Finally!
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?