeaters and doesn't feel tweaky. I will continue with these for the next few weeks and see how the fingers feel, if i get to the end of the month and they feel fine i will increase it to 5x4 untill the end of my current cycle.
Next up was some back work which went well and i am now happy with the weights I'm using and will stick to this for the rest of the cycle.

Dope time on the rope

2010-03-08T23:29:00.002Z

Well the first day of the trad season kicked off without a hitch and went quite well. The day kicked of with an accent of "Monday Blue" by me and Adam, then Adam jumped on to a pleasant HVS but the name escapes me. The next lead was mine and i chose to have a crack at "Moribund". This climb looked good and it turns out it is, a few easy moves take you to a good brake, which takes a couple of bomber cams, i then worked my feet up, undercut the break, and stretched past a blank section to a pocket, which from the floor looked good, it wasn't. I managed to hold the pocket and reached up with the other hand to a mono then slapped for a slopey ledge. The ledge was poor and i popped off and took the fall which was very pleasant. After a couple more tries and a couple more falls i sacked it off and went in search of something else, turns out you should go to the pocket with your left hand not your right, i will try this next time. We then moved onto Millsoms Minion area and Adam jumped on Pot Black and then i finished the day with an accent of Millsoms Minion which was very nice indeed. We could have got much more done but Adam was having a life crisis via the medium of text message. Next up is a trip up to Bamford and a crack at "Jet Runner" amongst other things.

Tonight's Chapel session was a bit of a damp squid, i didn't feel very strong but didn't feel weak either but i found that i was slipping off the holds but not through grease or lack of strength it was odd. I think it had to do with transferring the problems from the old book to a new one which meant i wasn't focused on crushing. Tomorrows session will hopefully be more constructive.

Victories and progress

2010-03-06T18:58:00.002Z

Today i had some success, not the success i was hoping for but success is success.
I started at Gib Torr and jumped on Stall to get some better footage, it went OK, i did it a couple of times but with a little more difficulty then last week. Next up i jumped on The Fin SS, i haven't done the stand yet but sod that, i might as well jump on the sit. I worked out all the moves but it seemed hard for the first few tries but then it clicked and i was moving into the start of the stand. After a few tries i was getting to the last move which is a right hand slap to the top sloper which i was hitting but sliding off due to the grittyness of the hold. In the end i gave in and moved on. This is another problem on which i have reached the last move but failed to do, it is getting annoying now but there is nothing i can do except keep trying.
Next i drove round to the Roaches and had to park low down the road so i walked up to the Aguile for a few tries on "Starlight Left". The first part of this problem is easy but the top out is very gritty and quite high. After several tries i worked out that i was moving up to the gritty slopey ramp with the wrong hand and decided that i needed to man up and get it done. I set off hugging my way up the first half of the problem, then hand traversed the break round the front of the bloc, it is here that things get interesting, the break is quite green and steals what chalk you have left and then you have to get your feet up and reach up for an insecure slopey gaston with the left, palm down with the right and get an uncomfortably high right foot. If you were to pop off from this position, which is very possible due to the ball bearing like state of the rock, you would face a fall of about 4/5 metres and land flat on your side, i didn't want to do this but i was on my way to victory so i pushed on. I matched got a left foot on and then shuffled left back to the arete and to some jugs, the top and victory.
Chuffed with getting another problem ticked of the list i moved to the lower tier to get on Tech Crack, i have done it before but not got any decent footage. I set up the camera and blasted through the problem. Then i set off on "Dignity of Labour" however after a few tries i decided to leave it as the breaks were full of dirt and damp, i will have to go back with a rope and give it a clean before i try it again.
At this point i was feeling like the day was done but wondered down to the spring slabs to have a play on something which didn't require to much pulling. I have done all but the traverse and Boba Fet on the slab so jumped on the traverse and to my surprise i got it done 2nd try. This spurred me on and meant only 1 thing, it was time to crush Boba Fet. The friction was good and i felt OK and was easily sticking the first smear, which i dont normally do, and was getting my left toe into the small pock but couldn't stand on it. I then had a moment of clarity and found a new little edge to start on and missed out the pock and stood up to a higher smear, progress. After a half dozen tries i was doing better than ever before and got within 2 moves of getting the high pebble which should signify victory but due to the fact that i was about to tear my nail of my finger on a pebble i gave up and went home.
A good day of victory and progress was had and i am syked for tomorrow when me and Adam will be kicking of the trad season. I have also added yet another problem to the club of last move failures, 1 day all these problems will go and it will be a glorious day.

2 days till crushing

2010-03-04T22:44:00.002Z

My Chapel session tonight went well i felt good but maybe a little shaky from to much caffeine. After warming up i got stuck into "RATM" and was reaching the sloper no problem but my foot kept slipping of the foothold which is annoying because i don't want to fail on a foot slip. Near the end of the session i was hitting the sloper holding it the the foot was coming off so 1 good go would see me stick the move but i don't think i want to keep trying it and failing on a foot slip as i don't think it will get me as strong as failing on a hand hold, obviously. I will move onto something else on Monday.
So its a rest day tomorrow an early night then a day of epic crushing on Saturday. The plan is to hit up Gib Torr to do Stall again because it so good then get stuck into The Fin SS for a nice easy 7B tick, if this goes down it will be over to Ramshaw. First port of call will be Ramair which should be in better condition than last week when it was very sandy. In better condition i should be able to hold the dish then i need to work out some foot trickery to hit the guppy the it will be the top and victory. "Dialogue" next 1 try 1 good jump and bang its in the bag, then another go on "Monologue" for the camera, it should go down alright. Then my first session on "California Screaming" it looks doable and at 7B not a lofty grade, but some of staffordshires finest have tried and failed but i will be successful, i will crush it. This day of ultimate crushing will then nearly be over, just 1 nemesis left Tetris.

Back to what works

2010-03-02T22:43:00.003Z

Changed my chapel session tonight back to the one which brought so much success in font The programme is now as follows-

-Traversing & antagonist work to warm up
-warm up on the board
-1.5hr on the board(1hr on monday)
-Back work-bent over rows
-upright rows
-bench press
-cable rows
-pull ups
-levers

I'm also gonna drop back to mon/tue/thurs so i get an extra days rest.

Tonight's session was OK, i felt good and was getting closer to holding the crux move on "Rage Against The Machine". I will give it another session on Thursday then move onto something else as the moves on RATM are quite delicate and you can fail through a foot slip rather than a failure in strength.

The fine line

2010-03-01T21:48:00.003Z

Tonights chapel session wasnt one of my best and i left after the first hour on the board. I had been sore all day at work and was very tired at work, i came close to staying at home but thought i would make the journey and see how i felt. After warming up i wasnt doing very well and the tape on my index fingers wasnt helping with the thumbless sloper pulling i was doing. By the end of the hour i had reached the last hold of a problem i should be able to do. I decided to sack it off and hope for a better session tomorrow.

Today i've been thinking about how small the difference between success and failure can be. Yesterday i had a good day out on some quality problems and got another tick on my list but the difference between a good day and a day on which i take it to another level was 3 moves. 3 more moves and i would have bagged 4 problems on the list, 2 of them at a grade i have only touched once. I think that the difference is desire, i dont think i am putting everything into my performace. I could put it down to being tired from the AW session i had the day before or the late night and doobs at J's but really i think it was down to not giving it that last bit of effort for which i would have been rewarded handsomely.
Next weekend is forecast to be fine on both days and although the forecast may change i am going to start my mental preperation now for weekend of crushing, i will repeat what i did yesterday but with the addition of 3 moves and i will crush like never before.

From victory to a bloody mess

2010-02-28T22:05:00.004Z

A good weekend was had, 1 day at the new wall in stoke and today was spent on the grit, shock horror.
The new awesome walls was good with some nice problems and a quality cave, but it lacks a propa 45 board to train on, but i wont be there to train so i don't really care. Sat night i went round to my dads for Tea then dropped in on J and Carys. The house was full of messy people and there exploits reminded me why i don't get high anymore. I had written off Sunday, due to a poor forecast of rain all day, so i smoked a little weed with J, 2 half joints and i was spaced, how times have changed.
I woke up this morning and wasn't greeted by the sound of rain drops on the roof which was surprising and i peeked out side and it was a windy overcast cold looking day so i crawled back into bed. Hang on, it was cold, windy, cloudy, time to get outside and seek out some dry rock. I was feeling a bit hazy from last night and didn't feel on top form which i was annoyed about as it was dry.
I headed to Gib Torr to have a look at Stall 7A. After dodging the bog i found the arete to be in fine condition and i set up my pads ready for a session. With a new sequence it was feeling easier than before and after 2 or 3 tries i managed to get get my foot on the good hold on the bottom of the arete and then the move up to the top of the arete, from here it is all over and a couple of moves later saw me stood on top, victorious. It was however an epic decent which was more difficult than the accent. It was a surprise tick from the list as i had started the day feeling hazy, but was now i had the syke and headed for Tetris. I failed on tetris from the last move again, got pissed off and left for Ramshaw. I jumped on to Ramair and was getting the pocke fairly easily but it was very gritty and a little damp so i left it and made my way to Dialogue. Once again i got to the last move but couldn't reach the top without launching up which i didn't fancy, then i got my first flapper so gave it up and jumped on Force 9. I once again tickled the finishing hold but couldn't stand up to get it. After yet another fall i looked down at my hand and my finger was bleeding, id split a tip on my other hand.

So, i had a flapper, a split tip, grazed knuckles and grazed wrist and 1 ticked problem and 3 i have 1 move left on, god i love gritstone.

A strong friday

2010-02-26T22:05:00.003Z

OK so I'm back into the 45 boar an loving it, its steep powerful and power creating. Wenesays session went OK an i started to try my older problems without thumbs which went well an i cruised a couple f the easier ones an then got stuck into a couple of medium ones. Thursdays session didn't happen, i went own but was feeling weird not weak just lazy maybe. Friday is usually a rest day so I'm feeling fresh for the weekend but with yesterdays poor show i felt i owed it to the chapel to get back in there and crush something, i did. I started off, tanked up on caffine, on the thumbless project i ended Wednesday on. On Wednesday i was dropping the last move so i knew i only needed 1 good go and it would be done, it took half a dozen tries but it went quite easily in the end. Onto "Rage Against The Machine".
This problem is, surprisingly on slopers and has 2 long moves which seemed hard on Monday but why would you want an easy project. Today it went well, the first move is an easy one to a sloper then there is a long move which leaves me quite stretched, then there is a tricky high step which requires some good tension in order to stop cutting loose and slipping of the slopers. After a few tries i worked out the positions needed for this move and was keeping my feet on and starting the next big move up to another sloper. This move seems a long way but when you actually do it its not to bad, the sloper come at you from knowhere its keeping a left foot on which was proving the problem and i couldn't manage it. When you do latch it the next move is a bump up to a good hold with the left hand using a crafty toe hook, i like this move. After that there are another couple of har moves to the end but i will work these when i get to them.

All in all it was a good session and i left after an hour while still feeling fresh. The weather is looking like its gonna take a turn for the better, there might be a couple of hours of dryness from 9 till 2 so i will be heading for Tetris with high hopes, tomorrow may be the day.

Back to the 45

2010-02-23T23:37:00.003Z

After taking Friday as a rest day, i was syke to gt stuck into tetris again an finish my battle, but it was not to be. I woke up early sat morning and after hitting up the carpet shop i headed up to tetris, i drove through the frosty morning hoping that the bloc would be dry, but when i got there it was covered in frost so i sacked it off, phoned Adam and headed for promised blue skies of the eastern peak and Burbage North.
I arrived at Burbage north car park headed, hopefully, to Burb west. wet. Headed for Burbage North and the permadry areas of banana finger and remergence. First of was Banana finger where i flashed all problems and got Banana Finger Reverse, 7A, on my 2nd try, good stuff.
Next up was remergence. I did the nice arete problem in a couple of tries then jumped on Blind Date 7B+. This is a sweet problem and with some better conditions i think it might be a goer, i look forward to getting back on it.
Tonight i had my first Chapel session on the 45 and it went well. I iced all my old problems without much bother. Next up i turned my efforts to some of my projects from last year, "Rage Against The Machine" and "Dirty, Dirty, Techno". "RATM" seemed hard and will need some more attention but "DDT" will go tmoz if i can do the crux move, a high heel and i well timed slap to a sloper, i did this move in isolation so i know i can do it i just need to put it all together.

Done, done and done

2010-02-18T22:49:00.002Z

Today was my last day on the 30 and i had 1 project left to crush, but it was my 6th day on and i was feeling sluggish and sapt of energy. 2 days on the grit and 4 days on the board had taken its toll and after warming up i wasn't sure if i would do my project, but damn it i was gonna try.
After a couple of tries i was hitting the last sloper, it was on. On about my 3rd or 4th try i got the undercut, but not very well, and slapped out to the sloper, i got it well, i was now eyeing up the finishing hold, good old pink no.2. I had reached this point many times this week but every time i hit the last hold and tried to match it my foot would pop of and i would, once again, be on the mat. This time was different, this time i hit the finishing hold, my foot felt good as i reached up for the match and boom i had crushed "Undercut It".

Its been a good week on the board, me and Eddie have both crushed projects without to much trouble but i have a need for someone to try my problems so i can judge how hard they are, Dave where are you when i need you.

Rest day tomorrow then hopefully out on the grit on sat and sun, the weather isn't looking to hot but I'm keeping the faith that i will be able to find something that's dry. Next week will see the beginning of the assault on the 45 and the sieging of "Sage Francis", will 9 weeks be enough time to do it? I'm not sure but on this weeks performance anything could happen.

Another 1 bites the dust

2010-02-17T23:53:00.003Z

Chapel again tonight and another project fell. Tonight it was the turn of "Pimpin not Crimpin" and it went in the second board session, just like "From the Grit to the Chapel", it seems that the second session is the time the crushing happens. Although it is no longer a project "PnC" still needs to be done without thumbs which will take a long time and since its onto the 45 on Monday it will have to wait. After "PnC" it was back onto "Undercut It" to try to match the last hold and send anther project packing. Once again i did the last move but failed to match due to my left foot slipping off, since tmoz is the last session on the 30 it will be the last chance to get it done, will it go? who knows but with 1 good go it will be mine.

Today is my 5th day on and i can definitely feel it although i am still performing. I am using this week and next to hopefully adapt to the new work load and by the end of next week will be feeling fresher at the start of each session.

1 down many to go

2010-02-17T14:07:00.002Z

Last nights session at the chapel was a good one. I felt quite sore on my antagonist circuit and after i warmed up on the board i was climbing about the same as the day before if not a little worse due to feeling a bit weak/tired. The session turned good in the second board session. I was feeling weak for the first 10 mins or so but after hitting the crux move on "From the Grit to the Chapel" i got a boost of energy and started to feel strong again. I then managed to crush "FtGttC" without to much trouble and drop the last move of "Pimpin not Crimpin", although i was using thumbs on "PnC" so it wouldn't really count anyway.
After these strong attempts i decided to move onto my hard project. This problem has a dirty hard cross through move to a poor undercut and then a slap to a poor sloper, i hadn't planned on doing this anytime soon but since i had crushed my other long term project last week i thought i needed to put up something i could work on for a while. Turns out it didn't feel that hard once i got stuck into it and i managed to drop the last move, which is easy, about 4 times, this will definitely get done tonight and get done without thumbs. I am hoping Dave will be down tonight as i need to see if he can do it, if he cant flash it i will be happy. I will get Eddie to have a go as well as he is about as strong as me. It will then be onto "Pimpin not Crimpin" i should be able to do this with thumbs in the first session and then start trying it thumbless for the second hour, this prob has a very hard start without thumbs so if i could make the move up to the wooden pinch i will consider tonight's session a success.

New week, new abuse

2010-02-15T23:25:00.003Z

A new week, a new training programme begins. After the success of my last training programme i have decided to use the same time period of 10 weeks for my next one. Tonight was the first session and i felt quite abused at the end of it, in fact i failed to complete the full session. I felt weak at the start of the session but then got going and crushed a few of my harder warm up problems. I managed to do "Not Long til the Forest" without pinching the first hold which was good. I think the pinch has been rotated so i moved it back to its original position, i will have another try at it tmoz, i also added a left hand finish.
I managed the crux move of my new hard project, "Undercut It", but couldn't link it all together, maybe i will have more luck, or more power, tomorrow. I also put up a nice new slopey problem called "Pimpin Not Crimpin", i managed all the moves with thumbs but not in 1 push, i should be able to do it with thumbs tomorrow as i only fell off the second to last move tonight due to a foot slip.

weekend 1 rain 0

2010-02-15T09:56:00.003Z

For the first time in living memory the weekend was a double climbing day extravaganza. After Saturdays successful failure i had no skin on my right hand and needed some climb on to try to heal in time for the next grit assault on Saturday. Adam couldn't stop at outside for me but suggested we hit up stanage and i could get it myself, since the plan was to go to ramshaw, the home of skin loss, i took him up on his offer.
There are a couple of things i had in mind to do on stanage, Captain Hook being 1 and Glass Hour being the other, there are many more things to do there but these are the 2 that popped into my head on sat night.
We got to the planatation to find that most things looked damp, not soaked but just damp enough to interfere with cranking. We warmed up on crescent arete left and right which are always nice, then a few tries on the pebbly slab to the right but with no skin the pebbles were biting deep and i decided to stop before i punctured a tip and ruined the day. Adam then decided to resume his battle with 'Not To Be Taken Away' but since my knee is a bit dodgy at the moment i decided to give it a miss. The first move of this problem is the crux and once you have done it you should make it to the top. After Adam had had a few goes i decided that it would be rude not to have a try. So i put on my shoes and got to it. The starting hand holds are OK but the foothold isn't to great, it is a small angled edgy smear. After a few tries i unlocked the secret of the foot, it required you to keep a very low heel so that the pressure from your toe goes sideways and bites the hold instead of slipping downward off the hold. After i had this i finished it off, its a classic problem and 1 i hadn't banked on getting done yesterday. Next of we headed for the first of the 2 problems i had my eye on, Glass Hour. Unfortunately this nice problem is let down by the rock quality which is poor and the dampness didn't really help. I chalked up and pulled on with a LH on the arete and my RH undercutting the bottom of the bloc, a high LF then some crafty toe-hooking let me walk my hands up the arete i got to the intermediate hold just below the jug, it was nearly done and not just that it was nearly flashed, however a combination of damp gritty holds and some girlyness no my part i dropped the last hold and lost my first 7A flash. Got it next try, nice problem. Captain Hook looked damp and had several people under it so i gave it a miss, we did some more pottering about on the edge but then sacked it off and went to the pub.

A good weekend was had, but today i am left with weeping tips and very little skin, training tonight will be a pain in the arse due to the condition of my tips but i will make the most of it, i will battle on.

So close yet so far

2010-02-13T21:58:00.004Z

Its become an obscure idea that a weekend will have a dry day but that is what happened today, and not just dry but dry with good conditions.
The day didnt begin well, when i woke up and opened the curtains i was greeted with a grey world covered in a blanket of thick frost. However bleak the day appeared the syke, which is now back in spades, wouldnt allow me to stay in bed so i went down stairs, had a little warm up on the beastmaker and headed for the grit.
First port of call was Gibb Tor but on turning into the road which leads down to the crag i was confronted by an frost covered road. Last week Adam skidded into a wall in the snow, remembering this my better judgement told me to turn around. Next up was Ramshaw unfortunately the side road upto the back of the crag was the same and i continued on to the Roaches, my last chance. Access roads were all fine but as i drove past the sring boulders they were covered in frost. This meant one thing The Clouds. The Tetris bloc seems to be impervious to the weather so i kept driving untill i reached The clouds. On first viewing they seemed to be free of frost and i as Tetris came into view i was blessed with a glorious site, a perfect frost free boulder.
I parked up, walked in, pottered up Finger of Fate and continued onto Tetris. Once at the bloc i easily despatched the hanging arete then crushed Hard Arete on my second try. The day was going well and i was feeling strong, my thoughts turned to Tetris, could this be the day it goes down?. After setting up the pads i clean my boots and pull on, slap, slap crimp, heel hook, cross through to the arete then off. Failure, but good failure, i reached the arete feeling strong the heel hook seemed easy ad the arete felt good once i had it. After a few more goes i decided to have a 10 min rest to recharge the pwer levels before another attempt. 1 good go was all i needed and it would be crushed. I pulled on and floated throught the first 6 moves, i was now in the starting position of hard arete, i knew i could do it from here all i needed to do was catch the side pull, i pulled in, locked off and hit the side pull only 1 more hard move and i would have done it so i slapped my right hand up the arete and hit the spot but slowly peeled off leavin most of my skin behind. This was a good go but i couldnt convert it into victory.
Today failure was an exceptable thing, i know i can do this problem now, it will be mine on the next visit, of this i am sure.
Ater a few more tries i decided to pack up and leave as my skin was in a pretty bad state and i wanted to get a good day in tomorrow, me and Adam are heading for the plantation and hopefully it will be a productive day.

Anticipation

2010-02-11T22:59:00.003Z

gyspsy count today was 1 potatoe, im starting to enjoy this a bit now.

The Chapel session today was a good one and 4th day on this week. We are currently waiting for the new mats to arrive, after the flood, so i cant climb on the 40, instead i decided to try some old projects and problems which i found hard last year. The result was very promising, i crushed them or made good/easy progress on things i had failed or found difficult in the past. I think the strength gains i am experiencing may be perminant and not just a feel good factor left over after font.

The crushing power i am currently able to summon is very odd, it seems like i came back from the forest with a new power level which feels a long way off where i was last time i felt strong. The only thing i can think has led to this increase is that the 3 months training i did before font was exactly what i needed and it started to address my weakness's, which were weak shoulders.
The next block of training will begin on Monday. This will hopefully further address my weakness's and will last until May, this will take me straight through the bouldering season and into the new trad season, but this bouldering season isnt what im training for, i am training for the forest.

I will have a rest day tomorrow, a good feed, an early night and an early rise and hopefully this will be the weekend i have been waiting for.

Start of the onslaught

2010-02-10T23:18:00.003Z

Still going strong on the gypsy mission, i bought some food for tea and a potatoe today, pay day is Tuesday, on course for £250 in the bag.

Todays chapel session wasn't as good as yesterdays, nothing was crushed, but i did start to think about my next chunk of training. I think it will be spent improving upper body strength, lock offs and body tension, all of which i think i am lacking. I have started a mega chapel onslaught as of yesterday, only Fridays off. I will be training pulls and locks on alternate days with static levers and bike levers on alternate days. This will be carried out in short sessions, about 1.5hrs climbing then strength exercises, to allow everyday training and will continue until the start of May.

I feel like i am stronger than ever, i feel i am on the cusp of stepping up to the next level in my climbing, all i need now is 3 or 4 weekends on the run when the weather is cold, dry and crisp so i can get out on the grit and prove it. A big weekend of crushing is coming, i can feel it.

Not long after font

2010-02-09T22:32:00.005Z

had a Chapel session tonight and crushed "Not Long Til the Forest" well chuffed, felt easy, need to do it without the heel toe and no thumbs no the pinch. Tickled the last hold of "Not a V10" will hopefully get it next session, maybe tmoz if i go down.

A weekend waisted is a waisted weekend

2010-02-09T10:50:00.003Z

A weekend waisted is never a waisted weekend, well it is really, isnt it.

Weekends used be hazy sleepless affairs, but this hasnt happened much in the last few years and the weekend just passed proved to be possible the point at which i find that those days are truely over. After a pityfull amount of wine and about 2 joints i fell asleep on the middlewich sofa. On waking i was meant to meet dave on Ramshaw for some crushing, however with a hazy mind i stumbled out the house and headed back to leek with the knowledge that all the day would hold was sitting on the sofa watching tv smoking what doob was left and generally waisting another weekend which should have been used to further the search. This is exactly what happened. Will it happen again, hopefully not.

Gypsyism is going well. With only a slight slip on sat when £20 was waisted. Sunday i spent nothing and monday passed without any cash being waisted. Today i bought a loaf on my way to work, and will buy eggs on the way home and that should be it for today. I have 1 week til pay day and with the exception of petrol i should spend not a penny more. This will leave about £240 in the kitty, i will try to crush this ammount next month and save at least £300, im not sure if i can do this but i will try.

Chapel session tonight, im syked to get my 2 projects on the 30 done (i think they will both go on the same day, hopefully today), so i can move onto my project on the 45.

Not light, strong

2010-02-06T00:20:00.002Z

yesterdays chapel session and weighing left me with the impression that i had lost 10kgs and was strong on the board because i was light. I came home tonight and spoke to tom, he informed me that the scales in the Chapel were weighing 5kg light. I weighed myself on the scales at home and i weighed in at a hefty 76.5kg, a loss of 2 kg, not the massive 10kg i had thought i had lost. This meant 1 thing, i was strong on the board because i have got stronger, and to pull through on the pink sloper, much stronger. Tomorrow i will head out to test out my new found power against drowning pool, dialogue and monologue, it could be a very good day.

Crushing at 45 degrees

2010-02-04T22:34:00.003Z

Gypsyism has gone well over the last 2 days, weds i bought spuds, sweetcorn, tommy k, corned beef, milk and tuna for the princely sum of £11, loads of meals in that, bargain. Today i bought nowt, and got some good miles out of the car, i drove from work to the chapel and back home and am still on my first block of petrol, if i can make it to work in the morning i will be very happy.

Did a Chapel session tonight, it went well. Warmed up for a half hour, then jumped on the 30. Did some of the warm up probs and didn't feel as strong as Tuesday, i say strong but i mean light. On Tues i was strong on the board, but i felt light not strong, tonight i found out why. After the board session i weighed myself and i am back to 70kg, that's 10kg gone in a couple of weeks and its all down to one thing, green tea, god bless green tea. After the weigh in i was syked that i had dropped a load of weight without noticing, i normally weigh myself quite regularly but hadn't done it for a couple of weeks, im not gonna weigh myself till the end of the month and see what happens. One thing is for sure, i am gonna keep nailing the green tea if i get these results.

I had a few more goes at my prefont problem but wasnt matching the sloper as easily, i got it a couple of times but not as easily, i think my boy position was better on tuesday. I then had a play on one of daves problems, Not a V10. Last time i tried this i couldnt really hold the pink sloper but today i managed to hold it, pull through and grab the finishing hold, i couldnt stick it but it should go next time. If Prefont and Not a V10 go i will be the strongest i have ever been, which feels good.

Next up was a beastmaker session. I started with 3 sets of repeaters on the 35's nestled and completed them without to much effort, probably the easiest sets so far. I had done 1 arm hangs on the first 2 sessions but i bruised my middle knuckle on my right ring finger so i decided to try some max hangs, pinched and nestled, on the 45's. I was expecting to fail miserably, as i can never hold them. Much to my surprise i crushed them with no nestle or pinch, i was hanging them for 5 sec. This has left me very syked. Next time I'm down the chapel i will see if anyone else can hang them, in case the beastmaker has just become a little more bedded i, if not i will be mega syked.

Rest day tomorrow, i will spend the evening putting the font video together.

The futures bright the futures slopey

2010-02-02T23:41:00.003Z

Gypsyism went well today, i bought some eggs and some ketchup and did double miles in my car.

Training went well today, i felt strong, actually i felt light, I'm not sure if theres a difference but i felt quite floaty on the board. I didn't complete my prefont project but i matched the crux hold several times without to much effort. I also nearly completed the second half of the problem in isolation, the last 2 moves are to match the poor pink sloper then pull through to the balls at the top of the board. Previously i hadn't even matched the sloper, tonight i matched and moved through the sloper to tickle the last hold. This may go soon which would be a good improvement in my open handed strength.
Once i complete this project it will be time to get back on the 45 to try to complete Sage Francis, Dave has done this but no one else, even the stubins was having trouble. In font i felt that if i could come home and complete SF before i returned in October, then i would be at my strongest ever, with tonight's performance i should be able to crush it in the next month or so, if i can then i will be very excited to see what i can achieve with 8 months of beastmakering and 45 board work.

Back in the game

2010-02-01T22:14:00.002Z

Today is a good day, a very good day. Today I'm back in the game.

At the end of December the snow left me feeling deflated and sykeless. This lasted until i went to font. Obviously syke was high for font, but could i kick back into syke mode when i got home was the question i was asking myself. The answer is yes.

I have just finished my first day of gypsyism, which i am pleased with, only 8 mouths left to go. More importantly i came home and hit the Beastmaker for the first time since it went up. When i walked into the house the first thing i did was feel the 35 slopers. Up until now the sloprs have felt very slippy and neither me or tom could hang them, even the 20's were hard to hang. Today, after a little chalk was added, they were hung like jugs, it was a sign, time to get hanging.

After a 20 minute warm up i did 3 sets of repeaters, 7x7secs with 3 sec rest, on the 35's. These went fine and the only struggle was with the last rep of the last set. I then did 3 sets of repeaters on the 20's with 1 arm using 13.5kg support on my free hand. i did these to failure, all less than 8 secs.
This wasn't a heavily structured session but i will continue to do this routine for the next couple of months to get my fingers into the routine of beastmakering, i will move onto something more difficult when i am walking this routine.

BACK IN THE GAME.

Font round up

2010-02-01T00:11:00.002Z

After Wednesdays crushing we had 2 days of rain, but we were placing hope in the weather forecast for sat, sunny and dry was the promise of the weather man. Sat morning arrived and i jumped out of bed to look at the sky, it was blue and sunny. I then looked at the road to see, surprisingly, a covering of snow, this was not forecast.
Not put off we quickly made breakfast, booked out of the gite and headed once again for Isatis. We arrived to a full car park, but they wernt climbers in search of perfect conditions and pristine sandstone, they were men on horse back on the hunt for the boar.

We made our way to the boulders to get warmed up. Due to the snow many of the tops were covered and many of the blocs were wet. We jumped on little karma to start the day, but were soon shut down. I was much harder than i thought it would be. After this Tom went to look at megawatt, i didn't fancy this problem so went to have a look at l'angle bens. When i got there this perfect arete was surrounded by people, and i dont really like to climb with a lot of people so i gave it a miss. As i wondered round the blocs everything i fancied jumping on was wet and i began to feel like the last day in font was gonna be ruined by the snow, i fucking hate snow. After i spoke to tom i wondered back over to a problem he had managed on weds, Rataplat 7B, and to my surprise it was nearly dry. After a brush and a little chalk it was in climbable condition and with renewed enthusiasm i pulled on.
I was making it to the crux with ease but was finding the slap for the top hard and when i did make it the top was very sandy. After a few more tries a friendly frenchman came over and gave me some beta and showed me how to use it. The key to this problem is to rock up onto a high left foot before slapping the top, this then lets you stand on the slopey ledge and rock right onto the top.
After a few tries the top slap was getting easy but i was still taking the fall from the top. After a change of battery in the camera i was ready for another try. Slopey edge, high feet, left hand reaching over to the high right sloper, match, high left foot, sloper with the left hand, rock up onto the left foot, right foot onto the slopey ramp. This was the point at which i had fallen on previous attempts but this time i stood on the slopey ledge matched my feet and moved a heel up to the high right sloper. I was now rocking up onto the top, i was nearly there, it was close, i could taste it, a little bit of udgeing later and i was stood, victorious, on top of not only the best problem i had done all week but also my first 7B in the forest, YYFY.

This trip was more successful than i could have imagined. I was expecting good climbing on good quality rock, however i was also expecting to get spanked. In reality Fontainebleau has amazing climbing on perfect rock and i crushed. In 4 days on the rock i managed 2 7A's and a 7B. If i had done this in 4 days on the grit i would have been very pleased, but to do it in the forest felt brilliant. I think Fontainebleau fits my style of climbing very well and its has everything i could want slopey, powerful, technical masterpieces hidden in a tranquil forest.

I had planned on returning to the forest in October for an extended 4 week stay to really get stuck into some of the finest rock i have ever touched, but i cannot wait that long. It now looks like we are going to go back at the end of April for 8 days. This does throw up a problem however, i have no more holidays to take from work. I am now engaging gypsy mode in order to save enough cash to cover missing a weeks wages by taking the days off work unpaid. Will a mere 8 days in the forest be worth living like a gypsy for 3 months, course it will. Viva la forest

Beginning of the crushing

2010-01-27T22:07:00.002Z

After 2 days of puntering, today would see some crushing. We began the day at Isatis, which is my favourite area at font so far, there were some nice reds to warm up on which was good news as it was reet chilly. After some pottering about i started to work on Surplomb 6A. After getting to the last move several times, and not being able to reach the last hold, i decided to jack it in as there were lots of other things to go at. I later found out i was starting from 2 move before the start of the problem. Tom then jumped on a sloping beauty of a problem. He dispatched it in 3-4 tries with a less than gracefull humping top out, we later discovered this problem was Rataplan 7B, Tom had crushed his 2nd problem of the trip.
We then headed for Cuisiniere. First problem was white no.1 a good looking arete which was a quick dispatch. Tom then hunted out Karma and it looked much harder than i had thought it would, the sloper is poor, very poor. There was an arete to the left called Bizarre, Bizarre 7A. This was quickly dispatched, i had crushed my first problem in the forest, it felt good. We then treked about the woods looking for more problems but ended up getting lost. On our way back i stumbled on a huggy slopey arete that just had to be done. With no idea of the name or grade, as we couldnt find it in the guide, i began to move through the slopey side pulls. 10 minutes later it had been polished of and was one of the best problems of the trip. I later found out it was Pause Café DG, i didnt do the traverse into the problem but it was brilliant anyway and the traverse seems a bit contrived to me. Bouldering goes up not sideways.

We will be heading back to isatis tomorrow with some big plans.

So close yet so far

2010-01-26T19:07:00.002Z

I awoke again this morning in the maisonbleau, and quickly made a beeline for the window to check the conditions. Wet ground and dark grey skies were awaiting. I was pretty much resigned to the fact that the day would be spent looking at wet boulders which begged to be climbed but couldnt be.
Thankfully i was wrong. We headed for Buthiers and on arrival found that the blocs were dry as a bone and ready to be crushed. We started with some highball aretes on the red circuit which were very nice indeed. We then headed for Cuvier. We started with some nice reds and a couple of whites, and then moved onto my main objective for the trip, Corto Maltesse. This problem is superb, its a propa font problem, perfect moves on superb rock and all on glorious slopers. After Tom dispatched it 2nd try i was left floundering. I was hitting the sloper but felt very stretched out and unable to move of the hold. I was feeling preety tired and a bit weak so after a few more goes i left it, gutted. Tomorrow we are hitting up Isatis, it will be a good day.

1st of many

2010-01-25T22:45:00.003Z

I awoke this morning to see splashes in the puddle outside my window in the Maisonbleau, "bastard weather" i believe were my words. last nght i had been told the rain was over and the next 3 days were gonna be dry, this did not appear to be true. Luckily by the time breakfast had been eaten the rain had stopped. We headed out for the 3rd time with the belief that the rocks would once again be wet, and that it would be the third day of boulder huting in the rain. THIS WAS NOT TO BE.

We decided to go to Roche Aux Sabots as the blocs are quick drying. As we arrived the grey skies parted and the sun began to soak the boulders in a warming light that lit the forest. After a few blues we moved onto some superb problems on the red circuit. The blocs were still a little damp to the touch, however, they were dry enough to climb on and after spendng the first 2 days of our trip looking at perfection but not being able to grasp it we dived in with both feet.

We sent the day climbing perfect slopey overhangs and crisp sharp aretes, it was MEGA.

Tomorrow we are heading out to Buthiers where hopefuly the rock will be bone dry and some crushing will be had. The 2 things i have learned from today are that the grades in font are indeed hard and that it is also the greatest place to boulder the world.

The arrival

2010-01-23T19:35:00.002Z

After the best part of 11 hours in the car, and 27 hours without sleep, me and Tom arrived at the sacred woodland of Fontainebleau. I was looking forward to the trip and even though i havent trained or even climbed for the best part of a month i knew thi wouldnt really matter as everyone gets spanked in font the first time they go. We arrived to a ight drizzle but not to be put off we headed straight for the first blocs we could find. We arrived at Buthiers and began to explore the maze of blocs which can be found in this forest. I have never seen so many tremendious lines and was gutted they were damp as the desire to pull on was huge. After we had finished running around Buthers we headed for Apremon. This place is a mess there are blocs everywhere but we couldnt find what we were looking for, or find anything for that matter, this area would require far more exploration and probably a local to make it worth a visit on this trip. Next up was the town of Fontainebleau, its lovely, i mean really nice but there aint no blocs there so we headed for Franchard Isatis. Isatis was a superb set of boulders, what i think of as classic font. Slopers, pinches and round brain featured top outs are why i have come to the land of sandstone, however since everything was wet we moved on but i will defo be returning to have a play. The last stop was elephant. We found a few problems which seemed really good however the rock was very soft and grains would easyily come of if the rock was rubbed. I am hoping this was because the rock was wet, we will find out later in the week. we then headed back to the Maisonbleau for some food and rest. Hopefully tmoz will be dry enough to get some climbing done, as the weather forecast, but the raining hitting the window right now says otherwise.

My own worst enemy

2010-01-16T16:57:00.004Z

I didnt do any training at all this week and didnt climb today and probably won't climb tomorrow.

What has happened?

Normally my desire to climb, and to crush things, is the overiding force in my life. The last few weeks have been a very poor period, nothing has been crushed, nothing has been trained and very little has been climbed.
It is now a week til font and all the training i was doing, from oct through til xmas, has been pretty much waisted/lost because of the last couple of weeks. The training was going well and i had started to iron out a few things i didnt like about my climbing. I had started to address my weakness on open handing edges, instead of crimping, i was dragging. However the shit weather and marijuana have contributed to my lack of crushing, and the lack of motivation over the last few weeks.

Next week i may go down the Chapel a few times to try to reverse the current trend of lazyness, but i may not.

Eat less move more

2010-01-12T14:14:00.002Z

Gravity is the enemy. Weight is a friend of gravity, ergo, weight is also the enemy.

I currently weigh 80kg, which is pretty heavy. My fighting weight is 70kg. That's 10kg of failure being carried at all times, this is not acceptable.

Clearly being heavy isn't doing the crushing any good, even though i don't notice i am 10kg heavier than last year, i would definitely notice it if i was to loose that weight over night and would be more likely to crush some of the 5 most wanted.

To remedy these extra kg i am going to eat the following (as of Monday 11th)

Breakfast- scrambled egg on toast
Lunch- jacket potato with tuna mayo
Tea- stir fry
This adds up to about 2000cals per day.

Now this ain't many cals, especially when i am training 3 times a week and climbing outside 2 twice. The recommended daily allowance for a male is about 2500cals, more if training. This is a calorie deficit of 500 cals, which should leave to about 1lb a week in weight loss.

The biggest problem i have is the coke and the chocolate and the crisps. I worked out i was taking in an extra 1500cals a day through eating shit. By stopping just these things i should achieve a significant weight loss.

Cold mornings and burst pipes

2010-01-11T23:21:00.001Z

This mornings pre work session didnt happen, suprise suprise. I new it wouldnt happen, it is so cold in the mornings that it is all i can do to get out of bed for work.
However i ate well today, bar the half bottle of coke, and was syked to get back to the chapel. This syke was somewhat diminished when i received an email from Guy to say the pipes had burst in the Chapel and that the mats were floating around in several inches of water, disaster.
When i arrived at the chapel i was very pleased to find Dave in an almost dry chapel. The floors were still damp but only the concrete floor, all the wooden floors escaped the flood and the good mats have escaped pretty much all the water, bonus. It will need another couple of days to dry and then it will be back to training.

Tomorow i will try to have early session, but its not to likely, followed by a beastmaker session in the evening.

Time to practise what i preach

2010-01-10T22:34:00.003Z

Crushing didnt happen today, yet again. I spent the day in bed, making excuses why i should stay put instead of venturing out to find some dry rock, which is definatly out there.
Even with all the snow there are still many, many dry boulders that could be worked on. Tetris is permaclean it would seem, magic roundabout blocs would have been clean if i had brushed them on fri night, doxeys blocs would have been cleans at a guess.
Thats 3 options of the top of my head, meaning there will be several more if i put in the effort to find them. The best(worst) excuse i came up with was that i was pissed off with the snow and couldnt be arsed to battle through it again, some of this statement is true.
The weather, however, has not effected my passage to mac, so everytime i couldnt be arsed with the snow i could have gone there.

The reason i havent climbed to a decent ammount, in the last month, is because i cant be arsed and i know why. This situation is easyly remedied and should be.

If you were to ask me ,right now, what my biggest desire was, my answer would be quite simple, to climb hard. As strange as that answer may be to some, it is the truth. I would tell you i would give up pretty much anyhing to achieve it. The reason i would give this answer is because i want to be good at something, not just to be good at something but to train hard, put in the lonely hours at the chapel, countless hours stood benieth perfect gritstone blocs, repeating the same moves over and over til sequences are etched into my brain. Years of dedication and sacrfice, to one day be stood atop of a boulder having crushed my way to victory.

My search for the magic number is not really about reaching 8A, its about reaching a level in something that most people will never reach. I dont think 8A is an impossible task but its hard and i know it will take dedication and sacrafice to get there, most people dont seem to have that desire. Have i?

Tomorow is the start of another week, another monday, a meaningless begining to another 7 days. Tomorrow will be a different monday. Tomorow will bring the beginning of the turn around. The slacking of the last month will be destroyed in a surge of good food, green tea and a double session of crushing. The alarm will be sounding at 6:45, there will be pull-ups, lots of pull-ups, press-ups, sit-ups and front levers galore. Tomorow i will prove to myself that i am back commited to the corse, prove that the mission is back on track.
This week will see 4 chapel sessions, mon-thurs, as well as 4 pre work training sessions. There will be no smoking, no drinking and no shit food.

The 12 days between now and fontainbleau will be a time of proving myself to myself.

Dropped out of the groove

2010-01-08T12:26:00.003Z

The disaster of the Xmas period, in terms of climbing, has been continued into the new year. This week was the first week back in work and should have seen me hit up the chapel on 3 evenings and be primed for the weekend. This hasn't happened instead i have been catching up with friends and family.

Tues and Thur's were spent in middlewich, 1 with J, 1 with Carys and an evening with my old man.

It is now Friday and the weekend is upon us, there is alot of snow about but none forecast for tmoz, a little on sun but it should be fine. Tonight will see me out at Ramshaw, brush/shovel in hand, making my way for the magic roundabout boulders. Hopefully there wont be to much digging and most of the work will be just brushing the tops. last years trip to bush the MRA blocs was a mission of Arctic proportions and this year the weather is much worse , groovy.

Tomorrow will see me crush Dialogue. I only have 1 move left to do and i have the start wired so it will only take "One Good Go" to get it in the bag. The conditions will be perfect, i think i have enough skin and it is a mega problem.

Lazy days

2010-01-05T13:56:00.002Z

Yesterday didnt bring a chapel session as it should have, i was again drawn by the Middlewich sofa.

Tonight will not bring a chapel session as it bucketed down with snow again last night and today. Dont fancy driving over to Mac in death race conditions.

However, plans for the weekend are being hatched. Due to snow fall, free standing blocs with accessable tops are the only option. Luckily there is a selection of fine blocs on Ramshaw, so this is where i will go. Friday night will see a visit to the blocs to clear the tops and allow a few hours for the wind to dry them if neccesary.
Epilogue, Monologe and Dialogue will be the blocs of choice.
Epilogue has been crushed and filmed already, but is so good its always worth a go, and is a similar style to the other 2 so provides a good warm up.
Monologue was surprisingly crushed in september, in horid conditions, on the first try of the 2nd session, with bleeding tips. F7C???. I got Monologue on film however it is poor footage, using a wide angle lens which distoted and massively reduced the quaity of the footage. I need to shoot it again to get a couple of angles.
Dialogue hasnt yet been dispatched, but not for lack of effort or skin. This problem is playing the same game as S&M amd LJB, they toy with me then spit me off. I must have had 9/10 sessions on this and still not managed the last move, however,that is how S&M/LJB played out and both of them have been crushed early in the season. Hopefully sat will see me stood on top of Dialogue with the sweet smell of victory filling the air.
The funny thing with victory is that in the world of boulders, it is usually quickly followed with failure on the next project.

C'est la vie.

Back to work

2010-01-03T20:27:00.003Z

Well, today was the last day of my Xmas holidays, however, instead of marking the finale of 2 weeks of crushing it was simply the end of a waisted holiday.

3 things have combined to make the last few weeks unproductive

1. Bad skin
2. Snow
3. Low motivation

1. Bad skin- I dint normally have bad skin, so i wasn't ready for this to be an issue, however due to a massive amount of rain in Oct/Nov i haven't pulled on grit for nearly 2 months and plastic skin is no good for the rock. This period has probably been the longest, since i started climbing, that i haven't touched the grit and it clearly shows in the shit condition of my skin.

2. Snow- I hate snow. Snow has been the biggest factor in my unproductive weeks. There have been a few blocs which have escaped the snow, Tetris and Boba Fet, but Tetris steals skin and BF is reet hard. These 2 blocs being the only dry blocs have led to no.3

3. Low Motivation- I'm normally quite good at staying motivated and getting stuff done, but when there were only 2 real options, and one of them seems impossible, then i start to wane. I knew i could only have a couple of days on Tetris as it left me skinless and only doing the first move on BF hundreds of times starts to grate. This led to either days tucked up in bed or days on problems i didn't really want to do.

I feel i have waisted my time off. Everything i have done, which aint much, could have been achieved in the weekends during my time off. I could then have used my holidays for another trip to font in march or just taken this tme in march. If i had taken time off in march i would have had warmer weather but i would have had better skin. Nevermind, live and learn.

Back to work in the morning and back on the mission, PROPA. I must battle the urge to sit round have a smoke and guzzle the rhone valleys finest.
I must.....
-stop eating 1500cals a day of shit
-stop downing the vino and tokin the green
-get up a little earlier and do a quick 45 mins of training before work
-get back to the chapel 3 times a week for some sloper action
-Bosh some green tea and brocoli

My Thoughts now turn to my first visit to the mighty forest of Fontainebleau. Me, Tom and J will be heading out there in 20 days, i am VERY, Very excited.

Snow, snow, snow

2010-01-02T16:02:00.002Z

Once again a potentially superb day has been taken away, by the snow. This weather situation is only acceptable due to my thin skin, which wouldnt survive anythig except a slab session anyway.

After i trashed my skin, the day before xmas eve, i thought that 5 days in portugal would allow it to grow back sufficiently to allow me to climb for most of my week off, i was wrong. I only managed 2 days outside and a chapel session. Drowning Pool took alot more skin than i thought, and it left my fingers sore and with very thin tips. This is strange for me as my skin is normally very good and it useually fatigue that means a rest day.

I thought my skin would be ok for a session today, and although still thin, it was less painfull and a go on the slabs would have been fine. however it snowed, alot, a good 2.5 inches in the garden.

Today will be used to grow skin, ready for a session on the Tetris bloc tomorrow, when it will all be lost.

Cold days and thin skin

2010-01-01T14:31:00.005Z

The weather is my friend. After Mondays disappointingly damp conditions and Tuesdays forced Chapel session, due to rain, i spent Wednesday in bed thinking the week was ruined by poor weather. But to my surprise Thursday was to bring back the perfect conditions and a good day was on the cards.
I loaded up the car and headed out into the frosty, clear morning for the Roaches. The plan was to see if any problems from the list were dry whilst on my way to Doxey's, i thought there might be a chance that Tech Crack/Modest Proposal might have been dry by the wind on weds night, they wernt.

The fact that the lower tier was wet was neither a big surprise nor a big hindrance, i had my eyes on a bigger prize. I new that when i got to Doxey's Pool i would have 1 of 2 things...

1. Boulders covered in snow
2. Perfect boulders

I got the latter.
On the skyline conditions were perfect, a little wind and low temps made for ideal conditions. I got warmed up on Staffs Flyer, i have done it before but never filmed it, so i would get at least one problem on film today. Then i had a look the 7a arete that is on my list but there was snow on the hold so that wasn't looking likely.

I then turned my attention to the main attraction, "Drowning Pool" 7a+, a steep, slopey, gritstone beauty. The first few tries went poorly,i could just about hold the LH dish but the heel hook wasn't going well, i couldn't get any weight onto it. A few more tries and i was holding the LH dish, starting the rockover but not hitting the high sloper. Then, out of nowhere, my hand didn't reach straight up to the high sloper, but came across to match just above the LH dish. From this position i started to rock to the right before bumping my hand to the high sloper. Left hand slaps left to another sloper, a quick switch from sloper to pinch with my RH, and a palm down with the left and i was in a position i didn't expect to reach. Feet then didn't play ball and i was on the mats.
OK, so i now know i can definitely do this problem, its no longer a case of if, but when.
A few more tries saw me at the same position, but with sorted feet, and now eyeing the last sloper of the problem, if i could get this and hold it the problem would be done. I cant. I fell 4 times from this position, i can do these moves in isolation just fine and they would probably be F4+ but they spat me off each time. I sat down for 1 last good effort, reached for my chalk and chalked up. As i looked at my hands, i saw a small dot of blood on my right index finger, which signalled the end of all serious attempts, as i had no tape.

As i packed up my stuff and wondered back down to my car, i was content with the fact that although i failed on Drowning Pool, it was not power or strength or desire that had stopped me but a lack of skin on my fingers which had let me down.

Friday did not hold any victories. I got to the crag, didn't have the right shoes, went home to get spares and on my return it had started to snow. The lack of skin on my fingers from yesterday meant that slabs were the only option, a wet 7C friction slab aint goin down. I went home to try to grow some skin.