Winter Climbing+, Cliffhanger, and The Emperor’s New Clothes
So far this summer has been mostly spent divided between coaching in the Peak District and working on Winter Climbing+. The book is almost complete now, with a cover chosen, and just a handful of photos and illustrations to be placed before I hand it over to Alan to cross the Ts and dot the Is, beautify it and get it ready for being printed. I’m very pleased with the way the book is going to look – there are some amazing photos in there, and just like the previous books (sport+ and trad+) it takes a tight focus on one aspect of climbing and takes it all the way from the very basics to the most technical details, it’s certainly got me motivated to do more ice next winter, and fortunately I won a bouldering comp down at The Arch in London a little while ago and got a pair of La Sportiva Nepal Extremes as a prize – so I’m pretty happy about that – it’s all I can do not to wear them around the house!
Talking about competitions, I was out for my once-a-year run a little while back and found myself running past the park where Cliffhanger was being prepared. I was so impressed by the efforts that were going into it that I decided I should enter the comp – it was only a five-minte walk from my house (also a five minute run at my pace) and it seemed daft not to. On the day, the weather was fine, and I was feeling quite strong. The qualifier started and I just picked random problems that didn’t have queues for them, I onsighted the first eight problems, then had a suddent and dramatic loss of power and couldn’t even pull-on. I was a bit disappointed as the problems I couldn’t do didn’t look any harder than some of the ones I had done. I had to be content with a score of 80, which wasn’t enough to get through by a long way – which was just as well as I was back home sleeping in bed before the qualifier even finished – I was that shattered. I came 18th overall, which wasn’t bad I suppose considering I haven’t trained seriously for about four years, and have always been more interested in climbing routes than boulder problems. I came back to watch some of the final, and it was a really good event – I was really pleased for Matt Heason, who’s brainchild it was – I knew Matt way back when I was living in Swansea and he was a student at Swansea University, so great to see he’s making a living doing what he loves, and making climbing better as a result.
As Winter+ starts to take its final shape, I’m turning my attention back to the France guidebook I was working on earlier in the year. While I’m here I’ll be finishing maps and generally doing the bits you don’t need to be in France for. I will be down in France in two weeks and hoping to call into Céüse and Verdon for some climbing and some photos.
It’s not all been work though, I got away to North Wales for the weekend, and managed to get enough time between showers to do a few routes that I hadn’t done before. The slate is looking a lot better for the rebolting that’s been going on. I just wish some of the stupidly bolted stuff could have some more bolts added to make them better routes. I’m tired of the bullshit about bolts on slate – either bolt something or don’t – the reason that there are these routes with crazy runouts is that they were a) bolted by cheapskates who didn’t want to buy too many bolts b) bolting back then was bloody hard work becuase no-one had drills, and c) the ethics of bolting in Britain were highly contested. I know this because years ago I stuck my neck out and bolted a crag on Gower – I was hand-drilling bolts, paying for them out of my dole, and knew there would be a storm. A few years later bolts were perfectly acceptable, those who complained about my bolts had mostly given up climbing (I dont’ think they ever really enjoyed it – they just liked to moan) and so I returned to that crag and placed all the other bolts – with a hired drill of course.
Well things have moved on – putting up new routes on slate by placing bolts at regular and reasonable intervals isn’t going to cause an uproar, so why preserve these badly bolted routes from the past? How can we be so conservative? There are so many great lines on slate that haven’t been climbed, it’s shocking, I don’t think there are any other parts of the country as accessible and as undeveloped. There are also a number of great lines that are simply ruined by the fact that they happended to have been first ascended in the bolting dark ages, and we preserve these monstrosities because, like in the story of the Emperors New Clothes, no-one will state the bloody obvious. The best thing about slate is that most of the new sport routes waiting to be done are probably going to be in the lower and mid grade range, just what north Wales needs!