My desire to try snowboarding started twenty-five years ago when I watched James Bond do it in the opening sequence of Octopussy. So impressed was I by this new sport, that winter I acquired a conveniently shaped a sheet of Perspex, and decided to make it into a snowboard of my very own. I curved the front over the gas stove, and screwed two pieces of timber to the deck so I could brace my feet to something. When the snow hit (it used to snow back then) my family and I headed up to Brecon one winter’s day and I quickly learnt why they use bindings.
Twenty-five years later, staying in Gryon, Switzerland, I had the chance to try it again. Thanks to George Gallop, I headed up to the slopes with a real proper snowboard and a moderate splashing of body armour, though not quite enough if you ask me.

I had been told that my first day would be hard work, and that was right enough. I spent five minutes just trying to stand up. The remainder of the session was a blur involving adopting the posture of John Wayne after several days in the saddle and at the same time imagining I was hovering over the world’s worst dunnie (my lesson was in Australian). Amazingly, after an hour I could actually get to the bottom of the run the right way up. I was quite happy with this, until I was told that I needed to learn to turn so that I faced THE OTHER WAY. This was rather like learning to ride a bike without stabilisers only to be told that you now need to do it sitting on your handlebars facing backwards before you can call yourself a cyclist – I would have told them right where to stick their cycling proficiency test.
Turning is, it turns out, the hard part. I now had a head full of quite important things to think about, and a couple of very important things that there wasn’t quite room for. The general idea was to point the board straight down and then whilst doing my cool cowboy taking a crap impression, to slip in a bit of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever by putting one hand on my hip and pointing with my other in the direction I wanted to go. At this point I realised why John Wayne and John Travolta where never destined to share a scene.

Ice climbing
After three weeks in Switzerland it was time to move on from snowboarding to try something far less dangerous; it was time to go ice climbing. Now, according to my new hostess, Louise Alexander, I had once announced that I would never go ice climbing, well, I was wrong. I had met Louise a number of times over the years: she was a client on a women-only coaching week that I found myself ‘supervising’ along with Gaz Parry – I can’t recall Gaz’s excuse. Anyway, the next time was as students attending the Extreme Film School, Louise and I made a short film about Tony Lamiche, a year or so later, we ended up making another film following Gaz Parry and Steve McClure climbing Hotel Supramonte, and that was the last time I’d seen Louise. I was quickly joined at Louise’s Chamonix pad by the Castle Climbing Centre’s head warden, Audrey Seguy (Audrey was actually the coach for the women’s week where I met Louise – it’s a small world). Anyway, it was a good job that Audrey came out as Louise had hurt her back in an accident on the ice – the ice between her apartment and her car that is. On the first day we headed to the Creamerie, in Argentiere. We picked a two-pitch route, and Audrey headed off up the first pitch, and, deciding there was only one way to learn to lead ice, I lead through and ticked my first lead.
The following day we headed off to Italy and got on a three-pitch route that weighed-in at 4+. Up to this point I’d found ice climbing nothing short of pure fun. A sport involving lots of sharpened spikes and bashing things really spoke to me. The fun ended when half-way up pitch one, a huge chunk of ice fell exactly where I had been minutes before. I decided I had enough ice screws and climbed at double-speed to the belay. Audrey led the crux pitch with her usual combination of finesse and determination, which I attempted to emulate, only I went slightly the wrong way, making life very hard for myself and realising that no-one had ever taught me how to go sideways. It was a great day, but one that reminded me of the objective dangers you don’t see too much on a crag. Our final day was spent dry-tooling. I’d never tried dry-tooling, and always thought it sounded a bit daft, pointless and easy. I was wrong about it being easy.

Back to the rock
And so it came to the time to hit the road again, this time to more a more familiar environment. I’m currently living near Buis-les-Barronies, getting back on rock after a two month break, and working on various book projects.
www.gryon.com
www.mountaingirl.eu
www.climbfrance.com
www.positiveclimbing.com