I’m back from what has become an annual pilgrimage to Kalymnos, and have to report having had a very good time. I managed to finish off a 7c project I bolted last year (Dream Line Extension), bolted and climbed a new variant to Anaphylactic Shock (Lactic Shock, 8a) and even managed to drag my sorry ‘desk-evolved’ state up Helios (8a) onsight – much to my great surprise – I was even more surprised to find it had originally been given 8a/8a+, so fingers crossed it won’t be down-graded. Actually, I know it won’t be down-graded because not long after I did it, my partner for the trip, Helen Dudley, pulled off a pretty big hold out of the crux sequence making it rather a lot harder. Shame too as she was about to redpoint it as her first 8a. But all was not lost as she soon ticked my Anaphylactic Shock –but promptly downgraded it, quickly removing another 8a from the island.

I had the usual epic getter back: the wind cancelled the ferries leaving us stuck in Pothia. Fearing missing flights we attempted to track down the local ‘private’ ferryman. A stark lesson in both the international language of Hollywood and the nature of this individual was soon learnt. When the coast guard was asked where we could find the captain of the Anna Maria, one of the Coast Guard staff gave a lengthy reply in Greek, the only discernable words being ‘Jack Sparrow’ somewhere in the middle of the sentence. Fortunately, the Greek Gods were on our side and the ferries did run in time to get to the airport, where I bought the last ticket on the flight to Athens only to stopped by security who were very interested in my pair of (rather heavy) Hilti batteries hidden at the bottom of my hand-luggage. I started a mime that was intended to explain ‘hammer drill’ but stopped when it became abundantly clear that, to the uninitiated, the method of holding an enthusiastic hammer-drill was not dissimilar to that of holding a WW2 sub-machinegun.

Trad Climbing+ is now in its final proofing stage, and is booked to go to the printers in the next couple of weeks, so now all attention is to be turned to the ‘Winter book’ and if the weather is kind, some good coaching days out in the Peak.

Click to Download the Ivory Tower Topo

Finally, Trad Climbing+ is out of my hands and has begun its final journey that will see it in print before the end of the year. It’s been a year since I started this book, and I’ve been around the world getting photos and ideas from New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and Canada. As always, when you embark on a project to write down what you know, you realise how much you don’t know. Fortunately, John Arran was there to co-write this book, and I got a huge amount of incredibly interesting information from research conducted my manufacturers, and folk like Dan Middleton at the BMC.

I’m happy that Trad+ is as good as it could have been, and that we didn’t compromise anything. Once again Ray Eckermann did a brilliant job with the illustrations, and we got photographic contributions from far and wide, including Alex Messenger, Nick Smith, and Simon Carter. We were also very fortunate to have help from climbers willing to dress in bright clothes and get on the routes that have the best light, rather than, perhaps, the best holds. Alex Hughes, Alex Mason, Alex Barrows (are you noticing a theme yet), Steve Ramsden, and plenty more all deserve a hearty pat on the back. Similar thanks should go to DMM, Wild Country, and Black Diamond for their help in supplying the latest kit.

I’m now about to leave for my annual pilgrimage to Kalymnos. I was going to try to go somewhere else this year, but it was not to be. So I’m currently working out how to get all my gear through an airline with a 15kg luggage limit – I mean, my Hilti batteries alone weigh about half of that, so it’s going to be another interesting journey. This time tomorrow I will be either handing off a tufa or swimming in the sea. Then back for some more coaching on the grit to pay the bills – well, you don’t think we earn any money from writing books do you?