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Top Ropes and Tick Marks: Once Upon a Time in the Southwest (E9 6c)
28 June 2011, 5:12 pm

Back in my Dad’s day (according to my Dad) head/redpoint tactics such as toproping, practising, tick marking, mock leading were for those climbers who were too rubbish to onsight or at least go ground up after a few tries. ‘Headpointing’ and ‘cheating’ for him and his friends were practically synonymous. Probably because anyone can do a route in 20 tries… right?

Up until a few years ago, I was almost always an onsight climber and I shared a similar perspective to my Dad.

But now I’ve crossed to the darkside and I see their value. Whether it’s a sport route, a boulder problem or E9, redpoint stress is well, very stressful. Mainly because of the self-doubt that creeps in, when you ask yourself whether you can actually do it; maybe you were just deluding yourself the whole time; perhaps you’re not good enough a climber after all. Even when you really believe you can do it – there’s still the time or money constraints, weather, skin, friends, fitness, injuries etc.

And that’s coming from me, who has spent at most about 5 days working a route. Hardly stressful compared to Scott Burk’s 261 days working the Nose. You’d pretty upset to find at day 240 that you’re actually shit at climbing, or you don’t have the time or money to come back. Or Leo’s 10-year stint on the prophet, the pressure of doing it the day before he flies home.

Sounds rubbish? Not really. When climbing is mostly about setting arbitrary challenges for yourself, you may as well go big and find a project.

Dave Birkett on the first ascent of once.. Alex Eves photo, stolen from UKC So a week after finishing uni, as weak as a kitten, Charlie asks me if I want to go down and try D. Birket’s ‘Once Upon a Time in the Southwest’. Even though I’d tried it a month before with Neil Mawson and worked out how to do the crux, I was a little reluctant to give up the plan of going to Pembroke to get some mileage in, start getting some fitness back and generally have fun in the sun after such a horrible time revising for exams. Onsighting perfect routes above the sea with good friends? Sounds like heaven. But instead I go down to Devon to try one route with only a few days left before leaving the country. To stew in Charlie’s van, in the rain and in my own self-doubt: the routes too hard, the rain wont stop, the holds are snapping off, if one more goes it could be over, too hard for Hazel.. etc.

Me on the start of Once.. A classic 'safety first, probably got a rollie in the other hand' Steve Findlay shot. Before I racked up for the route I had one of those ‘moments’. I looked behind me and there was a family just beyond the shade line, enjoying time spent by the sea tanning and watching this silly girl drag herself up a rock. Why couldn’t I come to Devon and just enjoy Devon? Why couldn’t I be content with the sea and the sand, the pubs and the quaint little villages?

A little cold and a little too keen, I suffered from some disco leg at the start, but after the first crux I eased into it and it started to become apparent that I wouldn’t fall off and I would love it. At the top of that wall, thoughts of fun relaxing times in Pembroke seemed too easy and too boring. Of course the days stewing in the van were worth it for this. In the words of Si Wilson: I was ‘buzzing’… even more than I was after passing my driving test. I pulled over the top, wind whistling past me, loose dirt blowing in my eyes and I was psyched, psyched out my tree and a little sad that it was over, that I was standing at the top and not alone on that face crimping for dear life, onto those holds that I had come to know so intimately (and sorely miss those that had fallen). My 30 minutes buzzing for 4 days of stressing.

Even more pysched than me was my Dad who belayed me. So I guess my headpoint/cheating has to be worth something, even to an old-school, no-chalk using, onsighter like himself… runway tick marks and all.



Source: hazelfindlay » Hazel Findlay blog

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Newfoundland
25 July 2011, 1:57 pm

Although I was glad to have done Once I was a little worried that I was ridiculously unfit having not climbed at all for a month over exams and not properly for a few more before that. Then having finished, only done one route; a slab.

A day at Cheddar struggling to get half way up 7b+s and a few days in Pembroke struggling to hang on to E5s certainly confirmed these worries. Newfoundland was to be a North Face-organised trip with Alex Honnold, James Pearson and Mark Synnot plus camera crew, routes of steep granite up to 14 pitches long… no worries right? After all 7b+’s at cheddar are no joke…

As chance would have it I wouldn’t need to be particularly fit for Newfoundland and neither would I get any fitter, since we spent most of it in a tent. It rained and it rained and it rained. 10 days we camped under the wall and of those days we climbed three, and of those days, only one was actually a ‘nice’ day.

But, it was a good trip anyway. A real adventure: with lots of driving, sailing, camping and getting to know nice people. This route took 4 days

Highlights included meeting the Newfies. Newfies are a rare breed of people, with a rare accent. You’d be hard pressed to even call it an accent considering it isn’t particularly clear that they are speaking English at all. The best description we could come up with was of an Irish man with a mouth full of marbles. George Fudge, our boat-man and host in the little town of Francois was certainly one on his own in terms of incomprehensibility. At best you could discern key words like FFFAAAAAAGGGGGGG (fog), which sounded a little bit like Brad Pitt’s ‘dags’, (“you like dags?”) in Snatch. Negotiating our early pick up from the cliff was challenging to say the least.

Other highlights were feeling like you were in Pocahontas discovering the ‘new world’. The landscape is beautiful but barren.  Even in it’s most populated areas Newfoundland is basically empty compared to the UK (we saw about two cars on our way to Burgeo), so sailing to one of the most remote villages of Francois was quite the cultural experience.

Climbing highlights? Summiting the mountain was pretty special. Mark and I climbed Leviathan a stunning 5.12 that keeps you interested even on the easy pitches. And Alex and James finished an incomplete line to the left. We had initially wanted to put up some new routes on the wall but since the wall was either wet or getting rained on for the rest of our time there, we didn’t get the chance.

Hazel on Lost at Sea Mark Synnot Photo Lowlights? The fog. Rain and wind can stop you from climbing but fog can stop you from doing almost everything. Most mornings we couldn’t even see each other’s tents let alone go on long hikes. We also had a pretty rough storm one night with very high winds ripping through the camp. Mark’s tent was close to being completely destroyed and mine would have definitely blown away had i not been in it. After almost a week of fog and/or rain, motivation for life was wearing thin. By day 10 our love for the dome tent was running as low as the beer supply and we were ready to leave “the grimmest place on earth” – harsh words from Alex… it wasn’t that bad.

But the boat journey back to Francois was that bad. Judging from the shades of green we turned on that hour-long journey all of us (except from Mark) were clearly wanting of sea legs. Games of ‘fake vomiting’ played by the camera crew in attempt to set the rest of us off left a particularly bad taste in my mouth. The only thing that kept me going was the comforting fact that Alex looked far greener than I felt.



Source: hazelfindlay » Hazel Findlay blog

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Maine Maniac
30 July 2011, 2:12 pm

After leaving James to fend for himself in the hopping town of Deer Lake (rumour has it he had to wait 3 days for a flight back to France), the rest of us made the 4 day mission back to the land of freedom and SUVs. With a week left before Alex and I had to fly home, we went to Maine to check out some of the sea cliffs there.

First up was a little sea cliff called Quoddy Head. We had heard rumours of an nails hard, unrepeated 5.13d called Maniac. It was put up in the early 1980s by a man known as ‘Spiderman Dan’ and if it really did turn out to be this grade it would have been one of the hardest routes (if not the hardest) in the country when it was put up.

Quoddy Head is the most eastern point of the USA and also it seems… the most foggy. Trying hard to ignore painful flashbacks from our 10 day stint in the thick fog of Devil’s Bay, we made our way to the illusive Maniac.

Dan Goodwin on the first ascent of Maniac. From Dan Goodwin's website www.skyscraperdefense.com We were surprised the route hadn’t seen a repeat since the wall is really coo looking. A clean face with yellow and black streaks up it. The first half is trad and the second half is sport and it climbs a lot like a steep slate route but with rougher rock. Nice crimps that face the wrong way with intricate foot movements. Having climbed 3 routes since I left home I was even more unfit (if that’s possible) than I was before Newfoundland. But this route was really cool and I wanted to do it.

Alex polished it off on the second day (but not as easily as you would have thought). I gave it a top rope try that day to warm up and was unable to link more than 4 moves together. I looked down and told the guys it would be ‘an absolute miracle if I did the route’.

Either our religious member of the team had a little word with the big man upstairs, or I pulled something out the bag, either way I got it on the third day and was psyched, not out my tree, but pretty damn psyched.

Although its the sort of climbing I’m good at – crimpy wall climbing – the hardest part for me was not getting too pumped and since I have almost no forearm stamina to speak of at the moment I found it difficult to grade. Alex seemed to think it was 5.13c/d or 8a+/b. That was.. until I did it and then he probably thought is was 5.10! Jokes aside, we didn’t find it easy, so it was a good effort for Dan to have done it back in the day and we were happy to confirm the grade for him, as hard.

The other area there is a place called Great Head.It’s another sea cliff with nice rock. It doesn’t have that many routes but worth a visit if you’re in the area. Alex completed a project and almost ticked the crag. I, on the other hand had a few pathetic attempts at some of the routes and feeling a lot like a wet flannel, realised I would just have to be content with taking Maniac from Maine and call it good.



Source: hazelfindlay » Hazel Findlay blog

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Ceuse
29 August 2011, 7:54 am



After Maine, and a few days at home, I got the word that Bristol-based loud-mouth Ollie Benzie was driving down to Ceuse and after not climbing as much as I wanted to in Newfoundland I was really keen to touch as much rock as possible. There seemed like no good reason not to stop off in Ceuse for a few days before moving on to Chamonix. For one reason or another a few days turned in to two weeks. In those two weeks I turned from a very unfit climber to a not so unfit climber. On day one I failed to onsight the warm up (7a+), by day seven I managed to onsight 7c+. Perhaps it was because I started off with such low fitness, or perhaps it’s the nature of the place, either way it was nice to see progression in 7 days. And in those two weeks, Ceuse also became my favourite place to sport climb.

The two things I’d heard about Ceuse before going were that ‘the easier grades are harder’ and ‘when it rains it doesn’t matter because things stay dry’. Both those things are quite far from being true; 6a at Ceuse is still easier than 7a (along with everywhere else) and when it rains, almost everything gets wet. On the assumption that the latter rumour was true we walked up in torrential rain, to learn the hard way, that it wasn’t. We sessioned the only vaguely dry route whilst trying our best to avoid a seepage line and waterfall that narrowly missed all the crucial pockets.

What is true is that the climbing is amazing, there are lots of friendly people (perhaps too many), the walk-in really isn’t very bad (until it gets too hot), the bolting could often be described as spacious and it feels a lot harder than sport climbing in Spain. I think it has become my favourite sport crag because of the style of climbing (got to love the two finger dragging in the pockets) and the run-outs. Usually I get bored of sport climbing after a while, but its hard to get bored when you’re taking 30 footers. Routes that really stand out were Blockage Violent, Femme Noir, Mirage and Little Big Wall. With mileage being the main aim I was reluctant to project something, but I would love to go back next summer and try some harder stuff.



Source: hazelfindlay » Hazel Findlay blog

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Switzerland
30 August 2011, 7:28 pm

It didn’t take long for life at Ceuse to get too hot and too easy… not that sport climbing is easy – it’s very hard – but it’s no stress, friendly, simple, non-committal… time for some alpine climbing. And when I say alpine climbing I mean high up, with as much effort spent on minimising use of spikey metal things. First up was a little two day mission with mountain guide and good friend of my Dad’s Steve Monks. Steve is a Brit, but he’s spent most of the last 20 years living in the sleepy town of Natimuck near Arapiles in winter and Switzerland in summer. When I went to Australia 3 years ago, Steve did the best he could to help us out, the same applied for my visit to Switzerland. Before I arrived he had a route in mind and we wasted no more than a day before getting up there.

The route is called ‘Ave Ceasar’ and it was put up by Didier Berthod. It’s on this really cool piece of rock called the Petit Clocher du Portalet. It has 2 pitches of 7c and a 7b+ with a sprinkling of 6c. The route was amazing, the rock perfect and the cracks painful. We gave it out best effort, but we failed to do the 7c pitches clean due to lack of: correctly sized cams, pain tolerance, ability to locate obvious jugs, ring lock for 40 metres, fitness, time, and the requisite granite skills.

Steve and The Petit Clocher The first 7c is a super sharp finger crack that peters out into half pad laybacking – or if your sensible enough you bust out right to a jug. The other 7c is a 20 metre pitch of ring locking, OK for 10 metres but gets pretty tiresome after 15. Our failings aside, it was a brilliant route and I would love to go back. I would also be quite interested to know about any one else trying it/freeing it… And there appears to be an amazing looking 80 metre-long finger size(ish) crack to the right that is meant to go at around 8a. So much to do!

me on the 7c finger crack pitch Steve Monks photo

The first of the many ring locks. Steve Monks photo



Source: hazelfindlay » Hazel Findlay blog

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Chamonix
4 September 2011, 8:18 pm



I have visited Chamonix only once before in my life, with my Dad and Brother when I was really young. Every summer we would go on holidays to the South of France to swim in the rapids, climb limestone and drink cold coke. But one summer, for some reason we stopped in Cham for a day. All I remember was proper heavy rain and being scared of the men with guns on the Swiss border. This time there were certainly no men with guns on the border, but unfortunately still a little rain.

Climbing on the Petit Clocher reminded me of how much I enjoy granite climbing and also that my granite skills are a little under practiced at the moment. I’ve found in the past that after climbing on granite for a little while, you find a certain flow to it. I’ve been in Chamonix for about 10 days now and although I’ve not climbed on the granite as much as I would have liked, I’m starting to feel that flow coming back.

A good friend from Canada, Jen Olson, is based in Chamonix for the summer working as a mountain guide. Whilst in Canada Jen has always been the perfect host, hooking me up when she can and sharing some fun days climbing together – probably most memorably in the Bugaboos. So when she invited me to come climb and stay with her again, this time in Cham, I hurriedly agreed.

The weather hasn’t been entirely cooperative, but here are some pictures from a the few days we had on the South Face of the Aiguille du Midi.

Jen following the 7b crux pitch of Super Dupont The rock is so beautiful on the south face of the midi, we couldn’t help but smile the whole way up the classic ‘Super Dupont’.

An Unusual Audience

Mountaineers or Lemmings? The Alps is a crowded place to say the least and the consequences of this can make climbing here feel a little odd. For instance, you could be climbing on beautiful alpine granite at 3800 metres, breathing hard because of the altitude, cold hands, placing cams in perfect cracks… and then, punctuating this soulful experience, what do you hear? None other than a bunch of very excitable tourists, most likely from Tokyo or somewhere similar shouting wildly at you from a metal bubble moving through the air, a mere 20 metres from where you’re climbing. Or you’ll top out of a route and instead of hearing the silence you usually associate with being in the mountains you hear a french lady’s voice over a loud speaker announcing the time of the next lift to Chamonix mingled in with the sound of a drill and a generator. It reminds me a lot of Yosemite Valley; the tourists sat on the bus gawking at the climbers, but in some ways, it feels more absurd in the Alps. You’re in the mountains but you took a lift there, just like you would take an escalator up to the 30th floor of an office block in the city. After paying through the teeth to be herded into a metal bin and dragged up the mountain side, it’s anything but hard to feel the overwelming human presence in an environment most climbers value for having the opposite.

All that aside, I feel the best way to deal with the absurdity of the situation, is to humour it. On the top of the midi, Jen and I made jokes about escaping the rat race, silent mountain tops, isolation, being at one with nature etc, whilst we fought to hear ourselves over the noise of drilling and Wang the Asian tourist shouting at us from the ‘observation deck’. As long as you can laugh at the absurdity of it all, appreciate the fact that, if the lifts weren’t there, you’d have a two day, up-hill walk from the valley floor instead, and the fact that rock doesn’t really get much better, you’ll have a good day.



Source: hazelfindlay » Hazel Findlay blog

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Back to Ceuse
22 September 2011, 12:51 pm

I bumped in to DMM reps Alex and Rob in Chamonix and persuaded them that it would be a good idea for me to be a third wheel on a Grand Capucin mission. The next day I packed my stuff to walk in, as I watched torrential rain hammer the windows. It’s OK, it will stop. Well, it didn’t stop and since we had already wasted a few days due to rain, the boys decided they’d had enough. Sometimes climbing full stop, is more important than climbing what you want to climb. So they decided that their best bet was Ceuse, and I decided my best bet was to tag along.

Climbing at Cascade I was upset about not being able to climb on the Grand Cap – it looks amazing – but I was very happy about being back in Ceuse. On my last day of my previous trip to Ceuse I tried Femme Blanch (8a+), and had written in my diary ‘must finish’, always one to try and follow up on my own commands, I was psyched to be back.

It’s a really cool route, with a bouldery start, pumpy middle section and prolonged, run out slabby section to finish. I thought I would get in second try, but it actually took me quite a few goes… I had an unusual excuse the first time: a wasp stung me in between my toes and apparently puffed up, painful feet are not great for slab climbing.

On my next try I ran out of light and unable to see my feet, I messed up my sequence, ended up wrong handed and unable to clip the bolt. I tried to create a new sequence utilising a ticked foot hold. This did anything but work and I fell with the unclipped clip at chest level. I’d asked my mate Amit, to give me as soft a catch as possible, this combined with the runout meant that I clocked up a fair few air miles. More pissed off than anything at having fallen off again I did not appreciate the air time, but I think it could have been one of those falls where you have to take multiple breaths.

Even though the next day was my 4th day on it was also my last at Ceuse. With a deflated foot, a little more day light and better concentration on my behalf, it felt easy, and I left Ceuse the next day feeling happy to leave.

Femme Blanche 8a+ Alex Haselhurst Photo I really enjoyed Femme Blanche, even though it took me a few more tries than I wanted it to. The climbing is really good and I really enjoyed working out the sequences between the bolts. After a little thought, I think this is why I like run out sport climbing; you can onsight climb even when you’re red pointing, since the only way to rehearse the moves properly is to top rope, and that’s no fun.



Source: hazelfindlay » Hazel Findlay blog

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Rodellar
26 September 2011, 12:55 pm

Rodellar is first and foremost a very nice place. You really feel like you’re on holiday. Most crags are no more than 10 minutes walk through an idyllic canyon, the Spanish are chilled out, the beer is cheap and weather is not British.

pretty walls and rivers But Rodellar is also ridiculously steep. I don’t think I’ve ever climbed on rock this steep. All the different caves that overhang by half their length on both sides of a canyon, give the place the feel of a jungle gym, with the spanish jabbering away like monkeys.

In some ways, I dislike a lot of the routes in Rodellar. Rock this steep on holds and tufas this big make you feel like you’re not climbing, but wrestling a gorilla. Or as my friend Rupert says: you feel like you’re trying to get pajamas on a gorilla, tiny pyjamas on a very big, angry gorilla, who doesn’t want to go to bed. The other comparison we made was between the holds of Rodellar and the blubber of a whale. I thought that the jugs were not like holding jugs, but instead like holding the inside of a whale you had just cut open.

These comparisons aside, Rodellar is not all wrestling gorillas and hanging onto whale blubber. There are less steep cliffs and when it cools off a bit, the holds begin to feel more like jugs and less like blubber.

I found a cliff that was a little less steep than horizontal and found a route on it that had some lovely small in-cut holds instead of whale blubber holds. The crag is called Pared de la Virgen and the route Les Chacals. Most people (yes I checked on 8a.nu) think it’s 8b and a few think it’s 8a+. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to go with 8b, if it’s 8b to Adam Ondra, Sasha Diguilan, Neil Mawson, Chris Savage, Dave Graham and Ethan Pringle (among others), then its certainly 8b to me.

I did the crux moves on my first try, but worried about my lack of fitness I was concerned that I would fall off higher up. Having watched Dave use a rest out right after the crux, and then finding myself unable to get to it (a big move to an undercut) I was a little annoyed. But Chris suggested that I could use this to my advantage; as long as I looked at the rest as I climb past it, then my anger would motivate the drive to carry on. This seemed to do the trick and I got it 4th try. Grades and ‘I’m short’ moaning aside, I guess its the hardest sport route I’ve done.

Daila Ojeda looking much stronger and a lot more glamourous, models the crux moves (Maria Torres photo, pinched from 8a.nu) I did an 8b in Turkey, but it was probably soft. It was also an 8a+ to a boulder problem and the boulder problem is easy if you have a small, strong ring finger, which I have, so in my mind it doesn’t really count.

It’s funny though; even though this was my hardest redpoint, after a few hours I’d decided that it wasn’t very hard and didn’t feel very proud of myself. The route took me 4 tries, so obviously if I really projected a sport route I could climb harder, but it was more than that. That evening my friend Chris Savage, very experienced in the art of hard sport climbing, said the same thing; that every time he clips the chains on a hard sport route, the first thing he thinks is ‘I can climb harder’.

And I think that this is maybe why I prefer trad to sport climbing. When I get to the top of a hard trad redpoint or onsight, I never think ‘I can climb harder’, I usually think ‘that was a really cool route, I’m really glad to have had a battle with that one’. Hard trad routes, looking back, seem like friends, that I learn to know and remember for a long time afterwards. After I’ve done a sport route, I usually care more about the grade or what a route says about how well, or badly I’m climbing. In other words, the actual route and the enjoyment of climbing it, gets lost after I’ve done it. Don’t get me wrong, I really loved the climbing on Les Chacals and I was psyched to complete it, it’s just that as soon as I did it, it felt easy, even worthless and all I could think of was how much harder I could and should be climbing.

Apart from the climbing in Rodellar, I really enjoyed being around a lot of good friends, who for some reason or another were out here in high numbers.

Jen came down and we joined team Austria on the classic Fiesta De Los Biceps, Riglos. That is as fun a route as any, I think the picture says it all.

Jen on the first of many steeper pitches, Fiesta De Los Biceps A fun ‘active rest day’ activity is to go canyoning. Myself and Mr Pickford, a little late in the day ventured out with wetsuits into some canyons and followed it down. At the start, when the water came barely above our ankles, we felt silly for having the wet suit. But after doing some swimming through deep pools and high walled canyons, we were thankful to have them.

Dave Pickford, a fine example of an extreme canyoner I’m back in Bristol now packing for Yosemite in a week’s time – bring on the cracks!



Source: hazelfindlay

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Golden Gate
23 October 2011, 6:07 pm

I freed El Cap. But I also broke my computer, so this has been written quite hurriedly. Even so, it’s really detailed, so skimming could be advisable! I got a little carried away because it was the little details that made climbing this route such an amazing experience for me.



Freeing El Cap is something most climbers want to do when they get to a certain level. Everything about the wall, it’s beauty, history, height and the hard nature of the climbing make freeing el cap the ultimate goal for a good climber.

Lynn Hill’s groundbreaking first ascent of the nose seems to make freeing El Cap even more special for a women, or at least it did for me, since that feat not only broke female climbing history but climbing history in general.

I knew I wanted to come to Yosemite, and I knew I wanted to climb a free route on El Cap. For a long time I didn’t have a partner or a route in mind. I didn’t really want to try Freerider, the usual first route for most climbers wanting to free El Cap, I had seen pictures of Golden Gate and for some reason I was drawn to that route.

A friend of mine, Hansjorg was also keen to try Golden Gate and so it was in Rodellar that Hans and myself hatched a plan to climb Golden Gate together in October. But I had never climbed a big wall, never hauled, never slept on a portaledge, never known how much water you need for 4 days of climbing. So I knew that completing the route free, on my first attempt at big walling might be too much to ask.

Moreover, the more I learnt about the route, the more it sounded like an unfriendly route for a girl. The 12c down climb is described as very reachy and the ‘Move’ Pitch is a 12a pitch with a 5.13 span from an undercut to a side pull. Every time I told someone that I had Golden Gate in mind, I could see scepticism in their eyes. But with a little persuasion from Hans and some fellow brits, I decided that it would be best to just see for myself and if I failed to free climb the route, so what, I would learn so much in the process.

Hansjorg arrived and before he got the chance to climb anything at all, we had packed for the wall. We hauled to heart ledges on the first day. As I sat on the belay with the protraction turning it this way and that, trying to work out which way up it went, I became increasingly worried that I was too incompetent to be Han’s partner for a route like this. I managed to haul the pitch, but only just; it had taken everything for me to get the bag up one pitch. I looked up the wall, at all 38 pitches of steep granite above me and decided that it was silly to be worried about freeing the route, surely I should only be concentrating on getting to the top in one piece!

We set off on the Freeblast just as light was hitting the wall and we got to our haul bags in not much time at all. The first little bit of confidence was starting to creep in. We climbed and hauled to beneath the ear and put up the portaledge. The day was hot, long and hard, but we had done 19 pitches and although this was good to know, I knew that in the morning Hans and I would have to face what we most feared: the Monster Offwidth.

Hans had said he wanted to lead it, his reasoning being that he would fight harder on lead. Although it would have been nicer to lead, I didn’t really care, I knew I would be fighting either way. So Hans set off and he was doing really well, making a lot of progress, but clearly giving it his all. Then, a few metres from the top, he slipped out. Exhausted he got back on and went to the top. Next it was my turn and I was shocked at how nervous I was. I did the big move into the crack, which was something I was worried I couldn’t do. The first half went well, and I began to feel increasingly cocky about doing the pitch. Then for some reason it became harder and harder. Scraping my feet around to find a good heel toe and jamming my head against my hand in the crack, I found myself doing everything I could to stay in.

I got to the top to find Hans at the belay equally exhausted. I asked if he wanted to go again, and he shook his head. With barely any skin left on his ankles, knees and elbows I knew that he had given everything and didn’t have anything left to go again. But he took this with great acceptance, which looking back on is something I really admire, and with this acceptance we turned our attention to the next pitches.

That day we made it to the down climb, still hot in the evening sun. This pitch had a huge question mark over it in my mind. The word ‘reachy’ seemed to shine out on the page of our topo every time I looked at it. Hans went first and to my disappointment agreed that it was reachy. My first try was in the hot sun and just by looking at how far apart the holds were I decided that Han’s beta would not work for me. But later in the evening when things had cooled off, I tried the move again and surprised myself by how close I got to doing it. This could actually be possible for us and hope started to creep in. Whats more is that after all the ‘easier’ but burlier pitches below, working out these technical slab moves was such fun in comparison. There we were 20 plus pitches up attempting a wild foot hand match to a downwards mantel.

The morning arrived and in the cool shade we felt even more hopeful that we would do it. We both got it really quickly and weirdly enough we had done it almost exactly the same way. Although we cheered at our success, just as quickly my thoughts turned to the dreaded ‘Move’ pitch a couple of hundred feet up. Half of me was full of hope: if the down climb is possible for me, maybe the Move is too. But as we got closer, the inevitability of it dawned on me. Luca, our Slovenian friend was above us trying the move and shouting down that he was too short to do the move. He had freed everything so far and was clearly pissed off about having to jump to a certain two finger pocket instead of simply reaching. Being quite a lot shorter and most probably weaker than Luca, I scolded myself at being so naive as to think that I could do it.

Hans went up and impressively got it second try. But Hansjorg is pretty long, and strong so this did not console me in the slightest. I went up, did the lower 12a section and reached the undercut from which you do the ‘Move’. I looked up at the next hold and knew that the distance between them was longer than my body length. But in the flow of the climbing I saw an unchecked vague sloper in between the two holds. I could only hold it with my right and if I got my left foot really high. This combined with the fact that I could not match the sloper meant that my body was forced to do a huge cross over with my left hand to the side pull, taking it as a gaston instead. Knowing that the next hold was up and left and I was wrong handed, I fell off exasperated and disappointed. I played on the move for a while, trying all sorts of different things. Jumping didn’t work because the hold was side pull. I tried holding all the other features in the rock, willing myself to be able to hold them, but couldn’t.

My brain strained trying to think of how I could do it… there must be a way. After trying everything I could think of, I knew that the closest I had got was on my first attempt; the crazy cross over. So all I had to do was work out how to get my right hand on the hold instead of my left. It sort of dawned on me that I would have to match this horrible gaston and make it a side pull, but with no feet out right I wondered whether I would be strong enough. After a few attempts I had got to the point where, with my left hand crossed over, I could kick my right foot up, just on smears in a back-contorting position that would eventually enable me to match the hold. Once I done the foot movements, it was easy to reach the pocket, but completely stretched in a totally off-balance position the foot movements felt crazy hard. As I swung around with a thousand feet of air beneath me I though to myself that if this were a boulder problem on the ground I would be really pleased to do it. But, I had done the move, so theoretically I could do the pitch. By this time the sun had arrived in full force and my skin was thinning by the second. I came down and asked Hansjorg if he wouldn’t mind waiting for the morning shade.

The next day I woke up, really nervous. I knew I could do it, but I felt tired and achey and my back was stiff from trying the move yesterday. I got to the bottom of the pitch and just before I set off, I heard a succession of congratulatory cheering from around the corner to the left; clearly some people were dispatching the crux pitch of free rider (which turned out to be some of our friends). After 4 cheers, I thought, come on Hazel, they are sending, now you have to too. I felt really shaky on the start with no warm up. I also felt the momentousness of the pitch. I realised that if I didn’t get it this morning, with only a certain amount of food and water, we would be forced to move on, leaving a free ascent impossible. I pulled into the move, crossed over and started the tenuous hopping of my right foot up the smears in to a position that would enable me to match. Trying my best to trust my right foot, I came in to the match and reached across. I was into the pocket! With a few more hard, pumpy moves to go I prayed that I could compose myself enough to do them. With Hans, Luca, Nastia and the french team cheering from above I reached the finishing jugs, really relieved.

I know I have described this ‘Move’, (or 4 moves in my case) in a lot of detail, but for me this was the crux of the route and I have never done a move like it, and probably never will again. In all those hundreds of feet of climb, this 10 foot piece of golden pocketed rock, had forced me do a move I would not of thought would be possible for me. Even though grade wise this pitch is way below what I have done before, that move combined with the fact that we were 3 hard days in to a big wall attempt, probably makes Golden Gate the hardest thing I ever climbed. I guess this goes to show, that grades really are arbitrary, with your experience of the climb the thing that really matters. For Hans this pitch was nothing, and the monster offwidth everything, Golden Gate for us, would be a very different route.

I suppose it also shows that having to do things differently to other people is not a bad thing, but instead something to appreciate. Admittedly, had I not done the move, I would have been angry that one move had prevented me from freeing El Cap. But given that I worked out how to do combined with the fact that it was still really hard for me, is kind of the perfect scenario: the ascent would have been boring if it had been easy.

On to the next pitch Han’s had to reface his nemisis: another offwidth named the Chicken Wing chimney, which he bravely lay backed. A few more pitches took us to the Tower of the People where Luca, Nastia and some french teams were resting in their ledges. Pleased to have done the the move pitch and to see some friendly faces, I enjoyed hanging out with them under their tarpaulin, sharing our experiences of the route so far.

We watched a few French guys try the next pitch the 5.13a Golden Desert and it looked amazing. A boulder problem led into a perfect thin lay back, traversing through some roofs at the top. Hans tried and with some initial difficulty working out the boulder problem he continued to cruz to the top. I managed to flash this pitch and as I lowered down I marvelled at how beautiful the climbing was; on the ground this pitch would be a 5 star classic.

We slept in our ledge that night and depending on whether we could do the A5 traverse, the last hard pitch, this would be our last night on the wall.

The next morning Hans impressively onsighted the 5.31a A5 traverse with no warm up. Although he proclaimed it easy I was feeling pretty doubtful, 4 days on the wall had caught up with me and a pumpy traverse on slopers with no feet was not my style. I gave it a bash and fell pretty early on. Panic was creeping in. I knew Hans wanted to finish the route today and I knew that I had only an hour or so before the sun came on to the wall. I had a hurried rest and tried again. The next time I gave it my all but my foot popped off a heel hook a metre from the belay. A little heartbroken I almost lost my composure. I had been so excited to do the Move pitch and now it seemed like a free ascent was slipping away. Hansjorg remained super chilled and this helped me to realise that this was just a short traverse, just rest and try it again.

On my last go, knowing the moves better I climbed quickly to make up for my fatigue and arrived at the belay very relieved. With only 4 more easier pitches to go, I knew I would free climb El Cap.

Tommy on the A5 traverse Some amazing, steep razor thin 5.11 flakes lead to the last pitch. These were the glory finishing pitches I was looking forward to. Unfortunately the very last pitch is a run-out, circuitous  5.11 that left me puzzled as to where to go. Exhausted both physically and mentally, with the most horrific rope drag, I ungracefully clawed my way up the final slabs in a style that was far from the glorious top out I had imagined. When Hans arrived at the top, we had a brief celebration, but the work was not over. After getting the haul bag stuck and ropes knotted, I realised that I would not really be celebrating until we reached camp 4.

We got to the hire car and at around 5pm, almost 5 days after we saw it last. I thought back to my mind frame on that morning; groggy, apprehensive but psyched, it seemed like such a long time ago. We chatted about how weird it was to be down and how nice it would be to have a shower. Hansjorg was a great partner for the wall and I really appreciatehim going up there with me, despite my lack of big walling experience. Freeing El Cap was once of my most enjoyable climbing experiences and also the most challenging. Although, for now I’m psyched to go bouldering and single pitch climbing I know I’ll be back on El Cap at some point.





Source: hazelfindlay

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Book of Hate 5.13d… apparently
23 October 2011, 6:22 pm

Beth Rodden (I think) on Book of Hate After a few days rest I went up to this route with climbing legends Irish/Spanish/Belgian Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll and fellow Brit James Mcaffe.

This is the most amazing corner ever. 35 metres of perfect open book corner climbing – bridging or chimmneying – pick your tactics for battle!

We were under the impression it was 5.13a, but all internet sources say 5.13d, which is hard! I don’t really know what grade it would get, I guess it’s hard to grade this kind of thing I think.

Sean, pretty wasted after tearing the valley to pieces for a month, narrowly missed getting the route, but still stubbornly going for it in the blazing heat of midday sun; no one can blame him for not trying! Caff, chimney master, chimneyed his way to glory on his third attempt. Being a terrible chimneyer myself, but pretty flexible, I chose to bridge (stem) the whole thing. Stamina bridging is a crazy affair, and I really had to try at the top, also getting it on my third proper attempt.

Anyway, this route is bloody AMAZING, all I can say really.



Source: hazelfindlay

[Jim]

Fucking AWESOME!!!!

[Oldmanmatt]

Ditto Jim.
 

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Book of Hate
23 October 2011, 6:22 pm

Beth Rodden (I think) on Book of Hate After a few days rest I went up to this route with climbing legends Irish/Spanish/Belgian Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll and fellow Brit James Mcaffe.

This is the most amazing corner ever. 35 metres of perfect open book corner climbing – bridging or chimmneying – pick your tactics for battle!

We were under the impression it was 5.13a, but all internet sources say 5.13d, which is hard! I don’t really know what grade it would get, I guess it’s hard to grade this kind of thing I think.

Sean, pretty wasted after tearing the valley to pieces for a month, narrowly missed getting the route, but still stubbornly going for it in the blazing heat of midday sun; no one can blame him for not trying! Caff, chimney master, chimneyed his way to glory on his third attempt. Being a terrible chimneyer myself, but pretty flexible, I chose to bridge (stem) the whole thing. Stamina bridging is a crazy affair, and I really had to try at the top, also getting it on my third proper attempt.

Anyway, this route is bloody AMAZING, all I can say really.



Source: hazelfindlay

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Joshua Tree
20 November 2011, 12:24 pm

After Yosemite, Ryan (Pasquill), Ryan (spidie) Mcconnell, Katy (Whittaker), Andy Reeve and myself went to J Tree for a short visit. J tree is undoubtedly a beautiful place, with a crazy desert landscape and strange trees. But if anyone tells you that its a world class climbing destination and/or that it doesn’t rain there, then they’ll be telling porkies. The crags are mostly pretty scrittley, not very high and spread out. The weather reminded us of home… Then again – it’s always hard not to be disappointed in a place following a month in Yosemite. A big highlight was doing Equinox, a classic 12d finger crack. The shots are an attempt to pay homage to Mr Moffatt!

Andy on Equinox - YES! Ryan flashing Equinox... not without a few grrrrrs Me - Sszzzzzzaaaaaa! beautiful mornings



Source: hazelfindlay

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Buttermilks Bouldering
4 December 2011, 12:51 pm

After J-Tree we went to Bishop for three weeks. We mainly climbed at the Buttermilks and set up camp a mile or so above the boulders. The Buttermilks is a beautiful place and the rock is perfect. I struggled with the bouldering, not really being a boulderer, but I learnt a lot… from the rock and from Ryan and Katy. I also struggled with my skin, which is a real issue in Bishop. Your skin definitely thins before the psyche and the muscle power, which is a shame.



Katy Flying on 'Fly Boy' camping in the snow



Source: hazelfindlay

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An end to 2011
20 December 2011, 1:23 pm

After Bishop, I went to Mexico for 5 days, for the North Face global athlete meet. This basically involves all the TNF sponsored athletes (climbers, skiers, snowboarders, runners) getting together for some fun in the sun. There are talks about The North Face, eating, drinking and surfing. We also got to go snorkeling, which turned out to be rather exciting when a party of dolphins and two humpback whales turned up. It was really nice to spend some time with a group of such talented and friendly people… and it was also a nice change from camping in the snow!

I’m at home for Christmas, then I’m off to Europe to try and get sport climbing fit again (after all the cracks and bouldering).

2011 has been a jammed packed year. It began with writing my dissertation, (the content of which has since left my mind), a spring full of exams, then after graduating – Newfoundland kick started my life as a full time climber, which ironically gave me more of an insight into the life of a full-time traveler, since we didn’t do much climbing.  In the 6 months since then I’ve been sport climbing, trad climbing and bouldering in Europe and North America. Highlights were definitely climbing Once Upon a Time in the Southwest, El Cap and for some reason Ceuse was a really special as well (perhaps because this was my first proper trip after graduating). I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of good friends,climbing on good rock… all in all I can’t really complain!

This year, however, was also the year a good friend Woody died in a climbing accident in Pembroke. I didn’t have a blog then, and I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it anyway. But for some reason it seems like I would like to now. I’m obviously sad that a friend died, and perhaps even more sad for those that were closer to him than I was. But my memories of Woody help me to realise how special life is. He lived his years on this planet with full force, no holding back, always with a smile and a mischievous grin. I look forward to 2012, with this in mind!





Source: hazelfindlay

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Hello 2012
24 January 2012, 11:17 pm

2012 started with a day skiing, which was also my second day on skis ever. I would like to say that I want to learn how to ski ‘to improve my skills in the mountains’, so ‘I can ski into alpine routes in the future’. This is true, but I mainly want to ski because skiing is ridiculously fun, even if I did face plant on numerous occasions. I also enjoyed the steep improvement curve; on day 3 I was actually twice as good as on day 2. After climbing for 16 years, I must have lost my chance of finding improvement curves like that at age 7.

Team Cham shreading the gnar like no one else Then I went to El Chorro for two weeks. It’s somewhere I have never been before, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. We visited this awesome crag called Loja a lot – it isn’t polished at all, not busy, and has some amazing routes.



We also risked our lives acessing the routes in El Chorro gorge via the famous El Caminito Del Ray. Basically, this is a walkway that runs along the inside of the gorge about 100 metres up. I doubt the walkway was that safe to begin with, but after over 100 years of concrete cancer, the whole thing is a bit of a joke. But, it does add some spice to a day’s sport climbing, with much fun spent mocking the sketchy ‘safety’ line, body sized wholes in the concrete and parts of the pathway that had simply fallen into the gorge below. It also cements my admiration in the Spanish mentality of being way too chilled-out to both make a safe walkway and stop people using it once it has clearly fallen way below any vaguely respectable level of safety.

As for climbing… well having spent the Autumn climbing granite cracks and boulders, then having almost a whole month of rest over Christmas, I knew I wouldn’t be in the best sport climbing shape.  I found that my strength wasn’t too bad, but I just didn’t seem to be able to recover, even on MASSIVE jugs. I would shake out and shake out, but get nothing back.

But, on the last day, it seemed like my body was starting to work properly again and I managed to recover in the knee bars of this really cool 40m route called El Oraculo at Makinodromo. They book says 8b, but the folk say 8a+. From my poor knowledge of this grade, I would say its 8a+, I definitely found it easier than Les Chacals (Rodellar). But, I was mainly pleased to have been able to recover on the jugs, even if I did have to wait until my last day.

Harold risking life and limb  So sketch



Source: hazelfindlay

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First stop: Chamonix
1 March 2012, 11:22 am

I spent three weeks at home, training, seeing friends and family and most importantly, buying a very desirable Citroen Saxo Desire to accompany me on my travels. This being my first car, and having driven very little since passing my test last June, I woke up each day some what apprehensive about getting in her and driving around Bristol. When my friends heard I was driving to France on my own, on the wrong side of the road/car, after only a week’s driving, they were a little concerned. My friend Nina even offered to buy me extra driving lessons after witnessing a certain parking episode. I must admit I was a little nervous myself, but I wanted to go to Spain and I wanted to have a vehicle out there.

First stop was Chamonix and in the end, doing that drive was far easier than any driving I had done around Bristol, just a little bit further. I ended up spending almost two weeks in Chamonix, which was a little longer than I expected, but it was a lot of fun. I upped my time on the slopes from 3 days to 7. The improvement curve wasn’t as remarkable this visit, but I did spend more time challenging myself off piste. A very memorable day was spent skiing into the Argentiere ice falls to do a little ice route with friends Jack and Christian. We also skied the Vallee Blanche – which felt hard for me, but completely worth it. And towards the end of my stay, temperatures grew and I actually got two days of rock climbing in. All in all a  good start to my European adventures.

Me trying to shred, with a pack and a rainbow suit (Jack Geldard photo) Shredding or sinking?(Jack Geldard photo) Bea, far from her Spanish home town Betty Extreme Alpine! Or not? There was talk of an extreme alpine mission, i.e. skiing in to a big winter route. But I found that skiing was way more fun, and not quite so cold. And that really, I am a rock climber, not a crampon kicking axe slinger. Maybe next time.



Source: hazelfindlay

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A week in Provence
1 March 2012, 12:08 pm

As another detour on my way to Spain, myself, Jack, Charlie, Mayan and Dave spent a week in Provence. First we went to St. Leger for a few days, which I thought to be a really cool crag. Coming from Chamonix we were psyched for some sun, but it was actually too hot and ended up climbing in the shade. Saint Leger is perfect for this, being a valley with one side shady and the other sunny.

Then we went to a crag called Lourmarin, which is really cool with unusual rock, but unfortunately we discovered it was banned and went to Buoux instead. I’ve never been to Buoux before, having always thought that it wasn’t really my style. But I actually really enjoyed it. It’s a really beautiful place and I am quite partial to a bit of pocket dragging.

We checked out Venasque after Buox, which provided the perfect counter-style to Buoux. Instead of sharp pocket dragging, we had round jugs on steep terrain. The crag by the road is OK, but luckily we bumped into some locals who showed us a better crag slightly higher up. This crag has a bigger selection of higher quality routes. After warming up we jumped on the classic Mauvaise Limonade 7c+/8a. The route is really good, and I was pleased to flash it, but… half way up I did a rather high heel hook/rock-over and as I shifted my weight on to it, I heard my knee go ‘pop’.

Mayan Smith-Gobat on Mauvaise Limonade 7c+/8a It was pretty sore the day after and difficult to walk on, but it has been getting better day by day. I’ve been in Spain a week now, and it’s on the mend, but I’m still avoiding heel hooking, egyptianing and deep step-throughs. As a climber who has a slight, if not strong affinity for these types of moves, I am struggling quite a bit. But I’m just really thankful that the injury wasn’t so bad and that I can still climb.

Apart from the knee life is good, and a week in Provence was a perfect start to my stint of sport climbing. It feels good to be on the road and the little car is holding up… apart from a little injury of her own, concerning the gear box. Similar to my knee, I hope she will keep ticking along… at least long enough to get me home!



Source: hazelfindlay

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Coaching Weekend 16th – 17th June
15 March 2012, 7:33 am



 

James McHaffie, Jack Geldard and myself are running a coaching weekend on the 16 – 17 June, this year, in North Wales.

If you feel like you want to up your E grade, or you fancy learning some new techniques such as self rescue – come along. Jack and James are both strong trad climbers and trained climbing instructors/guides and I’m not too bad at trad climbing either!

For more details have a look at Jack’s site

http://jackgeldard.com/2012/03/14/coaching-weekend-16-17th-june-2012-north-wales/



Source: hazelfindlay

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Terradets, Oliana and a little ‘Accidente’
1 April 2012, 6:25 pm

After spending a few weeks in Terradets I could feel some fitness seeping back. I say ‘back’ but really I’ve never had a huge base of sport climbing fitness, which, I suppose is why I wanted to go on a sport climbing trip in the first place.

Anyway, Terredets is perfect for getting fit. It’s a long slightly overhanging wall, with a huge supply of 7c – 8a+ to try and onsight or get in a few tries. It’s true that the style of the routes is quite similar, but the routes are really fun, albeit polished. The wall opposite, ‘Regina’ is also really good, and way less polished because of the ‘long’ (30 minutes) walk in.

K Widdy, happy to be in EspagnaThe long approach to Regina feels way easier when you have a dog/horse to carry the quick drawsToo much to choose fromClimbing with Sheffielder’s Neil (Mawson) and Pete and Katy (Whittaker) was really fun, but it was also nice to climb with my friend Jack (Geldard) and rowdy Americans Jesse (Huey) and Maury (Birdwell) after they left. I’m always amazed by how many people I see again and again on my travels, and how nice it is to have so many friends to climb with. I never seem to find myself devoid of partners to sport or trad climb with.

After a slow start due to my knee, I was quite pleased to do a few 8as second try and onsight a bunch of 7c+s, but really what I wanted was a project.

So after picking up American friend Alex (Honnold) at Barcelona, we left for Oliana in search of something hard. I tried China Crisis, an 8b+ there, but found a move I couldn’t do. I would have loved to persevere with a project there, either that one or something different, but it felt very hot and as the wall gets the sun most of the day, it didn’t seem like the best place to get locked down by something hard.  So we ended up climbing quite a bit at Tres Ponts, as its shadier and doing Mon Dieu, an 8a+ at Oliana.

We also missioned to Riglos for the day. I climbed Fiesta De Los Biceps last year, an amazingly steep 7 pitch 7a up a big sandstone conglomerate tower. Alex was keen to onsight solo it, which is what he did… whilst enjoyed my morning tea. Then we simul climbed a random route on the tower next to it. We didn’t have a guide book or know where any of the routes went so I loaded up on quickdraws, picked a random route and climbed as many pitches (all but one) as I could. It was just about easy enough (for me) to simul climb, but we were in the sun and it was hot, and it felt about time to head north.

Alex, up there somewhere, wondering if he'll stick the riverIt’s been fun, having a car and enough friends dotted around to have the freedom to climb whereever I want. But sometimes, I feel like I have too many choices. Oliana felt too hot, so I left, but sometimes it could be better to preserver with a place. It’s a hard life…

Oh yeah – on a separate note – I did the inevitable and crashed my car. I took a corner too fast, a car was coming the other way and I felt too close to it. I probably wasn’t too close, but I over corrected anyway and ended up spinning out of control, hitting the barrier and then careering backwards in to a tree. I was psyched not to spin the other way since I would have ended up flying air born into the bottom of a deep gorge.

I tried the engine, it wouldn’t start and I was convinced that the trip was over, and I was flying back to England without a car. But luckily for me I was traveling with 3 men who knew a little more about cars than me (impossible not to really), and kindly pointed out that the car was still in gear. With the car back in gear, a little push got it back on the road with nothing more than a few bashes, scratches and a broken headlight. Bueno.

Jack, Maury and Jesse giving the old Saxo Desire a 'once over' after her big crash. Cheers Guys. **Note Jack's T-shirt, perhaps I shouldn't take Jack's life-philosophy so literally in future...  



Source: hazelfindlay

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Gorges Du Tarn and first 8a onsight
10 April 2012, 9:40 am

I’d always wanted to go to Gorges Du Tarn. It looks so pretty in photos, and as Spain was getting a little hot it seemed like a good destination. I also knew that good friends from Bristol were there.

I was still searching for a project, but once again I didn’t find one. There were just so many 7c-8a+ to do. The style is mainly pocketty and LONG. There are a lot of pitches between 50 – 70m. This seems amazing on paper, but when your 60m up with hideous rope drag that makes V0 moves feel like V3, you sort of start craving a good old 20 metre pitch.

Adam (Mulholland) crushing, 3 beers in

The actual valley is really nice, with sleepy, cute french villages dotted along it. The local people there are also ridiculously friendly and super keen to recommend routes.

Alex on Le plaisir qui démonte, 55m 8a+, Tennessee WallSince I failed to find a project I was pretty happy to onsight my first 8a,  Les ailes du désir. I did the 8a to the right second try, and it felt like I could have onsighted it, so I saved the other one for when I was fresh. It felt really easy. I took a long time on it, but only because I didn’t want to read something wrong and botch the moves. I also felt like I could recover on nearly all the holds, which felt nice.

It’s funny I’ve always thought it would be nice to onsight 8a, and I felt like I could quite easily with a little forearm stamina. But it felt so easy that it didn’t seem like much of an achievement. I tried to flash an 8a at Regina, Terredets and it was a whole different experience: I went all out, fighting the pump, flailing and screaming, right to the very end. Although I was annoyed to fall at the last hard move, it felt like much more of an achievement because I really gave it everything. Anyway it’s sort of interesting because it shows that what your proud of often doesn’t really correlate with actual success.

Maury and Jesse returned for some more bolt clipping after their alpine adventures in Cham - here they are squished in the Saxo on the way to the train station.



Source: hazelfindlay

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Home
10 April 2012, 2:45 pm

Since it started to rain a lot in France the decision was made to drive home. It was a very long drive, but nicely broken up by a day in font and an exciting moment in the ferry port, where I made an ‘accidental’ but successful attempt to breach port security.

Excited as I was to be at home the weather forecast was not very inspiring, so we spent only a few days in Bristol before booking flights to Morocco!

In those few days, apart from battling with Mr Taxman at HMRC, I had a day of UK tradding, which was strangely my first since doing ‘Once Upon a time in the Southwest’ in June and Alex’s first time using the infamous ’double rope technique’.

Alex H-Bomb Honnold on Coronary Country E6 The fins in all their glory, taken from this article about Sharpnose http://www.planetfear.com/articles/18_Lower_Sharpnose_Point_686.html I’ve heard so much about Sharpnose and the pictures have always looked so pretty. It is a really cool crag, but unlike a lot of crags in the UK – where the opposite is true – the rock at Sharpnose is worse than it looks. It’s actually a little unnerving, and has a remarkably sandy feel to it. We did Wraith E5 and Coronary Country E6



Whilst I was on the phone to Mr HMRC Alex climbed with Dave at Cheddar in the rain, a crag that he deemed to be ‘the most disgusting cliff he’d ever seen’ and Swanage which he quite liked. Off to Morocco then…



Source: hazelfindlay

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Akchour Valley, Morocco!
7 May 2012, 8:21 pm

Morocco was a great trip. I loved the country and I loved the climbing.

Alex (Honnold) and myself left Bristol in the rain, flew to Marrakesh, stayed there a night then took the train North to the valley of Akchour. We were originally going to go straight to Taghia and stay there, but we heard rumours of multipitch tufas near the med and thought we should check it out.

The main wall in Akchour, still many lines left to bolt! The valley of Akchour is beautiful, much greener than the rest of Morocco. The climbing is pretty cool, but has very ‘fresh’/'new’ feeling, in other words it can be loose, chossy and crozzly. But given a few more years of traffic it could be a really cool place. We stayed at a little climber’s café come guest house called Café Rueda, where you can find topos and information about the climbing. We did two longer routes and finished some open projects at a little sport crag.

A nice little sport crag called sector Kozy. We finished 5 more routes at this wall (I did 1, Alex 4). The climbing can be quite crozzly in places with sharp, skin-tearing bobbles, but with more traffic some of the routes will be really cool. Of the longer routes, Timbuktoo 7c+/8a was the most interesting. It starts with big dripping tufa climbing and goes into cleaner less steep rock higher up. We also simul climbed Africa a 7a+. Even though it was dubbed the classic of the crag, we thought it was pretty average. What was most interesting was trying to climb with a lot of rope drag, which for some reason – I’m notoriously bad at and do my best to avoid, but since Alex is all about going fast and light and efficient, refusing to simul climbing anything below 7a+ was ‘out of the question’. Over the time we were in Morocco I think I improved a little at leading with rope drag and managing the rope whilst seconding, but I still have an aversion to it. Despite disliking rope drag, I must admit that its a nice feeling to have done 3 or 4 pitches without stopping.

In the blue painted city of Chefchoen, this guy is in the right trade It was nice to travel in a non-western country, and it’s something I haven’t done in a while. My memories of doing this have always been that although its interesting to travel in different places, sometimes it feels as though the people are only interested in you for your money. I loved traveling in India and found the people friendly, but I also felt as though they were trying to rip me off, or perhaps pick something out of my pocket. After leaving Marrakesh, I didn’t really have this feeling of unease in Morocco. We left our rooms unlocked the whole time and never once worried about our things getting stolen.

Pretty Chefchoen We hitched to the little sport crag and much to our surprise, were picked up as soon as we put our thumbs out. One time a local family picked us up in their small truck and I sat with bare arms, next to an old Muslim lady with full head scarf. But instead of treating me with disdain, she started pointing at my arms and laughing so hard I thought she was going to wet herself. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool that she found the idea of me going to hell when I die that funny.

Although we enjoyed climbing in Akchour, thoughts of Taghia pulled us away. We were lucky to meet a nice French girl, Lisse who had driven her van from France, and was driving south to Taghia. Not only were we getting a ride straight to our next destination, but being in her van meant we got to sample more of the country on the way down.

Alex and Lisse



Source: hazelfindlay

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Taghia!
7 May 2012, 9:29 pm

welcome to paradise OK, so Taghia has to be one of the best places I’ve been for mulitpitch sport climbing, if not climbing in general. And I will definitely go back.

Only two routes on this wall

Firstly, Taghia is beautiful! It’s like paradise, even if you’re not into climbing. You walk 3 hours to the village with some donkeys to carry your stuff as there are no roads that go to the village. As you turn the last bend of the valley you are greeted by big orange and yellow limestone towers that loom over a little village with a pretty little stream running through it. There are bright little patches of green where ever the stream reaches the ground and little water falls that sprout out of the walls. Every time we walked into a route, I was so happy to see that even the mud is pretty, it’s a funny shade of purple and sparkles in the sun.

poor little donkey The accommodation scene, is that basically, you choose one of three gites in the village and pay a fee per day that covers, a bed, dinner and breakfast. We stayed at Said’s place and found it to be really friendly, pretty clean and comfortable, shower scene.. not great but good enough. And just a warning – if you have something against the French, perhaps Taghia is not the best spot for you. Taghia seems to attract the French like bears to honey (they’re not stupid, the French).

When Hazel is in charge of packing the lunch this is all we get, an almond to share We were in Taghia for 10 days and 9 of them all were filled with some kind of climbing or hiking. Taghia is a place where you will find it almost impossible to sit still, and this isn’t just because there is no internet, TV, pubs or shops. It’s because it feels like a playground, a Disney land for the climber and hiker. Everywhere you look there is an adventure hiding, waiting to be had; all you have to do is pick a direction to walk in. Apart from the very first day, when we got caught in an epic snow storm, we enjoyed stable albeit slightly cold weather.

Alex, Widmo The rock is really solid and clean. Mainly crimpy or pocketted, and anywhere from slabby to slightly overhanging. A lot of the harder routes that we did haven’t had much traffic and as a result are fun to onsight as there isn’t much chalk or boot rubber giving you clues. The routes are anything from one to 18 pitches, the best ones we did, around 16 pitches. There is trad climbing there, but we thought that the sport routes were on nicer rock, and are on the most part the harder routes. A lot of the time we would walk for an hour or so to get to the base, and although you can ab the routes, we chose to walk off them, taking an hour and a half or something. All the climbing and hiking really added up towards the end of the ten days and I felt pretty tired on the way home. But it felt nice to be tired, because I knew we had really made the most of our time there.

Afternoon tea I really enjoyed the rock climbing, but there is something special about Taghia and the people that live there, that will bring me back, even when the memories of the cool routes we did have faded. Throughout the village the local people will always say hi, in either French or Arabic and if you meet a lone shepherd walking on the high plains, he will most likely invite you to have tea with him and chat to you in broken French.



These are the routes we did with a few words about them if anyone’s interested in doing them.

Les Rivieres Pourpres 7b+ – really cool, awesome rock, well bolted

Tout Pour Le Club 7c – really nice, brilliant 7c pitch lower down, really technical, no rubbish pitches but only 7 in total

L’Axe Du Mal 7c+ – really nice, a lot of easy pitches, and some not so nice ones higher up, the 7c+ crux isn’t so hard, with the hard climbing only being a few metres in length

Sul Filo Du Notte 7c+ – really amazing, a lot harder than L’Axe Du Mal. I onsighted the first 7c+ but the second one has quite a hard few moves, which I worked out after a fall but they were very low percentage, involving the smallest holds/thumb sprags known to man. The upper pitches aren’t very nice, with lots of crozzly rock.

Widmo 7c+/8a, really good – the 7c+8a pitch I got second go, and is really cool, not very cruxy, the next 7c+ isn’t that hard, but be warned if you aren’t rapping the ’3′ pitch that is supposed to traverse you off to the summit, is longer than your rope length, has no bolts and is a little sketch if you’re not into soloing slightly chossy rock/gullys after a sport climb.

Zebda 7b+, really nice, a short approach, hard first pitch for 7b+ especially if you’re short.

I also did Belle et Berber with Lisse, 6b+, about 10 pitches, really nice

We also tried Fantasia, but we got really cold and came down at pitch 7, but it looks really good, will be psyched to try it on a return trip.



Source: hazelfindlay

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Northumberland with the ‘Odyssey’
19 May 2012, 10:15 pm

For the last week, I have been traveling with the moving circus, that is the ‘Odyssey’. Film makers at ‘Hotaches Productions’ have teamed up with climbers Hansjorg Auer, Caroline Ciavaldini, James Pearson and myself. The idea is to climb a lot of UK trad, film it, and hopefully make a really cool film with the footage. So far, in the endless battle with UK weather I think we’ve come out on top, having climbed/got footage every day but one, and that was a day driving. However, we have been very cold, climbing, filming and camping. I can’t remember a May in the UK that has been this cold.

It’s been quite intense climbing UK trad for the cameras, especially since I haven’t done it for a year. However, Caro and Hans have never UK trad climbed, so I only have to look at their efforts to see that I have no excuses.

So what’s been happening? We started with two days in Northumberland. In terms of climbing, the most productive event was James’ flash of Crisis Zone, E7 6C. Caro also showed amazing form at ticking off a number of trad routes, from E2 to E6, picking up trad skills at a remarkable rate. It terms of footage, perhaps the most productive event was catching Hans, James and myself take ground sweeping, neck-jerking falls off tiny pieces of rock. My fall off the ‘direct’ of Charlottles Dream (E7), Back Bowden was especially entertaining as I narrowly missed Hans’ head along with the ground. James’ fall off ‘Off the Rocks’ E8 6c, was also pretty brutal.

Although the rock in Northumberland is really nice and the movement pretty special, after taking 3 falls off Charlotte’s dream, fumbling a leap in to a pocket each time, I decided enough was enough and I didn’t want to break my ankles on a silly eliminates. I think the rest of team were also feeling a little tired of having too many close encounters with the ground, so we decided it was time to head south to North Wales .

There are pictures and some short clips on here https://www.facebook.com/hotaches



Source: hazelfindlay

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North Wales, the Odyssey continues
20 May 2012, 7:47 am

We arrived in North Wales in full rain and fog, Llanberis style, but our forecast told us to expect otherwise so we made a plan for me to do the Cad the next day. We woke up in the morning to rain and wind and very cold temperatures. Although the Cad is meant to be easy physically, it’s not one you want to fall off of because you numb out. A little worried, we set off for the coast anyway.

Fortunately something that often happens in North Wales is that you’ll get perfect blue skies on the coast even when it’s pissing it down in Llanberis. Luckily for us, it was one of those days. ‘The ‘island of Gogarth’ as Hans calls Anglesey, was blessed with perfect blue skies and it was ‘game-on’. We did Blue Peter to warm up, which turned out to be quite bold for E4, on snappy rock, which didn’t bode well for the Cad.

So how did it go? Pretty good. I didn’t really feel like I was going to fall, and the tricky climbing was above OK gear, albeit a long way above that gear. I spent a long time trying to find gear on the start of the route. I think I’m a bit out of touch at finding weird gear having sport climbed and trad climbed on granite for most of the last year. Anyway I suppose it’s better to take a long time and walk back from the crag, than rush and end up splattered on the floor.



The next day provided full entertainment as we all launched oursleves on Strawberries. We all tried really hard which was great to see, but Hans came out on top with a smooth as onsight! It was really cool to see him do it, well done Hans! I really want to go back and finish it, its an amazing route.

The guys wanted some shots of the slate quarries so I did a little solo of Soap on a rope, which I really enjoyed. It felt nice to climb without a rope and rack.



Me and Caro also got a chance to get on Gin Palace. I tried it 3 years ago but fell off devastatingly close tot the top. I’ve always wanted to finish it off and was psyched to do it first try. Caro, really impressively did it second go. For those of you who don’t know Gin palace – it’s an incredibly awkward tight slate chimney. Most chimneys I’ve climbed are granite and you can smear quite easily, but you can’t smear on slate, which makes this ’7c’ extremely difficult. It mostly requires extreme perseverance to stay in the chimney.

All in all, North Wales blessed us with good climbing, good footage and blue skies!



Source: hazelfindlay

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Pembroke with the ‘Odyssey’
26 May 2012, 9:10 am

All of us were most psyched for the Pembroke leg of the trip, but when we got there we had a look around and realised that most of the things we wanted to do were wet. Given that Huntsman’s Leap and Stennis Ford were mostly wet we had to make a change of plan. Hans and I sort of wasted the first day checking things out to find them wet. James onisghted Big Softy E7, which was a good effort given its condition. Hans managed to flash it the next day, with some info about the gear from James. It was one of the scariest leads I’ve belayed, given Han’s erratic style and lack of concern in the face of minimal gear and wet rock. As I jugged out (I was resting) nearly all of his pieces pulled out with a slight pull of the rope.

The next day things were looking drier in the leap and Stennis Ford, but unfortunately the military chose that day to start blowing things up in the range, so we were only allowed in at 4pm. To make the most of the day we went to Mother Scaries first. Hans lead Just Klingon (which felt much easier than when I seconded Neil Mawson up it (I think he went the wrong way)) and I did the E6 to the left Fireball XL5. It’s amazing that the Cad and Fireball XL5 get the same grade. They seem to represent opposite scales of the spectrum. Fireball feels pumpy, steep but mostly a clip up, using a lot of threads, insitu and otherwise. Whereas the Cad has much easier climbing, is not pumpy but, has very limited or poor protection.

Although I wanted to try Ghost Train, and Hans, Point Blank, we only really had time to film James and Caro on the Jackals, a cool looked E8 in Stennis Ford. Caro worked out the moves and the gear, did it with relative ease, and then James flashed it using her sequences and gear beta. Although me and Hans were annoyed not to try our routes, it was cool to see James and Caro dispatch E8 so casually, and we got to solo Manzooku as the sun set, which is a really nice route at Stennis Head, and one of my first E1s when I was younger.



Source: hazelfindlay

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Nesscliffe: flashing, onsighting , flonsighting and head-pointing!
26 May 2012, 9:23 am



Hans left us, which was very sad, but we did smash Nescliffe. We went there for a day, but it felt like a year. We were there for 12 hours, filmed 9 attempts on different routes, racked up 63 E points and all in rather sweaty conditions. I had to hand it to the film crew (Matt, Dom, Diff, Dave) who worked super hard all day and our lovely chef Jon and driver Andy who brought us up soup and tea at 5 o’clock, nice!

I didn’t really feel like I got to climb much in Pembroke, so when I got to Nesscliffe I was psyched to climb something hard, perhaps a headpoint. But I abbed down a few E8s and they all seemed too hard. My Piano is one of the coolest looking lines, but I found that I could only do the starting moves in a really sketchy style, using the worst smears on rock. The sandy nature of the sandstone means that poor smears do not stick like granite or grit. Since the start is unprotected, and above some boulders, I decided to think first of my ankles and second of the route. Caro, however, utilising her longer legs did the start nicely and kept a cool head on the run out at the top. She also checked out another E8 Gathering Sun, which even she – with her longer legs – found a move that was too reachy. Knowing James was taller, she suggested ‘the method’ and the gear, so that James could flash it, which he did, making it look about VS.

Disappointed at not doing My Piano I looked for other impressive lines, and was drawn to Crispin Waddy’s E7 Tombola, named after his children Tom and Lola. Last time I was at Nescliffe, 5 years ago, I did the line to the left (a Johhny Dawes special 10’o clock Saturday Morning, E7) and had always fancied this beautiful looking corner, but I’d been too scared. There is a peg at 2/3 height, and a break at half height but below that it looked like you would have to be very creative with the gear, on sketchy rock. The line also didn’t seem to have had many ascents for quite some time. Abandoning routes at Nesscliffe can turn big jugs into sand-filled horror shows and good footholds into leg-shaking sandy nightmares. I also know Crispin quite well as he is a good friend of my Dads, so I also know that he can be a cheeky ****er, perhaps placing crucial pegs in awkward places, he is also not shit at funky corners, nor a scaredy cat. All this combined left me feeling quite worried about the prospect of breaking my legs. So Caro offered to go down on an ab rope to give it a clean and check that the gear wasn’t so bad I would die. She came down with encouraging comments, so I went for it.

The climbing below the break was easy enough not to worry about the fact that I had only a tri cam and a cam shoved into rotten sandy pockets. There was just one tricky move to the break, which I laced with gear when I got there and felt pretty happy about it. Knowing I only had the peg to the top I left the rest of my rack there, minus a quick draw. This was a good thing indeed, when I realised that I could not reach the peg, like everyone else, with my foot in the break. Whilst doing some of the hardest moves on the route, staring at the peg, that I then had to clip from a horribly awkward position, I was cursing Crispin Waddy for not being smaller, nor caring about those that are.  Anyway, I can’t complain because I clipped the peg, did the crux – which is a series of weird palming, shuffling, bridging moves that felt very nice – and pushed on to the top.

It’s sort of annoying that it wasn’t a true onsight, given that Caro cleaned the route, and suggested I take tri cams, but I felt like it was pretty close and a good effort. What I have learnt from this trip is that ‘flashing’ is a very strange and complicated thing in deed. James and Caro have mastered the art of flashing, given that they work as a team, going on routes and telling each other the exact gear, movements and holds. James’ attempted flash at Mui Caliente took flahing to a whole new level, seeing as James trained with the idea in mind for several months. James’ attempt was an awesome effort, and moreover, an awesome idea, showing that given enough fitness, talent and effort, routes this hard and bold can be done without top roping. But this idea of a ‘flash’ is quite different from your mate suggesting you take tri cams, a piece of information that one with tri cams might guess from the ground, given that there are pockets in view. I don’t really know either way, flash or onsight, and it makes me a little tired to have to think about it. Sometimes, I think that climbing is a very silly sport given all these labels we use to name certain efforts. We try to label routes definitively with grades, and then styles of ascent with ‘onsight’ or ‘flash’ or ‘headpoint’, but often these labels really detract from what’s going on, and it all begins to feel like a silly game.

So, my first E7 onsight? First flash. Perhaps I’ll settle for a ‘Flonsight’ and be happy to have done a cool route.



I’ll move onto the rest of the day, and it was a BIG day. Caro tried to onsight Yukan 2, a beautiful line in the main quarry, and one I tried 5 years ago, but never got. She fell in the awkward crux low down, but managed it second go. I threw down a top rope, worked out what I wanted to do and then also did it. I really love that route the climbing on it is very special I think. Then it was James’ time to shine, onsighting My Piano, despite fluffing up a lot of the sequences. He then repeated Nick Dixon’s new E9 A Thousand Setting Suns. What a day! I was especially impressed with James, seeing as he seemed to tick a lot of the hard routes at the crag in a single day.







Source: hazelfindlay

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Last day of the Odyssey – first day in the lakes
31 May 2012, 10:06 am

My first time climbing in the Lakes! I never have, largely because when I check the weather for the Lakes, there appears to be an entire lake hanging over the weather map. Ironically we had the clearest, hottest day there. We chose a good venue though; Pavey Ark being a little higher and more airy.It really is,very beautiful in the Lakes. It seems like a lot of the crags look a little messy from afar, as they’re mountain crags, but when you stand beneath the routes, you realise that the rock is actually really nice and clean, and the routes long enough to be inspiring.

Caro and I warmed up on an E4 called Fallen Angel. Caro started to lead it, but didn’t feel good about her gear, or the dirtiness of the rock or the fact that it was a bit wet. She decided to back off it and I took the lead.

I really admired Caro for this. She hasn’t done much trad climbing, yet she is onsighting E6 and headpointing E8, it took me years to get to that level, and most never do. But, she still has a lot to learn about placing gear, spotting gear and knowing what gear to trust. The good part is that she knows this, and is therefore willing to back off things when she doesn’t feel comfortable. Despite being ridiculously bold for a sport climber, it’s good to see that she has a sense of self-preservation, understanding that although she’s climbed E8, she might be risking too much on an E4 with tricky gear. Having taken the lead, and finding the gear to be a little fiddly, I was glad she backed off too.

I wanted to onsight Sixpence E6, which is meant to be a 3 star classic. And it didn’t disappoint! It was for sure one of the best routes I’ve done this trip. Cool rock, good gear, good holds, techy, airy. Just beautiful!

James abbed down Impact Day E9 6c to clean the holds and look at the gear, to go for the ‘flash’. He got really high on his first go, taking a big whip. Then got it next try.

All in all, the two weeks with the ‘Odyssey’ was a fun trip. We did a lot of good hard routes, and it was amazing to climb with such talented and varied climbers. It was quite tiring at times, having to get out of a van after 6 hours of driving, then summon the psyche to onsight another hard trad route. Hard trad climbing, especially onsight trad climbing – which is mainly what I did on this trip – is really mentally draining. Unlike embarking on a sport climb, when I embark on UK E6 and above, rightly or wrongly, I think a lot about the chances of me hurting myself and how I can reduce that risk. After a while this can be quite tiring. Perhaps a good solution is to minimise the really hard onisght trad routes to those that you really want to do, then spend the rest of the time either working on red/head point projects, and mileage on easy stuff.

George Ullrich on Impact Day, stolen from: http://steepmedia.blogspot.co.uk



Source: hazelfindlay

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Back to the Lakes
6 June 2012, 8:14 pm

I really enjoyed the last day with the Odyssey up at Pavey so I thought I’d come back and climb with local lakelander Pete Graham. We had some good days ticking off classics E3-6s. Most of the routes up at Pavey are really good, especially Fallen Angel and Mother Courage. I definitely found lakes grades to be harder than other areas in the UK. RnS Special E5 6a on Raven Crag, Langdale felt like E6 seeing as the meat of the route is protected by one rotten peg.

I also liked Hell’s Wall E6 at Hell’s Wall. It’s basically a sport route (at about 7c+) because it’s so pegged but the climbing is really nice and pumpy. I sort of felt like all the pegs detracted from the route a little bit. It didn’t feel like a trad route at all, so unless someone takes the pegs out and does it without them, it seems like it could just be bolted and you would have the same experience. But… alas! This is the UK!

 

 



Source: hazelfindlay

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IMPACT DAY ‘don’t you know you’re not supposed to fall head pointing?’
6 June 2012, 9:15 pm

One of my ideas of what to do in the lakes was Impact Day an E8/9 up at Pavey Ark. I looked at it when James did it and thought it looked really cool.

Pete was working one day and it was raining, so I walked up with an ab rope to look at the move I was most worried about – a big last throw to a slopey jug off a mono. I swung around on a gri gri for a little bit and eventually found a pretty easy way of doing it with a really high foot. The move is really fun and I was psyched to come back and try the rest of the route once it had dried off.

Out of a crew from Bristol and Sheffield, Neil Mawson and Charlie Woodburn were up for trying the route with me. We all did a few routes first and ended up getting on Impact Day a little late in the day. Mawsons was up first, top roped it, then dispatched it without too much stress. Then Charlie gave it a bash and fell off the heart-breaker last move.

Before they had tried it, I had decided in my mind that I didn’t want to do it for a few reasons. It was coming up to 9 at night, it was my 7th day on, I was really cold and most of all I didn’t feel happy about the start. The first few moves are quite big, and although Neil and Charlie thought they were piss (having 10 inches on me) I did not. The way I was doing them was quite dynamic and not as controlled as I would have liked them to be. Those moves are also mainly unprotected. A small cam protects some of them, but after that you have nothing between you and a big ledge (and below that, around 20 meters of vegetated blocky slabs and ledges. But seeing Charlie and Neil try the route got me really psyched, and I had top roped it without falling, so I persuaded myself the start was fine and that I should go for it.

Well that turned out to be a big mistake. I set up for the first move and was a little surprised that I actually had to try hard. Basically I had the whole head pointing mentality all wrong. I wanted the moves to feel easy because I knew I couldn’t fall.  But being on the sharp end doesn’t make the moves easy, they were still hard, and I still wasn’t supposed to fall. Anyway, I did fall and I hit the ledge, and then the cam ripped and I launched head first down the slabby ledge system below straight onto the belay. I ended up about 6 metres below a very shocked Mawsons hanging by my ankle.

I was really, really lucky. I escaped with some bruised ribs, whip lash and rope burn but I could have easily damaged my brain (I do actually have one) or broken an ankle or something.

The good thing is that I learnt a number of very useful lessons. The main one being that you should only listen to what you feel about something, and don’t let other people’s experiences effect your judgement. Just because a route has a certain grade, or people say it’s bold or it’s not, your experience of it is relative to you and only you can decide whether to go for it or not.

There was no point where Neil or Charlie suggest I try it, they were good friends and careful not to push me either way. It was totally my decision. But I let the fact that they breezed up the starting moves effect my perception of how dangerous the route is when I shouldn’t have. They find those moves much easier than me and therefore don’t think the start is bold. But, clearly it’s quite bold for me!



Anyway, lessons were learnt, ribs stayed in tact, and I have a cool rope burn on my neck that looks like I just tried to hang myself. Hopefully at some point I’ll summon the bravery to get back on it and finish it off. And more importantly: I’ll not be falling off when I’m not supposed to any time soon.



Source: hazelfindlay

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Adventures on the road: Ceuse, The Desire and Le Chirurgien du Crepuscule, 8b
23 July 2012, 9:45 am

After Impact Day (the day and the route), I rested quite a lot. My ribs hurt for a while and I felt like a needed a little break.

With my ribs repaired and not one to have unfinished business I was keen to get back on it, but since June was the wettest on record I wasn’t given the chance. This was a little frustrating but at the same time I had a good June, going climbing without an agenda, seeing friends and generally enjoying the UK.

Howard on the mega-flash of Penal Servitude, sandbag E5Lake District’s finest, Peter Graham on Limited Edition, E4 6a in the beautiful/quick drying Hodge CloseBut after a while, waiting for a weather window in the Lake District started to wear thin and gave up on the idea of doing it this summer – it was time to get back on the road and go somewhere where the sun always shines – Ceuse!

Madeleine Cope; Warrington’s creme de la creme was keen to join me on a European road trip. Being a good friend, I did explain to her that our vehicle for the trip had seen better days and that there was a high probability our journey ending with us at the side of the road, hitching to the nearest airport. Although she was a little surprised to see that ‘The (citroen saxo) Desire’ did not start via the conventional ‘turn the key method’, but instead, via the pikey ‘hot wire’ method, for better of for worse, she agreed, and off we went!

These cows were not psyched on us sharing their bivvy spot.The journey down was not without its hitches. We decided to go via Belgium to avoid the tolls, but it turns out that you pay for nice roads for a reason. After sitting in traffic for 5 hours we pulled onto another gridlocked motorway I decided enough was enough and the best idea was to reverse down the hard shoulder, do a U-turn then drive up the slip road the wrong way. This would have gone smoothly, had another women not had exactly the same idea…. anyway it worked out OK in the end and we both made it to France in one piece. The Desire, however, did not make it in one piece and we pulled into the Ceuse campsite with the exhaust dragging along the floor and a boy-racer grumble that no amount of techno could hide.

Ceuse is a great place to start a trip because it beats your body back into shape in no time at all. Keen to get on it, we decided to deal with the car later and go climbing. After a few days, Maddy had polished off some of the hard 7cs on Berlin such as Berlin, Galaxy and the 7c+ Makech Walou. I had done La Privilège du serpent, 7c+ and the direct finish to La Couleurs du Vent, 8a+.

With a few routes under our belts and our fitness increasing, we decided to turn our attention back to The Desire. Since neither of us know anything about cars we thought we should forget about ‘what we know’ and concentrate on ‘who we know’. Much to our good fortune a friend at the campsite kindly offered to take the car to his uncle, who could apparently ‘fix anything’. Since it’s likely that the car wont last much longer anyway the last thing I wanted to do was buy a new exhaust, so I was all for the ‘botch-job’ option. Simone and his uncle did an amazing job, and I can’t thank them enough for helping the Desire get back on to the road in an acceptable fashion.

Lager at 10am and an exhaust to piece back together!Couleurs Du Vent was a really good route, and since it didn’t take me too long I thought I should try something a bit harder. Last year, whilst I did Femme Noir and Femme Blanche I always looked to the right at this really nice looking 8b. I remember seeing a french kid weave his way up the wall, at one point down climbing, and at another – doing some ridiculous cross through off a two finger pocket. Anyway the route looked amazing and I was keen to give it a go.

Le chirurgien du crepuscule taken from: http://pinticlimbs.blogspot.fr photo by Robbie Phillips It turned out to climb as well as it looked. It’s meant to be ‘hard in the grade’, but I also think it’s my style – small holds – so I managed to get it 5th try. I have done some other 8bs, but they were in Spain and Turkey, and grades aren’t as soft in France, especially Ceuse. After Impact Day, UK trad bumbling and not doing that much climbing, it felt nice to do this route and get a bit of confidence back.

It also felt like a nice point to leave Ceuse. I really came to Europe to do some adventurous routes – so back in the Desire and off to Chamonix!



Source: hazelfindlay

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Alpine Adventures: The Findlay-Geldard Route – Aiguille de Saussure – Mont Blanc du Tacul
1 August 2012, 7:24 am

Aiguille de Saussure, 3839 m After doing Le Cherrurgien de Crepuscule (still can’t pronounce the name) I was ready for an adventure. I really do love sport climbing, and I especially liked this route – lots of two finger drag pockets, a cool face and some crazy moves. But I also like wild places, adventures and may I admit… a little bit of suffering? Ceuse is great, but you take the same path up, past the big group of Austrian 7 year old wads, past the rocks that everyone poos behind, and up to a project that you know most of the moves on… it was time to hit Chamonix!

Final pitch Jack Geldard has usually got some sort of strange mission or adventure playing around in the back of his mind whilst he blogs and updates UKC. This new route idea on the Aguille de Saussure had been on his mind for some time and when I arrived in Cham, it seemed like the perfect mission. Well sort of… I am not the most experienced Alpinist and as we racked up, with me a little confused about the right way to put my crampons on, I could see that when talk turned to reality, Jack was having second thoughts.

Neither were we aclimatised. The Aguille de Saussure is on the edge of Mont Blanc du Tacul and is at 3839m. It took us the best part of a day to walk most of the way up Mont Blanc du Tacul, and descend into the notch between Saussure and the Tacul. Breathing heavily on some very exposed terrain, feeling insecure in my crampons, I glanced at Jack and wondered whether he had actually tied himself to me or just looped the rope through his belay loop!

On these sort of missions, as each day rolls by I get more confident that we’ll escape unscathed and perhaps even successful. In comparison, the next day – the day we got to do some rock climbing – was a joy. We woke up late, drank vast quantities of tea, and set off around midday. Unfortunately it was too dangerous for us to get the very base of the route, three gully systems excreting all kinds of debris would have made for a suicide mission, so we decided to come from the top, and start the route at the base of the rock, not the base of the gully.

ergh gully The climbing was interesting, on that sort of scrittly granite that makes a noise like your lighting a match every time you smear. But apart from that (and some choss) the rock was good. Jack started us off with some easy climbing, which then led to a picth that would maybe get lake-district E5, with slabby climbing but quite spicy in terms of gear and the space between placements. Then Jack got a beautiful splitter, tight hands crack, and I took us to the summit with a choss fest and an awkward chimney.

We then tried to sleep in the freezing snow before the crux – 250m of out-of -condition mixed climbing to get out, ergh! I was glad that Jack took the lead on the melting Scottish grade 6 warm-up pitch. This day, day 3, was definitely the hardest for me. I didn’t want to admit it to Jack, but I think I was very tired. I’ve been described as careless at the best of times, not really a ‘by-the-book’ climber, and when I’m tired this gets worse. And to be very honest I’m not that excited by endless Scottish grade 3 and I found the whole experience a bit of a chore. But, it was good for me, and it’s all experience in the bag for future mountain-based adventures.

The nice pitch So that was that! We were alpine first ascentionists! What heros! I certainly did not feel like a hero, when in my dehydrated, hungry, unaclimitised and fatigued body said no to me walking back up the midi. The crux of the whole 3 days, was not throwing up on all the tourists in the midi station. The final step up the stairs to get the lift saw me gagging and hyperventilating on the floor. What an Alpine hero!

Chamonix is one of the strangest places I have ever been. One minute you can be up there in the cold mountainous world of snow and ice,  crevasses, falling rock, seracs and not to mention your own personal battles with the suffering and the associated risks of being in a place, that really, should not take ten minutes to get to! And then the next minute your down on the valley floor, watching fake-tanned legs walk between overly priced restaurants and Japanese tourists baffle themselves with how to get themselves and the mountains into a camera frame.



Source: hazelfindlay

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More alpine rock: Untouchables on The Trident, 7c+/5.13, onsight
7 August 2012, 9:58 am

After the mission that was the Findlay-Geldard I was keen for more rock climbing and a little less faff. The Grand Capucin is only a couple hours walk from the midi, which compared to our 1 day walk in for the Auguille de Saussure, would obviously feel like a walk in the park.



I think it may have felt like a walk in the park if it weren’t for the mine field of terrifyingly deep crevasses. Fortunately I was tied to Matt Perier (Ug), who – being named Ug for a reason – probably wouldn’t have noticed had I fallen in the crevasse; all 13stone of him may have even kept walking  pulling me straight back out! That being said, if he had been the one to fall, it would have been a different story.

Fine Alpine rope work from Ug   Because we had to deal with high winds we chose to do a route on the more sheltered Trident (which is just to the left of the Grand Capucin). A friend of ours had climbed ‘The Intouchables’ and pictures of overhanging splitter cracks lured us in. We made it to the base, at the not-so-alpine start of 9.30 with only one crevasse-related mishap. I broke through a thin bridge of snow and ended up stuck neck deep with my feet waving around in a scarily deep and wide cavernous crevasse. With some careful distribution of body weight I managed to climb out without falling in entirely, but far from ideal.

A pitch that dreams are made of, 7c+?, perfect crack climbing, from fingers to fists!   The route was really cool. Every pitch – even the easy ones – were interesting and varied. The penultimate crux pitch, rated 7c+, was awesome. An overhanging (maybe 30m) crack, which went from baggy fingers at the start to fists at the top, was just a dream to climb. I managed to onsight it, but it certainly wouldn’t have got 5.13/7c+ if it were in North America. I think the grades on granite in Europe are all over the place, sometimes I think the 6′s are harder than the 7′s. But it certainly wasn’t a path and I had to dig deep at the top.



The next day we wanted to climb Gulliver’s Travels on the Grand Cap, but complaining shoulders pushed us to opt for the more chilled Rebufat, 6a, on the South Face of the midi, which is such a nice route, albeit busy.



With the Desire’s exhaust back to what seems like it’s natural resting position (dragging along the road), our travel options are limited, so maybe there will be more alpine smashing, or back to Ceuse!

Ginger Ben – psyched this isn’t his car  



Source: hazelfindlay

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More alpine rock: Untouchables on The Trident, 7c+/5.13? onsight
7 August 2012, 9:58 am

After the mission that was the Findlay-Geldard I was keen for more rock climbing and a little less faff. The Grand Capucin is only a couple hours walk from the midi, which compared to our 1 day walk in for the Auguille de Saussure, would obviously feel like a walk in the park.



I think it may have felt like a walk in the park if it weren’t for the mine field of terrifyingly deep crevasses. Fortunately I was tied to Matt Perier (Ug), who – being named Ug for a reason – probably wouldn’t have noticed had I fallen in the crevasse; all 13stone of him may have even kept walking  pulling me straight back out! That being said, if he had been the one to fall, it would have been a different story.

Fine Alpine rope work from Ug   Because we had to deal with high winds we chose to do a route on the more sheltered Trident (which is just to the left of the Grand Capucin). A friend of ours had climbed ‘The Intouchables’ and pictures of overhanging splitter cracks lured us in. We made it to the base, at the not-so-alpine start of 9.30 with only one crevasse-related mishap. I broke through a thin bridge of snow and ended up stuck neck deep with my feet waving around in a scarily deep and wide cavernous crevasse. With some careful distribution of body weight I managed to climb out without falling in entirely, but far from ideal.

A pitch that dreams are made of, 7c+?, perfect crack climbing, from fingers to fists!   The route was really cool. Every pitch – even the easy ones – were interesting and varied. The penultimate crux pitch, rated 7c+, was awesome. An overhanging (maybe 30m) crack, which went from baggy fingers at the start to fists at the top, was just a dream to climb. I managed to onsight it, but it certainly wouldn’t have got 5.13/7c+ if it were in North America. I think the grades on granite in Europe are all over the place, sometimes I think the 6′s are harder than the 7′s. But it certainly wasn’t a path and I had to dig deep at the top.



The next day we wanted to climb Gulliver’s Travels on the Grand Cap, but complaining shoulders pushed us to opt for the more chilled Rebufat, 6a, on the South Face of the midi, which is such a nice route, albeit busy.



With the Desire’s exhaust back to what seems like it’s natural resting position (dragging along the road), our travel options are limited, so maybe there will be more alpine smashing, or back to Ceuse!

Ginger Ben – psyched this isn’t his car  



Source: hazelfindlay

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Adventures off the road: blondes try DIY auto-repairs and Alpinism
13 August 2012, 10:45 am

I drove down to France with Warrington’s finest female climber, Madeleine Cope. Even though she was crushing many hard pitches including L’ami Caouette, 8a I thought it was high time I recapture her for some mountain-based adventures. Given that the health of the car had deteriorated since last seeing her, the rescue mission was aided by Chamonix residents Jack and Sandra along with Cheddar resident Sef.

Back in Chamonix Maddy was keen to reacquaint herself with granite in a less committing environment before heading up the big hills of Chamonix. So I thought we should drive to Italy in search of single pitch granite trad. With the Desire’s exhaust last seen dragging along the ground it was clear that some sort of patch up was in order before leaving the safety of Cham.

It’s safe to say that Maddy and I know almost nothing about cars. But we do know that we can tie something up to stop it dragging along the ground… so we bought some wire. And that the more airtight the seal the better we can appreciate techno… so we bought some tin foil. And that many hands make light work… so we asked our visiting friends Clare and Helana to help us out. Unfortunately, 5 girls who know nothing about cars is just as useful (not very) as two. But Clare has got ridiculously small hands, so she was put to good use.

Back at Sandra’s and armed with a car-jack the match was on: 3 blondes, 2 brunettes, wire, wire cutters, and some tin foil, versus the snapped exhaust. After 3 hours of shuffling around under the car, we were well-primed for some off-widths and with an exhaust that looked like a fancy-dress robot we thought the girls had come out on top. Ready for Italy!

Bomber! After driving for a few hours, the exhaust was still safely secured in the correct position and we were feeling pretty smug. Unfortunately, with our attention fixed on the exhaust we failed to notice that the car was steadily overheating. In fact we continually failed to notice, until the car would no longer go in third and there was a strong smell of burning!

We pulled over and after checking the exhaust – which we were pleased to see was still looking good – we opened the bonnet to find smoke pouring from the engine. Luckily a nice Swiss-German road biker and a young lad stopped by to help us out. They spoke no english, but this turned out to be OK, since all they said was was ‘Scheiße’ and ‘sehr heiß’, which we fully understood.



Anyway, we poured water into the car, called the breakdown man, who was an incomprehensible Indian-Swiss-German but seemed to think that the fan had broken, but that now it was fixed, and we could get back on the road. Hoping that we had understood him correctly, but not wanting to risk entering Italy, we timidly drove back to Cham.

“Sorry, are you speaking Hindi or German?”  After that failed mission, we decided it would be best to stay off the roads and make the most of Chamonix. Maddy had always wanted to climb Republique Bananiere on Aguille de la Republique at L’Envers. It’s not graded super hard, with the crux pitch at 6c+, but it’s a mega route at 25 pitches long, topping out at 3305m.

Being a bit lazy,and more interested in writing about the car than climbing I asked Maddy to write a guest entry (with some editing) about our adventure:

Where is the crag? MADELEINE COPE guest entry:

We walked the three hour approach to L’Envers the day before, leaving good time to do some cragging and find the base of the route. As it happened we did one pitch (the really nice first 7b pitch of Retour a la Montagne) and spent the rest of the evening making numerous tracks up and down and around the (wrong) glacier in an attempt to find the base of the route. How long does it take two blondes with one ice axe to find the base of an alpine route?… about 4 hours!

Shouldn’t that 12 year old boy be at soccer practice? Not running around on a glacier? Anyway, we found it in the end and stashed our stuff (being true alpine-tacticians). In the morning we reached the base at the serious alpine start time of 7am and the two blondes set off, opting for the light and fast approach, i,e, sans long johns, sans fleeces, sans sandwiches… momentarily delayed by chasing a sliding rucksack down the glacier.

Maddy struggling with the moat-straddle/sit start crux to the 6b corner pitch The route was really nice, with a soft touch final pitch, and some amazing perfect open-book corner climbing. Fortunately, Hazel’s light-and-fast approach made up for Maddy’s a bit lighter but not-very-fast approach and the team summitted in a ‘race-for the-nose’ style sugar-high, after chain eating 4 sweets. However, sugar highs are all too quickly followed by sugar lows and the millions of abseils passed in a blur of head ache as we abbed down the wrong couloir. When darkness came the abseils became pretty draining for team blonde but fortunately we were led by ‘Britain’s best Mountaineer’ (qoute: The Sun) and feet were firmly over ‘the moat’ and back onto the glacier, ready for chicken noodles at a good time of 10pm.



A lot of the rock at L’Envers looks quite messy and chossy from a distance, which it sort of is, but on a macro-level, when you get up close, you realise that there are big and beautiful features of perfect rock, like this 50m 6b+ corner (Maddy above, me below)



Source: hazelfindlay

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CADARESE: Sweat, blood and ‘The Doors’ 8b, 5.13d trad
19 August 2012, 12:46 pm

After our failed attempt at getting to Italy in the Desire, and then our failed attempt to go shopping in the Desire we were ready to accept that the driving days of the little saxo were over. Luckily for us our friends Dave and Sandra were keen to go.

Cadarese is just south of Domodossola, which is just over the border from Switzerland in northern Italy. My friend tipped me off about this beautiful crack line there called ‘The Doors, rated 8b. I googled it and found a video of Matteo Della Bordella climbing it after taking all the bolts out of it. It’s sort of amazing that anyone would ever see this line as a sport route, but then again we’re in Italy now, not the peak district. But the route just looked amazing and I instantly had my heart set on trying it.



We arrived in Cadarese and we were at first a little underwhelmed by how the crag looked – sort of vegetated, broken rock and in the trees. But then we got underneath the routes and we were instantly psyched! The routes are a good length, the rock quality is basically perfect and the lines, are well, lines – big corners, beautiful cracks of all sizes up slabs, steep walls and even roofs.

Maddy on a nice cornerThe downfall? The bolts! Having done a philosophy degree I generally like playing devil’s advocate and tend to argue against the staunch British anti-bolting ethic. I don’t mind bolts, I can tolerate them on granite routes, in between cracks and at anchors. I have also been known to argue that in the UK our history of obstinate no-bolts ethic has done a lot to hinder the progression of British climbers. However, all this ‘open-mindedness’ flew out the window when I saw these perfect cracks with a line of bolts next to them. My heart sank and I felt deeply unsettled at the prospect of climbing these beautiful cracks with only quick draws on my harness. Clearly I can’t shake off my British roots after all!

On the first day we did a bunch of these ‘sport routes’, and slowly I eased into the idea of them. We were all climbing them a lot quicker than if we had done them on trad, and Sandra and Maddy were probably getting back into the granite at a quicker rate than if they had been placing gear. That being said, I still felt a little sad. Dave and I did a really cool 8a called ***, which would be fully protectable on trad, and would have made an awesome E8, or 5.13 R. Any Italians keen to chop?

Feeling a little sad I was psyched to sniff out ‘The Doors’, which I knew to have had the bolts chopped. And I was so pleased that it had – what a line! One of the prettiest cracks I’ve ever seen, and close to 40m. ‘Splitter’ enough to look nice, but broken enough to have some really interesting movements.

One problem with Cadarese is that I really do not think it is a summer venue. With expected highs of 29 degrees, we thought we could just wake up early and climb in the cool morning air. Unfortunately, it never got anywhere close to ‘cool’, even in the middle of the night. What’s more – we were also faced with ridiculously humid conditions. All in all, I don’t think I’ve sweated as much as I have in Cadarese since being in Thailand 4 years ago.

So what of The Doors? I was told it was 8b, but I felt like I should try to onsight it anyway. It may not be the best idea if you want to be tactical in terms of saving energy etc, but I feel like trying these things makes you a much better climber over all, and you never know – you just might get lucky! I managed to get past the tricky start and the section of baggy fingers/ring locks, which I was quite pleased with. But then I miss-read the first proper crux and fell off in a sweaty heap. I then went to the top and set up a top rope to give it a proper look. The first crux is really cool, with some thin locks and a big move off a side pull. Then it gets easier to a cheeky sting in the tail with a big move to final jug. All in all, I have to say that this route is, as the yanks say ‘totally bad-ass’.



The next day I warmed up, worked out a few more moves and gear and then went for the lead, take two. My tactics were to climb as slowly as possible. There are enough rests so I knew I wouldn’t get particularly tired, but the main crux would be not over-heating. We had found that as soon as you over heat, you can’t cool down again and you become a hyper-ventilating mess of sweat.

Imagining myself to be a sloth or something, I slowly made my way up the rock, managed to stay clam and therefore reasonably cool, completing the route that try. I really enjoyed the route, but I must say that it would have been much more enjoyable and probably easier, if it had been cooler. And what of the grade? I think 8b or 5.13d is a little steep. Dave and I thought it to be more like 13c, or 8a+. We in Europe, are no crack masters and given the conditions, perhaps a visiting American would think it easier? As always, I find anything to do with grades, hard to say.

The next day, our final day in Cadarese, I was feeling particularly tired, but there are actually a lot of cool ‘clean’ lines in Cadarese at ‘sector trad’. Robo-Maddy, always up for ‘one more pitch’, launched herself up a 7b flared-chimney at the hottest part of the day. I really think that her efforts far surpassed mine on the Doors. With her power-screaming, close to an asthma attack and dripping sweat like a shower onto me belaying below, I sort of wished she would just give up and let the suffering be over. But Madeleine Cope, never gives up and she saw herself clipping the chains, a broken, but successful lady.

Is it raining? Oh no wait, it’s Maddy’s sweat Every single route I did a Cadarese was good, from 6a to 8b and we left Cadarese content, albeit slightly worn-down, all of us keen to return at some point soon!

Water!



Source: hazelfindlay

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Route looks great. Good effort!

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An end to the summer
29 September 2012, 10:30 pm

After the Doors the rest of my European trip was spent in the mountains for a few days with my new friend Victor Estringen, who is a very strong French man. We tried Le Tresor De Romain on the Grand Capucin, put up by Nicolas Potard. I met Nico on Golden Gate, they were trying El Corazon and putting in a great fight on the final 13b pitch. Since then I keep seeing his name around, him and his wife Martina certainly explore a lot and have a pretty impressive tick list between them. Nico named the 8a+ pitch after his new son ‘Tommy’ and is definitely a tricky one. Victor sent it, but I found it too hard to do in a day, 8a+ at 4000 meters is no joke.

Vicor on the really cool 7b pitch Then me and Maddy then went back to Cadarese to do some filming on the Doors for a short BD profile film. It was a fun few days shooting with Ian Burton. Alongside getting back on the Doors, which felt a lot easier in cooler temperatures, we managed to get on some other cool stuff done. Maddy lead a nice offwidth and I tried to onsight Mustang, a cool route given 7c+ or 8a, I fell off first try but managed to drag myself up it groundup. A really fun one, maybe only 7c.

Then the summer was over! Europe is such an amazing place to be as a climber, there seems to be so much good stuff to do, whether it’s sport, trad, or in the mountains. A lot of people think North America is the place to be if you’re a trad climber, and yeah, the granite and sandstone over there will keep bringing me back, but there is endless stuff in Europe as well.



Source: hazelfindlay

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Squamish and The Adder Crack: 5.13 R new route
29 September 2012, 10:53 pm



Yosemite is of course somewhere I want to be this Autumn. But the valley is still pretty hot in September so I thought that Squamish would be a perfect warm up venue. I also had some British friends out there, Malcolm, Pete and Neil.

I’ve spent three summers of my life in Squamish, and every time I’ve had a lot of fun and done a lot of amazing climbing. The local climbers of Squamish are a good bunch and always seem AMPED for Squamish routes and climbing in general, with high fives getting passed around quicker than a bad rash. I missed out on Squamish scenes last summer, so I was psyched to be back.

The idea was to do a lot of climbing in preparation for the valley, but that didn’t go quite as planned. The weather was absolutely perfect the entire time, cool temperatures and sun everyday, so that’s not my excuse, my excuse is that I got sucked in to a project.

British Tom offwidthing at the Longhouse A week after arriving my friend Paul introduced me to a new crag called Long House. A few of the local Squamish climbers had been going up there recently cleaning lines and putting up new routes. The cool thing about Long House is that it’s in a really nice part of forest in between The Squaw and the Chief. Lovely green moss, old growth and beautiful trees, it seems very Tolkienesque and you half expect mythical beings to pop out from behind the trees. The other cool thing about the Long House is that the cracks aren’t like other cracks in Squamish; they are really steep and often wide, climbing more like the cracks of Yosemite than the Chief. On the first day I had a go at some of these routes, but my eye was drawn to a thin seam amongst all the wider stuff.

Joshua Lavigne cleaned this line, thinking that at a glance it was a ‘5.12 finger splitter’, after trying it and realising that fingers don’t fit in the crack and the crag is actually overhanging, he pulled his rope. I have to thank him for cleaning the line and allowing me to try it, because it turned out to be really cool.

The Adder Crack between the trees The start is super thin, not even locks for girl fingers, so I worked out this weird sequence using laybacking and imaginary finger locks. It took me the best part of a day to link that crux sequence. Then there is a higher crux, maybe 5.12b ish on it’s own, into a really cool 5.11 finish. The main difficulty for me was to find a way of protecting the crux, which goes from the ground to five or so metres up. The gear is quite bad and fiddly to place in the thin seam at the start, but the main problem is that the moves are too hard for me to place gear. Luckily I have a cunning friend Neil who suggested that I place some wires in the thin groove to the right, climb down and then if I fell off I would take a nasty swing, but hopefully not hit the ground. It did take some of the cool factor away from the route, to not protect the moves in the same crack. But the fact that this method required the use of two ropes, small wires, and cutting the first rope loose when I reached better gear, seemed aptly British. It took me three days to work out all the moves and the gear and then on the fourth day I did it.



Whilst working out the low crux I thought it was the hardest thing I’d ever tried, but once I’d figured it out and also waited for the sun to go away, it felt much more doable. I had a few set backs when a foothold snapped off and I needed a new sequence, but apart from that I had great weather and some friends psyched to come up and try the other stuff Long House had to offer. I didn’t mean to get sucked into a project, but I couldn’t say no.

And what should I grade it? I’m really bad at grading, I think maybe because I’m a different shape to a lot of climbers who climb 5.13 trad I find some things more difficult and other things easier, so grades always seem off to me. So I just compared it to the other hard trad routes I’ve done in North America and I thought it was harder than 69, which is 5.13b also in Squamish, Air Sweden 13b in Indian Creek and Magical Dog 13.b. So I thought I would give it 5.13 R, probably more 13c than b.

And the name… I started calling it Seam of Death at first, because it was really thin and pretty grim for the fingers. But that would mean that I have two routes in Squamish: Hazel’s Horror Show and Seam of Death. I really want people to get on this route, because it’s a good one. And not wanting people to be put off by the name I thought the Adder Crack was good, because it’s like a less cool, less bad-ass, thinner, slightly venomous, more British version of the Cobra Crack. But comparable to the Cobra in the sense that even if it isn’t as cool, it could definitely be a classic if people can be bothered to walk up the hill to try it.

Lake District’s finest about to get stuck I also did the line to the left, which shares the same finish as the Adder Crack and starts up a wide right leaning squeeze slot. This route is also not one to be missed. Drawn to moss and suffer-fests Pete eyed the line and cleaned it. But unfortunately he found that he was too big to fit in the crack and begrudgingly passed it over to me. This route I’ve graded 11a for the top section, but a lot of climbers will probably find the offwidth the hard part, at least I did, in fact I probably tried harder on that than the Adder Crack! I think I will call this one PG Tips because you’ll need a lot of builders tea to get psyched for it.

4 is not a crowd, Peter, Neil, Jen and I on the awesome 12a crack of Warriors of the Wasteland We did some other cool routes in Squamish and generally had a nice time wizzing around in the Ford Taurus. Thanks to Chris Trull for the hang out, a place to shower and generally being a good egg, it made our stay a lot nicer. All in all, a fun trip to Squamish and a 5.13 new route… can’t complain. Now I’m off to Yosemite, not in the best shape, but psyched for El Cap!



Source: hazelfindlay

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Free adventures on El Cap: The PreMuir, second ascent, 5.13c/d, 33 ish pitches
23 October 2012, 7:45 pm

Last year I freed Golden Gate with my friend Hansjorg Auer. This was the perfect big wall and the perfect difficulty. I found The ‘Move’ pitch especially hard with my short limbs, and although frustrating at the time, provided the perfect challenge. Yosemite, and more specifically El Cap holds a special place in my mind when I think of what inspires me and what I want to do in climbing, so although I’d freed El Cap – something I’d always wanted to do since seeing Masters of Stone 5, and hearing about Lynn Hill on the nose – of course I’d be back for more.

Me on the Move Pitch Last year my friend James Mchaffie was also in the valley, but suffered from an improbable bout of bad luck. In 8 days something unlucky happened on every one, included falling cams which impaired his partner Adam Hocking, falling rocks nearly killing him, falling friends at the crag breaking their legs and much lost gear including Leo Holding’s portaledge. At the time Caff was cursing the valley until the cows come home, swearing on his mother’s life that he would never come back. But British winters are long and childhood dreams of freeing El Cap hold fast. I think I was sport climbing in Spain when I got a little facebook message from Caff hinting at the idea of us climbing something together in the fall, in no other place but the unlucky Yosemite!

To Quote: ‘I felt like a donkey with three legs last year in the valley, but I’m getting an itch looking at the headwall pitch’

It seemed like we were both psyched for the Salathe. I’m not sure when it changed to the Muir; progression of ideas are usually hard to track. Looking back it’s easy to see why I suggested we do the Muir instead of Salathe. Yes Salathe is cool, the headwall pitch looks like a must-do if you can climb the grade… but… the Salathe is one of the busiest areas of the wall. I just wasn’t that excited about dealing with aid parties, other free parties. But most of all, in my mind it didn’t seem like much of adventure. I know a lot of people who don’t come to Yosemite for adventure, they come to stash gear, climb hard and fast and throw masses of fixed lines up and down various projects. I think this style of climbing has it’s benefits and is cool in it’s own way, but when I’m sat at home in the fog, or sport climbing in Spain, it’s not what gets me excited to book my flights and come to the Valley. I already know what and where the pitches are on Salathe, I’ve spoken to numerous people who’ve been up there, and I’ve already done the first half of the route. I was psyched for something a bit more obscure… and I had also heard that the crux was a beautiful, flawless stem-corner, and I love stem corners.

The Beautiful Muir Wall corners. Photo: Tom Evans Many months later, a few weeks before heading out to Yosemite, I found myself in Squamish. The day before I’d just done my 4-day project; a new route I called the Adder Crack, at a crag called the Long House. I gave the route 5.13c R (8a+ or E8) but wasn’t entirely sure it was that hard, even though I myself had found the moves really difficult. I was at a friend’s house, Chris Trull, who was kind enough to let us shower and use the internet. The night before we were celebrating Peter’s birthday and I had drunk a few more beers than usual since I had done my project. In a slightly hung over state I skyped Justen Sjong to collect beta about our up-and-coming adventure. Even though I don’t know Justen, I got his contact from a mutual friend Tim Kemple and was pleasantly surprised when he was keen to devote an hour of his time to chat beta.

Justen and his friend Rob Miller put the route up in 2007. They wanted to free Muir Wall but discovering that there was chossy ground, right above the busiest part of the wall (The Nose), they had a look around for other options. They discovered a perfect open book corner in the corner system just to the left of Tommy Calwell’s route ‘The Shaft’. They called the route the PreMuir because they thought that the corner systems above were the most appealing line, but would go by later parties at a harder grader of 5.14. They also thought the line was one of the best on El Cap (I agree).

Enticing photos of enticing corners Talking to Justen made me psyched, but to be honest, the over-riding feeling was one of doubt in my abilities to climb something this hard. In Squamish, it had taken me 4 days to climb 13c, on the wall I would have to climb a 13d and I’d have to do that after many hard pitches and hauling. The second to last pitch was 13c, which I’d have to climb, most probably after 5 days on. The other pitches are no joke either with only a handful of 5.10-5.11, 12 5.12s and 4 other 5.13s. Justen patiently went through each pitch; sentences like ‘you need pegs to protect here’, this is a really slippy pitch you can fall off at any point’, ‘the crux stem corner is much harder than Book of Hate’ etc were particularly fear-inducing.

I was also worried that I would be the weakest link in the team, possibly a dead weight. This past summer Caff climbed 9a slab and the previous summer he’d climbed 9a on limestone. I was proud of my 8b at Ceuse, but this is far from the  level Caff climbs. A late addition to the team was Neil ‘Mythical Being’ Dyer, who is the definitive dark horse of British climbing, being known for climbing 8c with ease and drinking a whole can of King Cobra mid-problem on the famous valley V8 ‘King Cobra’. King Cobra is probably the height of my bouldering achievements and my ascent was definitely sans beer… Along with Justen’s exclamations at how hard the route was, my friend Alex Honnold was also shocked at our proposed attempt ‘why don’t you do Tommy’s variation, the corner is supposed to be heinous’. Filled with doubt I tried to remind my self that that last year I had had the same thoughts about Golden Gate.

The Team! The coolest of cats… I arrived a little later than expected in the valley. We pulled into the campsite at 3 in the morning and bumped into Caff and Neil who were leaving camp4 to climb the Muir Blast (the first 12 pitches of the route up to Heart Ledge). The plan was for them to do it, then haul, then do it again with me before setting off on the wall properly. Caff came down with a big grin on his face, he’d freed it all and Neil had come pretty close.

Before setting off on Muir Blast I did the Rostrum as a warm up, and the 11d off the ledge Blind Faith. I’d done both these routes before, but for some reason I felt terrible climbing them. I felt really shaky and not confident at all. In fact I had felt a bit weird about my climbing since doing the Adder Crack, and I wasn’t sure why. Either way, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to drag myself up Muir Blast, let alone the rest of the route.

The Frenchies on the crux 5.13b of Muir Blast. Photo:Tom Evans But Muir Blast went really well, some of the best climbing I’ve ever done and I flashed all 12 pitches. Perhaps it was because the climbing was so amazing, but I felt really relaxed and (something which the sceptical Cumbrian Caff hates me saying) full of ‘flow’. I managed to flash the 5.13b pitch, which had some of the best technical, bad-feet, smeary climbing I’ve done. Doing Muir blast filled me with confidence again. I still felt like I was more likely to fail than succeed in our free bid, but at least I felt like I would be able to try my best, and if that wasn’t good enough, then so be it. I know that Caff felt the same as me, and Neil, being one of the nicest, most chilled guys around was happy to come on the wall, do some good climbing, have an adventure, and not worry too much about getting the pure free ascent.

The Silver Fish Corner: the first of many hard corners on the Muir, but a really beautiful one, 5.13b After the flawless Muir Blast, we set off a few days later but had some difficulties with an Aid Party. Despite us doing the 12b and 12d in the dark we had to wait 3 hours for an aid team and found ourselves on a hard 13b corner in full sun. We tried our best, but completely baked we were far from our planned bivy and decided to come down. In hidsight this was a blessing in disguise, because a few days later it started to rain. After the bad weather passed, we jugged back up to our high point on Grey Ledges and went from there. In cooler temperatures we managed to do the corner straight off, both of us leading, but I got horribly flashed pumped which stayed with me for a few days.

Looking down Silver Fish corner

Such beautiful pitches on such a cool part of the wall, the Nose dropping away beneath Caff as he seconds me up a pumpy 12a layback. Worrying that this is one of the ‘easy’ pitches I won’t go into masses of detail of all 30+ pitches.. or I’ll try not to…basically what happened was that Caff and I freed all pitches, and some of them by the skin of our teeth (especially me). Looking back there didn’t seem to be a ‘hardest part’ or even really a hardest pitch, the whole thing was very hard. Not a single day or even really a single pitch, passed with ease. The 2 5.10s were the only pitches that I didn’t have to try on, even the 11ds, in my tired state were a complete battle.

The beautiful 13c/d crux corner: Here I’m lowering off to the portaledges after working the route, we spent the next 8 or so hours hiding from the sun before finishing the pitch that evening. Photo – thanks to Tom Evans! The crux pitch has to be one of the best pitches I’ve ever climbed. It starts up a perfect 90 degree corner, with no face holds and no foot holds. In the back there is a crack, but it only really takes small wires, mostly RPs. Luckily for us we knew the Frenchies Nico and Pollo were climbing before us, and we had asked them to leave in a few pins, which Justen had said to be essential. The pins were really useful, mainly for stopping the wires from lifting out. You’re bridging so far away from the crack that your own rope lifts them out, but putting the pegs on shorter slings can easily solve this problem. Caff aided the corner the evening before and tried some moves. The corner was climbed with pre placed gear on the first ascent and this is how we planned to climb it as well – to place the gear on lead would be near impossible. Clipping the gear is hard enough because you have to climb the corner as quickly as possible to prevent your calves and shoulders from getting hugely pumped. We all tried it in the morning, but soon enough sun stopped play. Thankfully we got to work out the upper section, the difficulty of which we weren’t prepared for. After the corner you get a thank-the-lord no hands rest, but then you have to finish with a 13a bouldery lay back, which I was so worried about dropping if I managed to get through the corner. We hung out for what seemed like an age, hanging in the portaledges, with sleeping bags hung up to shade ourselves from the sun. When evening came I was psyched to lead it and managed to get it first go. Caff wanted to chimney it at first but the angles don’t allow it, in the end we found that all you can do is bridge the whole thing! I was really psyched to climb that pitch because it is a full glory pitch, but I was also psyched to climb it so quickly – basically with one top rope burn. Neil also did amazing; getting through the corner, but not knowing the top, fell off the second crux. Psyched by our efforts, Caff also pulled it out of the bag.

Staying as still as possible… welcome rest from the not so welcome sun. There were celebrations on the ledge, but for me there was a bit more going on in my mind. Up until this point I hadn’t felt huge amounts of pressure because I hadn’t expected to do the crux so easily, if at all. But now that I had, the game was on, and I could feel the pressure of the pitches above weighing down on me.

The next day was one of the hardest, in full sun, climbing pitches that in my mind, just didn’t seem to let up. The 13a traverse above the corner started with a double handed dyno, ended with a super technical crimp traverse and required a bit of working out in the sun. The apparent 12b up next was impossible for me, with a huge move. Caff basically dynoed/campussed it and I was really worried that my free ascent would be hosed by one big move. Luckily for me, the El Cap gods, like they were on the move pitch, wanted to allow little people to go past free as well, and instead of going left I found some hidden crimps that led straight up to a ledge, which I then down-climbed to join the belay of the next pitch. After a cool 12d we reached a big ledge system, traversed around an arête left and found ourselves on an awesome bivy ledge (Chicken Head Ledge) on the west face of El Cap. Up until this point the west face with Salathe wasn’t in view, but now I could see the headwall and the A5 traverse. I could also Pete and Howard questing towards the headwall on their 3 day Salathe mission.

Neil stretching to reach the ’12b’ reach move. Photo: Tom Evans

Chicken Head Ledge, an amazing bivy for two nights. Here Caff and Neil jug up in the evening light to try the final crux 13c corner The last (5^th) day was quite stressful because we were really tired, knew there weren’t much supplies left and we still had the final, second 13c crux pitch to go. It turned out to be my style, thin locks, lay backing and stemming, but my arms kept giving up. Neil impressively flashed it on second, but Caff, also very tired was having problems as well. It’s the sort of pitch you just have to climb, you can’t really work out the perfect sequence, and I don’t think I ever did the crux section the same way. This made it quite difficult to deal with because I never started up the pitch knowing what I had to do. The heat was also a problem and we had to wait until it was dark before trying it again. That evening was a very strange evening, the three of us perched on this tiny ledge below the pitch, head torch beams lighting a small circle of rock on such a big wall, each of us dealing with our own mental demons and lactic acid filled arms. We kept checking the time to see if we had rested enough but Caff kept trying without much rest at all. He amazingly pulled it out of the bag on something like his 7^th attempt. I had given it 3 goes already and my arms were telling me to pack it in for the evening, but Caff’s send made me psyched to give it one last shot. I somehow managed to scrape my way up it and when I got to the top I had no idea how I’d done it, nor could I remember any of the moves. Not one to say words like ‘flow’ or ‘zone’ I was surprised to hear Caff mention that I looked ‘in the zone’. Back on the ledge we had a group hug (also a rarity for the Cumbrian and the Welsh man) knowing that with only a 5.10 to go the free ascent was in the bag.

On the crux corner Back on the ledge we realised that we only had 4 litres of water, and would need to top out the next day anyway, so it was a good job I had decided to have that last go!

I think that when I look back at our PreMuir mission, what I will remember most is being on that ledge at 9.30 at night almost too mentally and physically tired of trying hard to enjoy the moment. We could taste the relief that was to come, but still there was some small doubt that we wouldn’t be able to pull it out of the bag. But skill, or good luck, or effort or something else was on our side and the next day we found ourselves at the top, too tired to sing and dance, but happy nonetheless.

I can’t thank Caff and Neil enough for such an amazing adventure!

Three muppets

The Mythical Being on the summit – proud that his plums survived!



Source: hazelfindlay

[Tommy]

Absolutely cracking read.

[andy popp]

 

[comPiler]

The last 5 months: Choss paradise in Oman, rain in the UK and my first 8b+ in Spain
23 February 2013, 3:27 pm

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front; consequently the last 5 months are here condensed into a mega post.

After a week on the ground after El Cap I went on a North Face expedition to Oman for three weeks, climbing choss, deep water soloing and sailing around on a catamaran in one of the world’s most beautiful places. I’d like to write about it, but since there is article coming out in National Geographic, I’ll let everyone read that first.



Even though I was traveling from paradise, to England in late November I was so happy to be going home. I’d basically been traveling for all of the last year, and was happy to just chill out in the rain and see family and friends. It was also nice to have a mental and physical break from climbing. I’m not massively in to Christmas and New Year celebrations, but it seems like a good time to have a look back at what you’ve done in the last year, and plan the next one. But the novelty inevitably wore off and I was itching to see the sun and go climbing every day. So off we went to Spain!

Winter climbing with Peter in the Lake District

Days out in the Peak District My Dad has chosen to spend yet another winter in Thailand (many don’t blame him), and I managed to commandeer his car. This Audi estate is no high top VW but it’s definitely a step up from a Citroen Saxo Desire.  Bonuses are that we can sleep in it, the exhaust isn’t falling off, and I don’t have to hot wire it to start it.

Orange rock and light in Siurana The good thing about having some time off is that when you do go back to climbing you are really psyched. Or I was anyway – every crimp seems like a gift, getting pumped is awesome, and waking up with sore muscles is a novelty. The bad thing about having some time off is that you’re really shit at climbing. The first day we had on rock was horrible. I couldn’t do the moves on F7a, and I was cursing myself for having gone back to rainy England. Cursing myself for not having trained more down the wall. But the next day I climbed 7b+, pumped out my mind, hanging on for dear life. Two days later, 7c, then 7c+, then before I knew it I was onsighting 8a and climbing 8a+ second try. It was really nice to see this kind of progression, I think if you go sport climbing for a few months and you get some fitness, when you go back to it the gains are much easier to get back.

Peter racing through the grades on his first proper sport climbing trip. Jam Session at Bruix, Terredets We moved from Siurana to Terredets to Masriudoms and Chulilla and then back to Siurana. Masriudoms is an awesome crag, especially if you’re in Siurana and it gets chilly. The grade range isn’t massive though – it’s best to be climbing between 7b to 8a+.

STEEP and LONG pitches at Masriudoms

Another 8a succumbs to Howard’s impeccable technique at Masriudoms Chulilla is an amazing place. Such good routes, but hardly anyone goes there – maybe because there is no guidebook, or maybe because climbers are like sheep and all go to the same places. I hear there is a guidebook due to come soon, so I have no doubt that popularity will grow. There is a lot of rock left to develop there as well.

Chulilla – where climbing dreams are made Now, we are in Siurana. With big forearms but little biceps – I wanted a project. So I tried an 8b called Ramadan. I knew it was supposed to quite soft for 8b, but I also knew that it’s very bouldery, so I thought it would take me a couple of days at least. The first time I tried it, I thought that maybe I couldn’t do the move at all, but then after a bit of tinkering I found I could do it. Since the climbing after the crux is relatively easy, I started throwing myself at the route. On my third go, my fingers popped off and I knew that I could probably do it. It was so cold though, and I was taking up a lot of Peter’s belay time, so I barely had 10 minutes rest and went again. I got through the crux, but found I was really tired on the ‘easy’ 20 metres to finish. Luckily I managed to stay with it. I was quite proud to do my supposed project in a morning and decided I need to try something harder.

Me on Ramadan, 8b, Kate Keltie photo So next came Kale Borroka, 8b+. One I’ve wanted to do for a while, having seen pictures and video of Lucy (Creamer) on it. The line is amazing, a 40 metre crack line through a massively steep barrel shaped wall. The rock, however isn’t great. Before coming to Siurna, all I heard was that it’s the mecca of sport climbing, and in my mind it became a sort of fantasy land for bolt clipping. However, overall I would say that I am slightly underwhelmed. I’ve done some amazing routes here, but I’ve also come across a lot of choss, a lot of bad rock, and a similar theme of uber crimping (which is great, but not what you want all the time). It’s certainly a world class climbing destination, but no more so than most the other Spanish crags i’ve been to.

An OK line, Jack Geldard photo (chief editor of UKC) When you do something thats at your limit, its easy to get carried away with how good a route is, and I did find myself falling for Kalea Borokka somewhat. This being said, the numerous loose holds and the dirty/polished/slimey lower section of the route, were ample reminder that this isn’t the best pitch I’ve climbed. The crux headwall, however, has some amazing moves on it and it felt great to be up there. Despite the bad quality rock, it is a mega line, and a mega classic.

It was also a pleasure and a surprise when I finally did it. The weather has been pretty on/off here in Siurana, and with Kalea Borokka being a very conditions dependent route (the start gets very slimy in wet conditions) I was worried that I wouldn’t get a chance to do it. But after the rain, the sun came out and a light breeze dried it off, giving me a chance. I think it was my 5th day that I did it. So this is my first 8b+! After doing 6 or so 8bs I thought I was capable of climbing 8b+, but not many of them, not without the mega-siege anyway. Although Kalea isn’t massively my style (being so steep) it is an endurance climb, and that suits me much more than something bouldery.

I sit now, with water streaming from my eyes and nose with the worst cold I’ve (probably) ever had. This, along with the snow that has settled on the ground outside, makes me even more psyched to have done Kalea when I did. Now I hope to rid myself of this cold then return to dry rock in the UK so I can use my new found sport fitness on some home ground.

Filed under: Hard Routes, Sport Climbing Tagged: 8b+ Hazel Findlay, Chulilla, Kalea Barokka, Lucy Creamer, Masriudoms, Ramadan, Siurana, Terredets

Source: hazelfindlay

[comPiler]

Chicama, E9 6c, second ascent
23 March 2013, 2:11 pm

Dom Bush photo. Dom and Matt (Pycroft) kindly came down to film the ascent for reel rock 8. Cheers! * For non-uk readers this E9 is like a 5.13c R/X.. maybe… Returning back to the UK after two months in Spain I was greeted with beautiful sunshine. Getting a sun tan at Gogarth with Callum got my hopes up that March would be the UKs 2013 summer and I would get to try all the trad projects I was keen for. That isn’t exactly how things have turned out. And now, 3 weeks later, sat looking out at a blizzard, it certainly doesn’t feel like summer.

Main Cliff, Gogarth, early March – why couldn’t it have stayed like this! A fun day with Calum Muskett on Eraser Head, E5 Winter returned! (The slate quarries) But despite the bad weather I’ve managed to get one project done. Chicama is an unrepeated Tim Emmett route, 10 years old, at Treaddur Bay, Holyhead. The route is ridiculously steep – 45 degrees overhanging. Therefore working the moves proved to be very difficult. Since there are quite big spaces between the geer, lowering in from the top means that a toprope fall sends you a good couple of metres out from the rock, with no means of getting back in. It’s also really difficult to reach the base of the route at anything but low tide since the route comes straight out of the sea. You might think that it would make a great DWS, but there is an unfortunately positioned boulder right in the landing zone. All these things make this route an absolute mission to check out, belay and lead. The other thing about the route, is that there isn’t really a wealth of natural gear. There are a few cams and wires, but apart from that the route is largely peg protected. Whilst working the route, 3 pegs fell out spontaneously, without much force, and two of them snapped. This meant that I didn’t really trust any of the 10-year old pegs and was therefore inclined to bash some more in. Being in-experienced in the art of pegging I asked my boyfriend Peter to take a look. Mr patience spent a good few hours teasing some pegs out and putting new ones in, which gave me much more confidence when going for the lead.

Thanks Peter! So why get so psyched for a route that is such a mission to try, and is very peg-reliant? Because it’s a really cool route. The climbing is amazing. It starts off with small crimps, luckily there are enough of them in such steep ground, for it to be possible. Then the holds get bigger and the angle even steeper, before it eases off at the top. There are wild heel hooks, egyptians and knee bars – not your standard trad affair. It probably gets about F8a+, but its hardly one you want to lob off, with long run outs and reasonably sketch gear.

What happens at low tide… no more water and a nice belay spot! Neil Dyer I worked the route for 3 days. Which sounds like a lot, but most of that time was spent faffing with ropes and gear in attempt to touch the rock. The second day down there Neil Dyer and myself successfully managed to set up a tensioned rope between the pieces of gear, which we could then clip in to and work the moves. But this took us the majority of the day – I don’t think Neil even put his rock shoes on! The third day was more productive and I finally worked out all the sequences. None of the moves are that hard, but all together – they surely induce a healthy dose of lactic acid.

Day 1 – can we touch some rock? Caff trying When it finally came to tying on the sharp end, the faff continued. Whilst warming up another peg fell out when I weighted it, and I had to get the hammer from the car and bang it back it. Not a good start. With bad weather coming in, I was eager to get it done, but unfortunately the tides were bad – with high tide at 2.30pm. Not to worry – we can make a belay for Peter above the sea! I had the idea that Peter could ab down, clipping into the old pegs of ‘Treacherous Under Foot’ an old E6, make a belay, then I could join him down there and start rock climbing. 2 hours later, Peter was in a precarious positions, only a foot above the sea, and one wire-popping incident away from being totally submerged. Luckily Peter managed to make it down without getting too wet, and I joined him.

The morning was a bit of a stress, with pegs falling out, high tides and even a bit of rain added to the mix, so when I actually set off from the belay I was feeling tired, cold and anything from composed. Images of decking off Impact Day a year previous came flooding back… but at the same time, I was keen to go climbing, get my weight off the rope and do the route unhindered by fixed lines and top ropes. It went without a hitch. I was quite pumped at the top, but two months in Spain helped massively and the lactic-acid levels didn’t feel too disastrous.  There are a few places on the route, where it would be ill-advised to fall off, and whilst climbing, although I was aware of those spots, I’d rehearsed the route enough, and was fit enough for it to go smoothly. I learnt from Impact Day, that I shouldn’t expect the climbing to feel easy on the lead, and as a result – I didn’t make the same mistake again! (of falling off where I shouldn’t.. and hitting things I shouldn’t)

Dom Bush photo. Dom and Matt (Pycroft) kindly came down to film the ascent for reel rock 8. Cheers guys I love little missions like this – that require a bit more from you than sport climbing arms, with swinging around on ropes trying not to get wet. It would be a lot easier to go to Spain and climb some 8a+ there, but I’ll certainly remember this 8a+ more than those. One problem with missions like this though, is that often they rely on the good-will of others. I couldn’t have done this route without help from my friends. Caff, Neil and Emma (Twyford) all kindly came down with me, to hold my string, faff with ropes and have a play themselves. Levels of faff-psyche permitting I’m sure we could see some more ascents of Chicama, especially since all of them are complete wads. But an extra special thanks goes to Peter, because without him and his Cumbrian pegging skills, the route would be a lot less safe. And not many people would have had his patience to down-aid the steepest cliff in Wales, belay me and then jug back out. So thanks!

Dave Birkett’s Once Upon a Time in the South West, my first E9 (Dave Pickford) This is my second E9, the other being Once Upon a Time in the Southwest, in Devon. They are both sea cliffs, but that’s about where there similarities end. Once, is a technically difficult slab on a monster of a wall with 30 odd pieces of gear. Where Chicama is a full endurance battle with a few cams! Are they E9? Which one is harder? I have no idea, and I don’t really care much about answering these questions. They are both great routes, and I won’t forget them.

Filed under: Hard Routes, Trad Routes, UK Climbing, Uncategorized Tagged: Chicama E9, Emma Twyford, Hazel Findlay Chicama, Hazel Findlay E9, James Mchafie, Neil Dyer, Peter Graham, Tim Emmett, Treaddur Bay

Source: hazelfindlay

[Fiend]

That's the beauty of the English grading system, that with a look at the style of the route and the sort of protection it entails, E9 covers such disparate routes so well

[comPiler]

Filming and Training
11 June 2013, 10:37 am

This winter/spring is be a big time for me in terms of my climbing career! The holly grail for professional climbing is being in the Reel Rock tour in terms of media exposure. Its a collaboration between Sender films and Big Up productions and it’s the most successful climbing film tour/dvd going, especially in the States. When those guys asked if I wanted to be in the film, I felt flattered. The plan is for me to be in a 20/30 minute segment, some of which will be me climbing in the UK, with most of it being about Emily Harrington and myself in Morocco. With this being such a successful film and it being very good for my career as a professional climber I wanted to make sure I did my best.



Fist things first – I needed to get fit and that’s what I did in January and February, culminating in my first 8b+ in Catalunya. Next up, I needed to get filmed. I had planned to set aside March and most of April to concentrate on climbing and filming in the UK. That resulted in climbing and filming the E9 ‘Chicama’ in North Wales. This March displayed some of the most awful weather on record and given that most animals weren’t able to survive a night in the fields I was psyched to do even one route. Dom Bush and Matt Pycroft filmed this and I was happy to get started on compiling footage for the Reel Rock guys.

Chicama, E9 (Matt Pycroft) It’s amazing how much work goes in to 10 minutes of footage. The audience will never know how many hours goes in to one minute, well its hundreds. Chicama was only one day of footage, but to make a good film you need more and I guess it is also important for the film guys to get to know me, so Bret and Josh Lowell from Big Bup came over from America for a visit. They wanted to do interviews and also film me on another bold trad route in the UK. Having just hurt my knee in the climbing wall I wasn’t sure I would be able to jump on another project and get it done in the seven days that they had over here, so I suggested that they film me on something I’d already done, and the obvious choice was the other E9 I’ve done ‘Once Upon a Time in the SouthWest’ on Dyers Lookout.

Dave Birkett’s Once Upon a Time in the South West, my first E9 (Dave Pickford) It was really strange filming that route. Usually when you climb something bold the desire of doing the route to overcomes any sense of fear you have. However, having already done the route so there was no desire at all, (other than to make the film) so I found myself feeling quite terrified to be back up on that slab, trying to remember the moves. That wall is really impressive so I look forward to seeing what it looks like on the screen.

The main part of the film will be about Emily and myself trying a big wall in Taghia, Morocco in May. Since Emily and I haven’t climbed much together and we have been mostly doing single pitch stuff – a good idea would be to go training together! My idea of training is a trip to Spain, so that’s what we did.

This was our biggest training day, where we tried to climb the length of Babel (800m) – we didn’t come close and it was still a lot of climbing! Unfortunately it rained almost solidly for a week, so instead of climbing the vertical stuff similar in style to Taghia, we ended up climbing steep stuff. Not to worry, it’s good to have your arms in shape no matter what and we got a lot of climbing done, not to mention the crucial bonding time we spent together.

After Spain I spent a week at home, climbing, seeing my boyfriend and friends before the month away. A lot of professional athletes don’t get to do their sport much just for themselves. For example big mountain skiers and will only ski big mountains if they have a heli in tow shooting everything they do. I think this is a shame and I love the fact that this isn’t the case with climbing. During my week at home, I went to Pembroke and saw so many friendly faces. Things were pretty chilled out on the climbing side, since I wanted to be rested up before Morocco, but I got a few classics done, like Ghost Train, which is a route I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and it didn’t disappoint!

Off to Morocco! Tagine for a whole month!

 

Filed under: Uncategorized  

Source: hazelfindlay

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Run Out in Morocco: Two Girls One Big Wall!
12 June 2013, 12:15 pm

Emily Harrington photo Here it is – the mega blog about a mega route. Beware – it’s long! I put important parts in bold, to be cheesy and assist the skim-reader.

Taghia is one of the most beautiful places in the world and it just so happens to have world class climbing as well. I went there for the first time last year with Alex Honnold. It was a very different scene from this trip; it was just us, a rope, some gear, no film crew, no photography bar our iphones and a lot of climbing got done.

Paradise! That’s Oujdad in the back ground This trip has been organised by Emily Harrington, a fellow North Face athlete and funded by The North Face, under the premise that it will be documented by the Reel Rock film tour guys, for the up and coming Reel Rock 8. Reel Rock is a very successful enterprise and we were psyched that they wanted to film our trip, and of course The North Face is psyched that they get the exposure when the film comes out with us in it wearing nice North Face jackets. So what does that mean for us?

Emily enjoying the bumpy ride to Taghia It means we get a free trip to one of the most magical climbing destinations. But it also means that we have 2 or 3 film guys with us most of the time documenting what we do.  A free trip, free jackets and all you have to do is get a camera wagged in your face every now and then? Of course things aren’t always as simple as they seem and having done a bit of this now, I knew this trip was going to be a lot different from mine and Alex’s almost exactly a year a go.

The idea of the trip was for Emily and myself to climb (and for those guys to film) one of Taghia’s hardest routes. ‘Babel’ put up by Titi Gentet, Nicolas Kalisz, Stephanie Bodet and Arnaud Petit. I really have to hand it to those guys; they spent 15 days putting up a magnificent route, in a very admirable style.

Arnaud on the 7c+ crux. Arnaud Petit photo from Alpinist website. Quoting Arnaud Petit from this Alpinist news article (http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web07f/newswire-morocco-taghia-babel) because he puts it better than I could:

The route is consistent at variations of grade 7, and the climbing is always runout, sometimes dangerously. We opened the line with minimal bolting, free climbing between the protection points and hanging on hooks, nuts, or pitons to haul the drill and place the bolts. This approach is referenced by some as “Larcher style”: sparse bolting and mandatory, engaging free climbing between bolts. On our route, the obligatory free climbing between bolts registered as difficult as 7a+ (5.12a). On the hardest pitches, bolts were spaced 4 meters apart. On easier sections, around 6c (5.11b), we placed bolts every 7 to 8 meters

The psychological aspect of the climb is just as (if not more) important as the physical and the technical

The overall difficulties, the beauty of certain pitches, and the environment and breadth of the wall combine to make Babel an exceptional big-wall free climbing experience

The line marks 700 of the 800m of Babel. Photo: Arnaud Petit from Alpinist Magazine website With big wall free climbing being the thing that most excites me in climbing, looking at this picture and hearing Arnaud’s words, I couldn’t not try Babel. Although not as high as El Cap, the style of climbing and run out nature of the pitches put Babel up there with routes such as Free Rider and Golden Gate. Having now done both Babel and Golden Gate, I must say that this is true. The crux pitch is 7c+/5.13, which is the same as Golden Gate and Free Rider, but nonetheless it’s hardly cutting edge standards of rock climbing. Despite having such low graded pitches Golden Gate and Free Rider are sought out prizes in climbing, with a free ascent of El Cap being a life time goal for many climbers. I think you could happily put Babel into this category; where it  is less of a route in terms of height, it’s certainly more of a route in terms of (in the words of Tim Emmett) SPICE, with some pitches having 4 bolts in 60m and sustained climbing, with only 3 pitches of grade 6 in 20.  For the brits out there – it’s a 800m E7.

So how did it go?

We arrived in Taghia on the wrong foot harbouring some Moroccan fauna of the diarrhea and vomit inducing variety. We climbed the first day (which resulted in a little accident) but found ourselves too sick to climb for a few days after that. Eventually our stomachs grew accustomed to their new inhabitants and we managed to drag ourselves up Fantasia. Fantasia (read about it here http://www.alpinist.com/doc/ALP14/climbing-notes-kaszlikowski) is 700m, 7c and a great route.. an amazing route! I tried it up to pitch 6 last year with Alex, but we got too cold and tired and came down. This year me and Emily did it, I did it free and onsight (apart from vague memories of last years efforts), which I was proud of, and Emily came close, falling only whilst onsighting this really tricky 7b+ pitch. It’s a must do for those climbing the grade.

Eliza Kubarska on Fantasia Photo: Kaszlikowski from Alpinist Although Babel is ‘only’ 100m bigger and one + grade harder, having done them both – they are not in the same league. We hoped, having done Fantasia that we would be in good stead for Babel, but we were soon to find out that the brutalities of Babel were far and above anything we saw on Fantasia.

Although many people approach routes like this by coming in from the top and working things out, potentially stashing gear, or even going slow and taking portaledges, we thought that the route was within our means to go for the ground-up, in-a-day approach. We also thought it would be a lot more fun to try it in this style. Unless a route is dangerous (like many UK single pitches) I always aim to try routes ground up. It’s not about ethics, it’s about whats fun, and getting the most out of a route. If you come in from the top, you loose that element of the unknown, you loose that amazing feeling you get when you’re slapping around on a route trying to find the best holds, thinking as hard as you can to unlock a sequence before your timer runs out. They are the most fun and most engaging moments in climbing – and we were bound to have lots of them on a ground up attempt of Babel!

The wall is separated at it’s base by a big ledge and although there are three pitches in the canyon below the ledge, the meat of the climbing is above. We chose to take the advice of the previous ascentionists and try the first pitches before the rest of the route… and we were glad we did! The first pitch is a run out adventurous 7a+, probably about E6, and the second pitch is a run out 7b+, about E6 or 7. I got the second pitch, and I was proud to onsight the weird moves and keep my cool. It’s almost like these first pitches are the gateway to the route; if you get through unscathed, then you can attempt to fight the dragon!

Emily got shat on by a bird seconding one of the more run out pitches – we were glad she wasn’t leading! We set our alarms for 3.30am, but in hindsight maybe we should have set them later, not because we were fast, but because I probably lost us more time trying to onsight the first 7b+ pitch off the ledge as a warm up in the dark than if I had tried it a bit later in the light. This type of limestone slab climbing, with no chalk and smeary feet is difficult to read at the best of times, but with my head torch casting weird shadows, I fell off not knowing where any of the good feet were. I think at this point – even though I wouldn’t have verbally admitted it – I knew we were in for a bit more than we bargained for. Not wanting to start the route in a bad style, I looked for the good feet, lowered back down to a big ledge (where the real climbing starts) and re-climbed the hard climbing I’d just done, this time I got past it, only to pull off a hold I couldn’t see was loose right near the anchor. What bad luck! Or bad climbing… Yet again I lowered back down to the ledge and re-climbed the pitch. It was an hour in to our ascent and already I’d climbed the same pitch 3 times!

Me gurning (Kris Erickson) The next few pitches went a lot smoother and we found ourselves on the 7c pitch, which although not the crux on paper, was deemed to be since it’s a technical slab. Emily gave it an awesome onsight attempt, but fell near the top. Seconding, I got a little higher but committed to a wrong slab move I couldn’t reverse and fell. Neither of us wanted to descend into all-out french freeing, so yet again we lowered to a mid height break/no-hands and re-climbed the crux sequence from there. We weren’t sending, but we were yosemite-freeing and that is better than nothing. 

Emily about to enter the crux sequence of the 7c – technical crux of the route? Kris Erickson Babel is like many big walls in that the ‘easy’ pitches just aren’t easy. It’s almost like you may as well look at the topo and it read 7c,7c,7c, 7c, 7c…. for 20 pitches, because bar a few, it felt like I was trying 7c hard on all of them. If they aren’t weird and hard to read, then they’re loose, if you don’t get lost then you’re trying to go fast and you’re getting tired in different ways, if you’re feet aren’t screaming then your hands will be, if some of your arms muscles aren’t tired climbing then they will be when you haul the bag, and it goes on and on until you get to the top. If I didn’t love it, I’d hate it.

The biggest heart-breaker, was watching Emily battle to onsight the crux pitch, only to read the last few moves wrong and fall, literally a few feet from the belay. Although I seconded it clean, I knew that at this point the team was loosing its mojo; we were looking above our heads at 10 pitches left to do with little light and arm power left in the day. 

The next pitches for me – although easing off a bit – were a big test. We were leading in blocks, so  you get a rest in between pitches and I had just started my block after the crux – 7b and 7a+ has never felt so hard! Although I had taken a few falls, I had always lowered to ledges, and although not sending I felt like I was happy with my ascent so far and I wanted to keep it up. But then I had a nightmare 7b+ pitch. It was starting to get dark and I was trying to move quickly, I pulled over a roof into a big undercut flake, only to have it explode in my face. Hmmm, that’s annoying! I inspected the flake, lowered back down and re-climbed the traverse into the roof, only for it to happen again! There just seemed to be no part of that flake that wasn’t rotten! This time I didn’t lower back down (because it was getting silly) and found a no-hands under the roof, but it happened again! I really didn’t want to resort to pulling on the bolt, so I tried again, this time thinking light thoughts ‘don’t break, don’t break, I’m as light as a feather’, and it let me through. It felt like now we were in full desperation mode.

Although Emily had done some cheeky french freeing on the 7c+ pitch (she stood on a bolt to get to the anchor) I was impressed to see her try her up most hardest not to resort to out-right french freeing. At the start of the route, having both fallen, we could have got to the top in no time at all, if we’d moved quickly, pulled and rested on bolts, etc, but either because we’re stupid, or because we’re determined we free climbed the most we could, and in the end we were only a few meters short of an all-free ascent.

Me on one of the wildest pitches. 7a+ ‘swiss cheese’ climbing up big orange holes. Kris Erickson But then, perhaps I let us down! We got to a big ledge and above us there were only 2 more pitches – a 7a and a 6a. By this point, about 9pm, I have to say, we were very tired. I was still having fun… just about, but looking at Emily I could see that for her it was questionable. I was a little bit concerned for our safety. The pitches were getting more and more run out, some of them with only 4 bolts in 60m. I had just lead a really nice 6b+ pitch, and although I did it quickly and found the climbing not too bad, I was becoming aware that bad things could start to happen. It was dark, we were FREEZING cold, dehydrated and I was suffering from bad cramping. I would take my fingers off a crimp and my fingers would be locked in that position and I would have to bend them back against my leg. At this point, I was also too in-the-zone and too tired to be afraid. I found myself climbing, with no thought to the consequences of a fall, essentially I was getting complacent, and this is dangerous. I felt like, in our state it would be very easy for one of us to make a mistake and with 20 meter run outs above slabby and ledgy rock, that mistake could be disastrous if not fatal. Knowing that there was a gully system to the right of the last two pitches, I suggested we climb up that instead. In hindsight I feel a bit bad for this, perhaps I should have sacked it up and lead the last two pitches, they probably weren’t that bad. But like many of my potential critics I say that sat in the comfort of a nice warm house, not 700m off the ground, in a bitingly cold wind, feeling my muscles cramp uncontrollably, worried about our safety.  In our position, the choice of climbing an easy gully, was like having a chocolate cake sat next to a bowl of rotten sprouts – you’d be an idiot not to take it.

Finishing a run out 6b+ – 3 bolts on the pitch? Kris Erickson So that’s what we did, I soloed up 4th class terrain to the summit and there we were – on the top! What a massive day! We were in really good spirits, mostly to be alive and well and not strapped to the side of a mountain any more. The film crew had reached the top before us and we gathered around their fire. Having Kris and Frosty film  on the route, surprisingly didn’t make a huge difference to the way the route felt. They always seemed to be way off to the side or above, and for the most part we felt alone, especially on the first 5 and last 5 pitches – where we were actually alone. I’m not massively in to climbing ethics, but one thing I was strict about, was making sure the films guys didn’t support us. Even once we’d got to the top, they offered us food and water, but we declined. I was very defensive about the fact that this was a sponsored trip and it was paid for and all the rest of it, and I didn’t want that support to affect our ascent in any way. It’s one thing getting the trip paid for, quite another to have a load of subbies carry up your food and water, bivy gear and trainers.

5 hours later… I think we were both thinking the same thing – I bloody wish we’d  taken them up on the offer of food and water! We had exercised for 23 hours straight and eaten maybe a 1000 calories, and drank a few liters of water. The walk down, in some ways, was the mental crux of the day. Usually I bounce down paths and love hiking around over rough terrain. On that night, my legs felt like jelly, like they could just give way at any second. We’d done the descent before (off Fantasia), but not in the dark and our head torches were failing. We spent about three hours trying to find the cairns leading the way down. Going down a gully, looking, not seeing anything, then having to hike back up, getting more tired and irritated by the second. I remember being stood on the edge of a cliff, looking to see if I could see the descent, a hundred meter drop below, thinking that I could easily just sway off it. At one point I think we were both close to all-out hallucinations, with cairns revealing themselves from all directions, taunting us, only to be a weird shaped rock, or a bush.



There are things about that day that I am not so proud of (taking the cake gully) but one thing I am really proud of is that we kept our cool 4 hours in to the descent after a ridiculously long day. We were so close to just curling up in a ball and waiting for the sun to rise, or close to loosing our cool and shouting at each other. But we didn’t and I think that is a testament to our partnership. Eventually we found the cairns and we staggered back to Said’s gite at 3.30am – 24 hours after we’d woken up! 

The next day we felt like we’d been run over by a truck.  I tried to have a shower but my fingers hurt to much to light a lighter and my feet said no to going in anything but flip flops. Alex Lowther (film producer) popped his head through the door and said ‘don’t worry it’s amazing what two rest days will do’. I look at Emily and we each with the silent thought ‘he has no idea’.

To go back on Babel? Maybe in a year or 2 or 3, when I’ve forgotten enough for it to be fun again, but for now, our ascent feels like something to be proud of and I don’t have the motivation to go back for the sake of a few meters of free climbing. There have been times where I’ve been super lucky to do a route and I feel like I’ve just scraped an ascent through the skin of my teeth (The PreMuir for example) so I’m happy to say this is one that  slipped away.

Em finishing a short 7b pitch – tired arms! Kris Erickson Sometimes I think our ascent was a bit lame, that we should have sent. Maybe we should have come down after the 7c, rehearsed those pitches and then been in good stead to do the rest another day.  But I like the way we tried it – putting all our eggs and beans and energy into one all-out attempt. It felt fun and natural and it was an amazing adventure I think we’ll both take to the old peoples home. You don’t remember the easy sends, the quick ticks, you remember the all-out battles, that take everything out of you, right until the sun starts to rise again. Since getting home I’ve chatted a little to Arnaud Petit over email and it was nice to hear his words of encouragement…. sometimes you need someone else to put things in to perspective… it’s easy to berate yourself and say ‘it’s only 7c+’, it’s not even that many pitches, but I know in my heart that it’s never about that, and it never should be. We can ask ourselves whether we failed or succeeded, whether Babel is cutting edge difficulty or not, whether we’re tough climbers or weak girls, we can ask these questions until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, it felt hard as nails and yet we gave it everything we could and well, I think that’s enough. 

So what of the rest of the trip? At first the film guys were a little annoyed when we said we weren’t going up there again, they had a story to tell! There is always a contention between climbing,  professional climbing and documenting climbing because it’s difficult to know where your motivations lie. Sometimes when I climb I feel like Billy Eliot in that film when he dances down the street, not because I think I’m as good at climbing as he is at dancing (he’s really good at dancing), but because you can see its pure joy, and that he’s totally lost in what he’s doing. My point is is that giving everything to climbing isn’t like giving everything to your tax return, it’s a deeply personal thing, and to be done well it has to be entirely self motivated. You can say down in the village ‘yeah I’ll go back up there’, but if it’s for a film, for some idea of a professional climbing ‘career’, then you won’t be holding on to those crimps at 10.30 at night, above a 10 meter run out in the dark when your whole body says no. That’s just how it is. So we didn’t go back up, instead we got to work!

Going back to the top of Babel to get more ‘climbing in the dark’ footage – fun! Emily Harrington Photo Making a climbing film doesn’t just involve pointing the camera at the action, it involves a lot of re-climbing for more footage. They need close-ups of hands and feet, they need different angles, they need the stuff that they missed, they need interviews. So we spent the last week, going back on pitches and doing all that stuff. I know by the end, myself and Emily were very mentally tired from the trip. Even though you try to keep the climbing separate and personal we both felt like there were a lot of other people’s energy, time and money resting on our climbing and the film, and this is quite a lot of pressure. 

Now I’m home, and it’s all done and dusted and I can say I had a big adventure with a great partner, and hopefully there will be a brilliant film about that adventure. I know as climbers, we all have adventures, some of them push us right to the limit and others not. I feel like this will be a great film because the viewer will have either been in our shoes – and can relate to that feeling of having the perfect challenge, or they will be inspired to get out there and find there own adventure, that pushes them to fatigue induced hallucinations! Because really, these are the moments that we relish most.

Camera-hero Robert Frost making sure he misses none of the action A special thanks to the film guys Alex Lowther and Rob Frost who were by no means too annoying and worked bloody hard! To Kris Erickson, for being a true Montana hard man, taking beautiful photos and teaching us the local ways. To Emily for being an awesome partner and friend, and for essentially being the one to make the trip happen. And finally to Titi Gentet, Nicolas Kalisz, Stephanie Bodet and Arnaud Petit for creating a perfect challenge. I must admit guys, it’s a little bit designer danger, but I wasn’t complaining!

VENGA LAS CHICAS!



Filed under: Hard Routes, Sport Climbing, Trad Routes, Trips, Uncategorized Tagged: Alex Lowther, Babel, Big Wall, Emily Harrington, Fantasia, Kris Erickson, Rob Frost, Run out in Morocco, Taghia

Source: hazelfindlay

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A summer of rock and snow in the Alps.
2 September 2013, 12:36 pm

Cloud inversion over the Italian Val Ferret, no lifts. Lifts! I haven’t written for a while. I think I used up a lot of writing juices with my last blog about our trip to Morocco. I may have used up some of my climbing juices as well; even though I’ve done a lot of climbing this summer, none of it has been particularly hard.

Over the last few years I’ve climbed quite a lot of things that I thought were quite hard for me and achieved goals that I’d had in mind for a while, such as climbing hard single pitch trad routes in the UK, and freeing El Cap. But I haven’t really worked my weaknesses so much, and neither have I put in motion any long term projects. I have recently booked some flights to Patagonia for January 2014 and with this in mind I have been trying to improve my alpine skills. Using crampons and ice axes, climbing and walking long distances in my mountain boots and climbing with a rucksack – all things I sort of hate but all things I need to be better at if I want to climb the routes I want to in the mountains.

Enticing description Perhaps my biggest alpine adventure this summer was climbing the Gervasuti route on the East face of the Grandes Jorasses with my boyfriend Peter. Peter isn’t the best rock climber to come out of Cumbria, but he’s very experienced in the mountains and he’s like a mule (can carry heavy bags and keep going without complaint) so he was a very good partner to have. The Gervasuti route is a rock route but the approach and descent are long and complicated. It has also yet to see a free ascent even though the crux pitch is ‘only’ thought to go at 7c+. This drew me to the route but I also knew that with the amount of ground we’d have to cover we may not have the time, energy or inclination to work a pitch.

The Jacchia hut: 4 star accommodation with 5 star views Those things all turned out to be true, especially when the approach that we thought would be 3 hours was closer to 9 and we were racing to get to a bivy spot before it got too late. We were also denied the chance of even really trying to free the route because a lot of pitches including the crux pitch were soaking wet.

This route is such an undertaking because there are no lifts that can get you up to a higher altitude (unlike a lot of the routes off the Valley Blanche) so you have to gain a lot of ascent from the valley floor. To make matters more interesting, the access to base of the wall includes complicated and potentially dangerous glacier navigation via the Coll de Hirondelles. Not really liking the sound of this, we decided to go along the Tronchey ridge instead. On the map this looked like a good idea, but in reality it was a never ending choss-ridge of doom that took us 9 hours from the Jacchia hut to the base of the wall.  And this was after 6 hours of walking to the Jacchia hut the day before! Getting  to the base of the wall at 2.30pm was not the start we wanted and it was quite stressful committing to the route.

Peter picking his way up the endless Tronchey ridge We had a team talk before we started and discussed our options. Unlike most routes where if you get in to trouble you can just ab down and you’re back to safety, reversing the ridge and the abseils we’d done to get to the base would have been equally involved as climbing the 15 pitches to the top and descending the 2600m back down to the valley floor. So off we went. We got to a bivvy spot near the top close to midnight. I found the route to be quite a challenge even though most of the pitches were graded quite easy – some of them were wet and the pitches closer to the top had a lot of snow to navigate around. 6a slab feels pretty hard when smearing on snow and you have a rucksack on!



Since Peter is bigger and stronger he carried more of the bivvy gear than me (food, a jetboil and a bothy bag) and in return I lead more of the meltwater 6as – teamwork! We had a very short/fitfull shiver bivvy, but we were repaid with a beautiful sunrise. Although we didn’t have the convenience of a nice lift on this side of the range the lack of people, views and feeling of adventure certainly made up for it. We climbed the last few pitches along to the summit and were greeted with the most spectacular view of Mont Blanc and the French side of the range. We descended the normal route up the Grandes Jorrasses and got back in time to have a pizza in Courmayeur.

Peter on the summit (point walker) What else this summer… a short trip to the Ecrin range, which was fun. I finished off a route on the Petit Clocher called Ave Ceasar with Welsh star Calum Musket. An amazing route with RAD splitters all the way up it. I fell off it quite a lot 2 summers ago, so I was pleased to free it all with no falls this summer.

The petit clocher du portalet I also managed to try a route I’ve always wanted to do – The Voie Petit. I beautiful line with an absolute mega 8b corner/roof pitch on the Grand Capucin. I didn’t manage to send it, but I’ve got all my beta written down for another try next summer! I’m psyched to have a long term project in the mountains to work towards.

German Daniel/Ben styling the crux pitch We finished the trip off with a few days in Salvan – a really cool sport crag in Switzerland. The climbing is nice and there is a cute little hut under the crag, but the grading is a little strange. Apparently I climbed an 8b+ there – but it felt more like 8a! Peter also climbed his first 7c and Ben his first 7c+, but these routes felt more accurately graded.

I’ve also spent a lot of the summer filming my adventures and playing around with documentation. Hopefully with this footage and Matt Pycroft’s genius editing skills we can make a fun video series (called Hazel Days!) for epic tv. If you haven’t looked at this website yet – you probably should: epictv.com



Filed under: Alpine Climbing, Trips, Uncategorized Tagged: Ave Ceasar, calum musket, daniel jung, gervasuti route, Grand Capucin, grandes jorasses, Hazel Findlay, Peter Graham, Petit Clocher du Portalet, salvan 8b+

Source: hazelfindlay

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The Movie Business!
8 October 2013, 6:55 pm

A screen shot from Reel Rock 8′s piece about me climbing Once Upon a Time in the South West I left the UK mid September and I’ve been bezzing it around the world since then.

First stop was Boulder CO, not for white water rafting down their flooded roads, but for the reel rock 8 premier. I’ve spent much of 2013 filming with Sender Films and Big Up, to create a piece about me for reel rock 8. Sat in the crowd with hundreds of other people having never seen the final edit I was a little nervous. If you are a person easily embarrassed by watching yourself on screen this was in some ways a sort of living hell. In other ways, it was really cool to see the beautiful finished product of a big project for myself and the team. The other films were also really good, I especially liked the Daniel and Yugi Karate kid combo. Anyway Sender and Big Up are right at the top of adventure film today and the Reel Rock grows every year and so far this year hasn’t been an exception.

If you haven’t seen it yet here is the link http://reelrocktour.com/reelrock8tour/ to find a showing near you.

Recently I’ve picked up the camera myself, and started making a few short films with the help of Matt Pycroft. The intro to the series is here:

Now I’m in South Africa. Filming with Alex Honnold for a film about the cool trad climbing over here. Of course Alex easily occupies the majority of the limelight, but so far it’s been a great introduction to the amazing climbing and people over here. Hopefully there will be films, writing and photos to follow!

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Emily Harrington, epic tv, hazel findlay days, Morocco Big Walls, Reel Rock 8, spice girl

Source: hazelfindlay

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Adventures in South Africa
29 October 2013, 7:50 pm



I recently spent almost a month in South Africa with Alex Honnold. We were there to route climb and make a film about it. I had a really good time and I’m already planning a trip back. I was so excited about the trip that I wrote a trip report for UKC. To be lazy I’ve put the opening here and you can read the full article here:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=5882

When most people think of climbing in South Africa they think of Rocklands, the world-class bouldering Mecca and might be interested to learn that South Africa also has world-class sport and trad climbing. When most people think of Alex Honnold they think ‘soloist’ and might be interested to discover that Alex does actually wear a rope on occasion. This is a trip report about Alex and I on a route climbing tour of South Africa.

The trip was born when entrepreneur/budding film-maker/local gym owner Robert Beyer bumped into Alex in Rocklands last year. He invited Alex to dinner and asked him if he wanted to be involved in a film project that highlighted the route climbing of South Africa. Alex readily agreed and the ball started rolling. A few months later I snooped some of Alex’s emails from Robert whilst on a North Face trip to Oman, psyched to go to South Africa I was eager to invite myself on the trip alongside Alex.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=5882

Alex sending an open project at the mine near Cape Town   

Filed under: Hard Routes, Sport Climbing, Trad Routes, Trips Tagged: Alex Honnold South Africa, Blouberg climbing, cape town climbing, the mine, trad climbing in South Africa, waterfall boven, Yellowood climbing

Source: hazelfindlay

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The Nose in a day and Freerider in three
31 October 2013, 7:39 pm

James suffering up the Monster This year I turned up in Yosemite and for the first time I had no plans and no partner. In some ways this is nice because it means I get to try all the random routes that I want to do but aren’t big goals. Doing the PreMuir last year was one of the best climbing experiences I’ve ever had but it was also one of the hardest, and unlike Mr Caff (who rested a day and then went straight back up El Cap) I’m a mere mortal and didn’t really feel like doing anything after the 5 days we spent up on the wall. So this year I wanted to just try a few things, do some of the ‘easier’ free routes in Yosemite, that sort of thing. An obvious partner was James Lucas, who roams around the valley most of the year living in his ‘saturn’ car adorned with a lightning bolt.

THE James Lucas James was keen to go up on Freerider and I said I could be his partner. We didn’t really feel like hauling (can you blame us) and since James has worked the route from the top a lot anyway, we spent a day abseiling down the whole of El Cap in order to stash a bag in the Alcove, which is about half way up. Hauling may be hard, but there is no easy way around the fact that you have to get all your food, water, sleeping and pooing supplies up the wall with you and abbing El Cap is no exception. It’s long, it’s scary and it’s hard work, pulling the ropes 20 plus times, terrified that it’ll get stuck and you’ll be sleeping on the Salathe headwall. But when it came to us climbing it – we didn’t do any hauling, which was really nice. The first day we woke at 4.30 and climbed the 13 pitches to the Alcove where our bags were. This meant doing 12 pitches before embarking on the Monster offwidth, which didn’t feel any easier 2 years on and left James and I feeling like we’d been chewed up and spat out the next morning.

Day two was the important day – the crux. We wanted to make sure we climbed the boulder problem in the shade, which meant waking up at 3.30. The boulder problem is an amazing piece of rock, with some funky moves. There are about 12 or so real moves and it culminates with a cool karate kick to a sidewall off a sloping pinch. I got it after a few tries and James got really close, falling at the sloper. Soon it was too hot to try any more so we escaped the death star and abbed to the shade of the Alcove.

James seconding me up the enduro corner Day three was to be a long day. We woke at 4 again and climbed from the Alcove to the top and then rapped the whole route. The thing with Freerider is that if you can do the Boulder problem the pitches aren’t that hard, not compared to The PreMuir or even the Move pitch on Golden Gate (if you’re small), but there are a lot of pitches and they’re all so burley. Perhaps I’m just weak at that type of climbing, but fist jamming, offwidths, chimneys, steep laybacking, all that stuff, it make be graded 5.10 but it’s fierce and my body still feels them 2 days on!

Having freed three lines on El Cap now, with Freerider supposedly the easiest, I have to say that there really isn’t an easy way of freeing El Cap, and it’s a real achievement to even get up it at all. I also think that after a month in South Africa climbing with Alex, I was probably in need of a rest, not three days on El Cap. But rest isn’t as fun as monkeying about on boulder problems and swinging around on ropes thousands of feet above the valley. I always love it up on the wall; for me El Cap feels like a natural phenomenon and it never gets boring being up there.

Hans on his first jug free ascent of the Nose – here he is seconding me on the worst pitch on the route! Yesterday I did the Nose in a day with none other but Hans Florine! I was worried about getting lost, but he assured me that after 97 (!!!) times up we’d be OK. We did it in 12 hours with no jumars (Han’s first no-jumar ascent), and no simul-climbing, which I don’t think is too bad, but we may have broken the record for Han’s slowest time!

This week I’ve been up and down El Cap 3 times, and I’m pretty tired. The problem with Yosemite is that it’s impossible to be down in the valley, hanging out with the other tourists who are just looking at the walls, knowing that you could be climbing up them instead. Although things are getting wintery here in the valley and I’m not sure I have another El Cap mission in me. We’ll see!



Filed under: Hard Routes, Trad Routes, Trips, Uncategorized Tagged: el cap free routes, freerider, james lucas, the nose in a day

Source: hazelfindlay

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The rest of the USA (beyond Yosemite??!!)
11 December 2013, 2:44 am



I’m sat in Las Vegas airport and it’s time to leave America. The fact that there are  computer screens instead of people at the ‘information desk’, McDonalds instead of real food and slot machines instead of water fountains isn’t interesting anymore it’s just annoying. 

2012 might have been the year I’ve struggled most for partners. This year I turned up in the valley for the first time without a partner or a plan. Luckily for me ‘the last dirt bag’ James Lucas showed up in his Ford ‘Saturn’  in which he offers girls to go on an  ’intergalactic journey’. Uninterested in his spaceship come car, or his one-liners, we climbed Freerider in great style with James one-hanging it and myself freeing it. It was my first non-ground up ascent of El Cap, since we stashed a bag at the Alcove. This didn’t bother me so much because I’ve been on that part of the wall before and since I was climbing with an American my ethics were tainted already.

With only a week or so left in the valley I succeeded in two pretty cool things; I climbed a V8 after a few tries, which is pretty good for me. Maybe a bigger success was freeing a route with Alex (Honnold) called The Final Frontier on Fi Fi Buttress.  James and  Nick Berry recently did the FFA of this route in the spring. The route is really cool, with some technical, sustained and bouldery pitches, a few of which are 5.13 and most 5.12. None of this is really important compared to the fact that I only fell on one pitch and Alex fell on THREE pitches. The take-home message of that day was that maybe Alex’s worst day of rock climbing isn’t far from one of my best. We all take what we can to make ourselves feel better. 

Alex – just about to fall seconding a pitch I onsighted. Oh dear!  Unfortunately great success comes at a price and mine was re-injuring an old shoulder injury, which subsequently gave me some hassle in Indian Creek – our next destination. I’ve been to Indian Creek once before, 3 and a half years ago. It was there that I really started to crack climb to a reasonable standard, and I climbed a really cool non-splitter called Air Sweden. I love Indian Creek, but I sort of hate it as well. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful place and you can’t help but spectacle at  how cool all those splitters look. But on the other hand, I sort of dislike the brutality and the monotony of climbing pure splitters. I feel like once you’ve done one of every size, you’ve done them all.. OK not quite, but I still feel like they lack that sense of the unknown you feel  when you stand below a face climb; you can’t see the holds, or the gear and you know you’ll have to read the sequences on the spot. At Indian Creek, it’s all about trying hard and controlling the pump. Of course crack climbing is highly technical and it’s really cool to slowly improve at all the sizes, it just doesn’t grab me as much as funky face climbing. 

Neil on the hardest 5.11 in the worldThankfully I didn’t fall on this sketchy Cedar Wright knife blade protected affair he called Half Aligator Half Shark Man. Really funky climbing. James Lucas photo Anyway, I didn’t end up climbing many hard routes – just two 5.13s. This was largely to do with my shoulder and then later the cold, and mostly me being a bit slack. Along side the two 5.13 redpoints I onsighted 5.12 most days and I felt like I improved at a few of the harder sizes. Toward the end of the trip it got very cold and motivation slipped – so we spent the last week of our trip in Red Rocks. After all the trad climbing I was psyched to climb single pitch sport routes, and it was unbelievably fun. It further cemented my belief that I just love holds, face climbing and sequences. Perhaps the reason why I love granite so much – is that you get both – the cool lines that come with cracks, but also the technical sequences and intermittent face climbing. 

Death of a Cowboy, 5-13-, got this thing second try – very bouldery. The rain on the 5.10 fists above made things a bit more interesting. James Lucas Photo After a lot of travel to visit the TNF offices and my friend Emily in Tahoe I’m back in Las Vegas en route to Patagonia! Once again, I have no set partner, luckily I know a lot of people out there this year, brits included. With no plans, and no partner and the weather down there being how it is, I just have one hope for this next trip; that I get to climb something. Anything will do, just something. Fingers crossed. 

Filed under: Hard Routes, Trad Routes, Trips Tagged: Alex Honnold Fifi, Death of a Cowboy, Fifi Buttress, Final Frontier Yosemite, freerider, Half Aligator Shark Half Man, Indian Creek, james lucas

Source: hazelfindlay

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Trying to be a better alpinist, trying to be a better sport climber
24 April 2014, 11:58 am

Patagonia

Tourist trip to Torres del Paine. Looks like nice climbing weather? Winds of 70m/h on the valley floor A gentle breeze. I’ve put off writing a blog for a while, mostly because I’ve been struggling with what to say about my recent trip to Patagonia. It was quite possibly the least productive trip I’ve ever heard of. I didn’t climb a single peak. I climbed some boulder problems, did a lot of hiking (which trashed my knees) and tried two routes (one rock, one ice) but that was it. All the Patagonian regulars admitted that the season was a particularly bad one in terms of weather and the only real window they got was after I left. The small windows in which I tried to climb weren’t for rock climbing; it was just too cold with too much snow and ice from the previous periods of bad weather. Despite this, I had a really good time in El Chalten, largely because I had some good friends around me, the scenery is out of this world and the bouldering is world class.

 

It’s hard to complain with a view like that. Peter Graham commuting back El Chalten  

Fitzroy gathering cloud But sometimes when I think of my trip I ask myself whether I really deserved to climb anything in Patagonia anyway. I’m an experienced granite climber and I’ve climbed a reasonable amount in the mountains, but I’ve done very little mixed and ice. With the weather how it was, I was very ill-prepared to climb there.

There is a famous mountain behind the cloud It was going so well, and then the route fell on our heads. Ben Silvestre showing me how to climb an iced gully The important question is whether I want to become a more experienced alpinist. If I was just transported into the Matrix and I could download ‘ice climbing’ then of course I’d sign up. But in the real world you have to spend a lot of time doing something to have the requisite skill set. Do I really want to go Scottish winter climbing every winter instead of sport climbing in Spain? Do I want to climb mixed routes in the Alps in autumn instead of going to Yosemite? The answer to these questions is probably no. So I wonder whether I do really want to be a better alpinist. Hard alpinism really is a game for the minority. From the good alpinists around me in El Chalten, the thing they had in common was patience. I am one of the least patient people I know, often preferring to give up entirely and do something else than hang around and do nothing. Perhaps I need to learn how to be more patient, and then the magic on the mountains will compel me to return.

Really? We’re walking in to go rock climbing? I extended my trip by a few weeks, but it wasn’t long enough. I went home a week too soon, missing the only rock climbing window of the season. Bad luck, or was I just not trying hard enough? Either way, I had fun and I still managed to scrape myself up some rock routes after I got home.

Spain! 

Me on Fish Eye, 8c. Photo: Peter Graham It’s been two months since I flew home and since then I’ve climbed my hardest sport route to date. Fish Eye, 8c at Oliana in Spain. It was a really enjoyable process and it got me psyched to try something harder one day. Hanging out at Oliana also made me really appreciate my ability to travel and climb lots of different sorts of things. I was at a sport crag trying an 8c every day, but I wasn’t getting bored because before that I’d been in Patagonia walking a lot, and I knew that after, I’d be in Yosemite big walling. Mixing it up so much means that I won’t ever be the best at any one of these branches of climbing. But when did anyone care about being the best?

Thanks to Walker Emerson for the picture and for being my red point coach It also gave me confidence in my sport climbing ability. I know there are harder 8c’s out there and that it being an endurance route suited me, but it didn’t take me too long (7 days of effort) so I feel like if I wanted to I could climb something a bit harder. It was a great feeling to clip the chains of a 50 meter overhanging route with only a few proper rests, and for it to feel easy when it finally went.

I’d like to say I drank all those beers, but it’d be a lie. What’s next 

It’s time to concentrate on something totally different – Yosemite. Although on paper I’m technically stronger than ever before, climbing 8c is a very different story to climbing El Cap. I would like to climb Free Rider in a day, but with a total lack of all-day-fitness I might have to save that for another trip – we’ll see!

El Cap yeeeeaaaaahhhhh!  

Filed under: Alpine Climbing, Bouldering, Hard Routes, Sport Climbing, Trad Routes, Trips, Uncategorized Tagged: Ben Silvestre, Fish Eye Oliana, Hazel Findlay 8c, Patagonia climbing, patagonian weather, Peter Graham, Walker Emerson

Source: hazelfindlay

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Easy climbing in the UK and a Yosemite video
3 July 2014, 8:41 pm

The Lovely Troutdale Pinnacle Since climbing the hardest thing I’ve climbed – an 8c called Fish Eye in Oliana, Spain… it’s all been down hill from there. Life is still pretty good, but an annoying shoulder injury (whingury) halted play in Yosemite and now also back home. It’s not that acute of an injury but it just won’t go away, and any amount of climbing makes it feel pretty sore. But… I’m seeing some pretty good people; Tim Button at Cleve Chiropractic in Bristol and Nina Leonfellner a friend and great Bristol-based physio. So fingers crossed it will only be a few more weeks of whinging. Even with the shoulder life has been pretty fun, seeing friends, going soloing and doing easy climbs in the Lakes and North Wales.

Peter loves Newky Brun! I don’t like moaning (too much) so instead of talking about how I didn’t free El Cap this year, I’ve edited some footage from 2012 and 2013 trips to Yosemite. Being injured has meant that I’ve had time to play around with other interests, one of them being documentation of climbing. I don’t think I’ll ever be that good at photography or film making, but since I go to all these cool places it would be a shame not to at least try. Have a look, and please bare in mind that this is only my third attempt at editing, and due to blonde hair and a slow disposition the nuances of iMovie are not coming quickly.

The UK is about as green as it gets. I miss that when I’m away. Claire and Helena walking down from a route on Cloggy

I’ve also set up a youtube ‘channel’ in the hope that I might spew out further edits.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2KWFpT-7OashcJQzJSX_CQ

Filed under: Trad Routes, UK Climbing, Uncategorized Tagged: cloggy, freerider, Nina Leonfellner, premuir, Tim Button, Yosemite

Source: hazelfindlay

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Back at Araps! Also, did I mention I have a sore shoulder?
7 October 2014, 12:20 am

The summer is over, even though it feels like 2014 started only yesterday. I’ve been a full time climber for almost 4 years now. It’s crazy how time seems to speed up the older you get. Since I’m having way more fun now than ever before, I was sort of hoping it would be the other way around.

Back in May, the first day of my Yosemite trip, I hurt my shoulder bouldering and what I hoped would be a few weeks of recovery has turned into months. Five months later it still hasn’t totally healed up. I’ve had a few different diagnosis’s and so far I’ve chosen to go for the safe option and listen to everyone. I’ve seen chiropractors in Bristol and Sheffield and my very supportive physio Nina Leonfellner. The only thing that I have learnt that I can be totally sure of, is that the body is a crazy place. I feel like I know more about the surface of the moon than I do about how my own body works. People think that with modern medicine and rocket planes, and google maps we know most things about how the world works. But dealing with this shoulder has reminded me that there are still big question marks. Through my research I’ve come across musicians that have lost feeling in their fingers because of tight muscles in their necks, people who’s hair turns grey over night, and climbers who are injured because they wear metal jewellery. Despite the lingering shoulder pain coupled with feeling completely clueless about how to make it better, I’m still happy and psyched. Right now I can still climb and I am actually climbing reasonably close to my limit. If there is one thing that an injury is good for, it’s psyche. Since first becoming a professional climber 4 years ago, I haven’t been this psyched.

Arapiles 2014 Right now I am in Australia and today I need to take a rest day. Perhaps if it wasn’t for my shoulder I wouldn’t need to rest after only two days on. But, I’m going to spend most of the day pouring over guide books in a generally twitchy and excited manner. There is no better feeling that being psyched for climbing, with or without an injury, and recognition of this psyche makes me happy.

I came to Australia 6 years ago on my ‘gap year’. I went to 10 different countries in 10 months and 3 of those months were spent in the Pines campsite under Arapiles. In those 10 months I was most happy in the Pines. Life was simple, no money, no car, no work, no school, the only thing to think about was what route we’d climb the next day. We met the weirdest people, saw the craziest wildlife and went the longest I’ve ever been without washing. It’s a bit of a different scene this year. My Dad moved to Natimuk a year ago and got hitched to a local Ausie lass. So this trip my friend Cedar and I will be staying in a lovely house, we can borrow a car and shower every night if we want. What’s interesting is that even though I’m 6 years older and this trip is completely different from my last trip, I’m still overwhelmingly excited to climb on Oz rock. It’s great to know that I’ve not lost my love for moving over stone and that shower or no shower the climbing here is still incredible.

Another positive is that even with an injury I think I’m still a better climber. Maybe, just to be sure, I shouldn’t get on any routes I did last time. Sometimes you do need to protect the ego a little bit.

On a negative note, we only have 2 weeks here! What were we thinking! We’ll spend 8 more days in Nati, then off to the Blueies to do a talk at the Australian Climbing Festival. Should be a good’un.

http://australianclimbingfestival.com.au/

Here are some pics from 2008

Matty Rawlinson styling Denim, 26 (I think). One of the better harder routes I did back then. 2008 no shower, no hairbrush

Filed under: Trad Routes, Trips, Uncategorized Tagged: arapiles, climbers shoulder injury, grampians, natimuk, sore shoulder, the pines

Source: hazelfindlay

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Fun times down under
29 October 2014, 7:46 pm

Strolling!  

 

Air India flight 807 Heathrow to Delhi.

“I’m glad that my next flight isn’t going to be as long as this one,” I said to a red-headed brummy I’d ended up sat next to.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

“Melbourne” I replied.

He spluttered into his tea. In my mind Delhi was really far away, so Australia couldn’t be that much further.

“You’re not even half way there,” he laughed at me.

 

In between considering how an earth India was ever going to understand that lad’s thick Birmingham accent, I decided angrily that my Dad couldn’t have moved further away. With already 12 hours of travel under my belt and another 20 to go I wandered through Delhi airport looking for something edible.

 

Robbie G on Eau Rouge, the Lost World in the Gramps – what a pitch!  

I’m in Yosemite now and to be honest I wish I were still in Australia. Irritation at my Dad moving so far away changed into gratitude as soon as I touched the rock at Arapiles. A daughter needs to see her Dad at least once a year. Or at least that’s a great excuse to visit the best rock on earth. Exaggeration? Probably not.

Women’s Climbing panel at ACF – sat next to legend Louise Shepard!  

Gemma sent me an email at the start of the year asking if I would talk at the Australian Climbing Festival held in October. This was before my Dad ever intended to move to Natimuk, before he’d decided to marry an Aussie chick. I agreed, largely because for 6 years I’ve wanted to return to Australia. Gemma also invited my friend Cedar, which was perfect seeing as I’d have a partner in crime for the whole trip. Later I found out my Dad would be moving to the village situated under rock I wanted to climb at and I hadn’t seen him for over a year. Everything aligned and we had the makings of a perfect trip.

 

In the last 6 years I’ve been to most of the best climbing destinations this planet has to offer and I’ve climbed on every continent other than Antarctica. Half of me wondered whether I’d still think Arapiles was that good after been spoilt so much. After Yosemite, maybe I’d think it was a pile of choss.

 

Birdman of Alcatraz!  

If anything I think it’s better than I did when I was 19. With only 7 climbing days at Arapiles and a few days in the Blueys the trip felt like a bit of a tease. Just enough of a taste to get psyched but not nearly enough to feel satisfied. Once the jet lag had worn off, Cedar and myself got a cold and then we had to leave. Despite the jet lag and the cold, my shoulder behaved for the whole trip and we managed to do more good routes in those 9 days than I have the whole year so far (!!). Every pitch we climbed, we would lower off with massive Cheshire cat grins on our faces. Was climbing really that good? Take any of the best sport routes you’ve done in Spain, times the quality by two and then make them a trad route with bomber gear the whole way up.

About as good as it gets – Orinoco Flow, Lost World, trad 25  

We also had the pleasure of attending the Australian Climbing Festival in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Three days of climbing-related festivities including a competition, talks, workshops, films and music. I usually enjoy events like this, but also find them quite hard work and tiring and sort of wish they were only an evening instead of three days. I’m not that good at prolonged socializing and small talk. Although I was tired after the 3 days and the cold made resurgence, everyone was so friendly that it really didn’t feel like a chore. Apart from being a tad sport-climbing/lack of adventure orientated in the Blueys there is a good crew of people who get out and make the most of their amazing back garden. I always thought of the Blueys as a good sport climbing destination. But actually it’s a great sort climbing destination, with the routes and the rock being a slightly more special than European limestone. I also learnt that there is a ton of adventures to be had there from multipitch trad to choss to aid, should any of those things take your fancy.

Debutantes and Centipedes, classic 25  

Unfortunately on the last day I pushed my shoulder a bit too far. Before I left I saw Matt Pigden in the Peak district about my shoulder. He gave what seemed to be amazing advice and I went on my way feeling better than ever. In Australia my shoulder felt better than it had in 6 months. I think for this reason I got a bit cocky and pushed it a bit far. On the last route of the last day I tweaked it. And now I’m sat in Yosemite housekeeping, doing laundry whilst my friends go climbing. It was only 6 months ago that I was in this same position. Yosemite is quite possibly the worst place to be with an injury. Those big walls stare down at you mockingly as you massage your shoulder, wondering whether you can go up there without breaking yourself.

Leaving Sydney Cedar on the Space Odyssey, Lost World Cedar took all the good pics. I took the not so good ones.

 

Filed under: Hard Routes, Sport Climbing, Trad Routes, Trips, Uncategorized Tagged: arapiles, cedar wright, eau rouge. space odyssey, grampians, lost world, matt pigden chiropractor, orinoco flow

Source: hazelfindlay