I’ve been back from France for a week now. It was an exceedingly productive trip in that I finished my research for Ceuse, Volx, Sisteron, and Orpierre. I got a few action shots to finish off some pages too. The flip-side of the trip was hardly doing any climbing! Walking up to Ceuse day after day is pretty rough, but when you’re not going to be climbing when you get there is pretty hard. I did get some routes done, and they were all incredible, but it would have been nice to have tried a lot more!  I was joined for the first couple of days by Belgian super star in the making Robin Poelmans. He’d onsighted 8b but couldn’t seem to get psyched for the 6cs and 7as I was doing, falling off them more that I might have expected. However a couple of days later he onsighted 8b+, which I was impressed by – a lot of people would have probably not have even got on an 8b+ after falling off 6c, which just goes to show that yesterday’s defeats are not today’s limitations.

Nicolas Le Baut climbing at Sisteron

The greatest frustration of the trip was not walking up to Ceuse and not climbing, though that came close, no the biggest pain was trying to work out the lines at Sisteron. The guidebook to the area is so bad that I really struggled to make sense of it. Only when cross-referencing the lines with Bill Birkett’s French Rock did it start to reveal itself.

Orpierre took about a week to re-photograph (I’d mistakenly taken the first photos in medium res – oops) and sort out the lines. I didn’t climb at all at Orpierre, which was a shame, but I wouldn’t have made a very good climbing partner as most of the time I was sorting out where various routes go. Fortunately Ian Fenton, who lives out in Orpierre much of the year is going to lend a hand to this section.

A rainbow at Ceuse - the only day I carried my camera up to the crag!

Volx was a relatively easy day, just sitting in the scorching sun and working out where the lines all go – binoculars are my number one purchase of the year. From there I headed out to Buoux to take a shot of someone on TCF but no-one was there – unsurprisingly as it was about 37 degrees in the shade. I then went to St.Leger and photographed the North Face, I had not been to the area in the summer before, so not appreciated how important the north-facing crags are.  I got there at about 9am to get perfect morning light on the rock.

The North Face of St.Leger in summer morning light

Then it was straight into the van and driving back to London. Leaving St.Leger at about 9.30am I got back to London at 3am after changin my ferry ticket from the following morning. A good tip I discovered for driving long distances is to play movies on my laptop and try and imagine the image – it helps if there’s lots of dialogue and I know the film quite well. Being John Malcovitch was a hoot.

Since being back I’ve split my time between some training at The Castle, more DIY, and sorting out my coaching schedule fo the remainder of the summer – I’m going to be very very busy next month! I’ve also made a decision to stay in the UK this summer and go on a bit of a road trip, taking in the South West, South Wales, and Snowdonia. I’m looking forward to giving Mark Glaister’s new guidebook a test-drive!

www.positiveclimbing.com

I can’t believe it’s been nearly four months since I last posted an update here.  My last trip to France researching the Rockfax guidebook I’m producing  and writing is close to 90% complete now. I met up with most of the Rockfax team in Mallorca in April, so it was good to show everyone the progress, and to see progress on others’ project such as Mark Glaister’s South West and South Wales books in progress  -  both of which look pretty fabulous.

>> Photo: Me climbing in Mallorca back in May, the shot was taken for the updated Rockfax guidebook to the area. This route was about 7a, only the bolts were all pretty well rusted which made it feel more like an E5! Photo by Mark Glaister.

Much of the summer has been spent so far coaching up in the Peak District, I’ve has some brilliant days out on the rock with clients, many of whom have put in some big efforts to move up a grade or two then been gracious enough to offer me some of the credit! When I’ve not been coaching in the Peak, I’ve been working though some quite arduous DIY jobs – such as replacing a floor. These jobs have given me back muscles upon back muscles but I think I may find my finger strength rather lacking next time I go sport climbing!

On the subject of sport climbing, I’m going to be heading down to France in a week to finish off this guidebook. I’ll be there for a few weeks, so if you’re about then do drop me a note!

Before the summer ends I’m hoping to finish off a couple of new routes on Rams Tor – I cleaned a couple of lines, but have yet to bolt them. The last time I was there I was all kitted up on my ropes at the top of the line, ready to go over the edge, when I realised that I’d forgotten my drill bit. As it happened I had to spend hours cleaning loose rock from it anyway, so bolts can wait. At least it wasn’t as bad as walking for three hours to get to the top of Afternoon sector in Kalymnos with 120m of rope, drill, bolts, etc. only to realise I’d forgotten my harness. I can testify that 100m abseils in a 10mm dyneema sling harness is not much fun. On the subject of Kalymnos, I’m planning on being back out there in October, where I’ll be offering 1:1 coaching and maybe bolting a few last great lines – I’m hoping there will be a few still left!

I am currently in the South of France working on a selective guidebooks to the sport climbing in the area. There has been a lot debate taking place on the rights and wrongs of guidebooks that are not produced by local climbers. Debate is always healthy, but many of the arguments against books such as the one I am working on are ill-informed, and fail to take in the wider picture. Unlike Alan James and Mick Ryan, I’ve not bravely engaged in the forum discussions. Instead, I’m going to try and answer the criticism one by one and you can make up your own mind.

>> Photo:Adrian Berry on Flashdance (7a+) Lou Passo, Buis-les-Baronnies, France. Photo by Phil Vickers.

Argument 1:  Outsider guidebooks damage access.

Obviously an important issue, so I’m happy to look at this first.  Knowing where you can and cannot climb requires information that is up-to-date. It really doesn’t matter where that information comes from, so long as it makes it way to the heads of those intending to visit. While it is possible that a more popular guidebook may exclude access information, that is not the policy of Rockfax books. Who in their right mind would spend the time producing a guidebook to an area that was likely to be banned? There are a number of crags where climbing happens, but is not allowed, I’m not putting them in this book despite them being suggested to me. A guide that is better produced, more widely available and in a language that almost all visitors are likely to understand will be updated more often than a locally produced topo, as such it will be a more effective way of communicating access issues than will local topos. Of course, a sign at the parking area of the crag would also work.

Argument 2: Rockfax guidebooks take money away from local topo sales that fund bolting.

Firstly, I am a keen bolter myself. I’ve bolted sectors in Kalymnos and in Wales with bolts paid for with my own cash. I don’t expect to get proceeds from the sales of the Kalymnos guide to pay for my efforts! I climb because I love it. I bolt because I like to produce something that others will enjoy. If I were to take contributions from climbers via guidebooks sales, then I would be under a moral obligation to bolt routes that they will be able to climb - and I want to bolt whatever takes my fancy.

Now let’s look at the money. At the moment, the vendors of local topos are getting nothing from climbers who don’t even know about the area. Surely better to get some money from the climbers who are brought in by another guide? I’m not saying that every person will choose to buy the local topo, but if even one person in a hundred does, it’s better to have 1% of something than 100% of nothing. And is it really reasonable to expect visitors casually travelling from crag to crag to contribute the same amount toward the bolting of an area as local climbers who climb there all their lives? Hardly, especially when you consider that most climbers from the UK are for the most part looking to climb routes in the 5s and low 6s whereas most new areas being developed are in the upper grades.

Selling topos is just one way of raising money for a good cause. Local businesses benefit hugely from guidebooks bringing in climbers from afar, ask them for help. Local clubs have far more vested interest in having their local areas developed and maintained, a fund-raising Christmas dinner could raise money easily. Heck, you could even sell the Rockfax guidebooks and use the profits from that the pay for bolts, it really doesn’t matter where the money comes from, just don’t rely on the proceeds from topos.

Here’s another way of looking at it. If you buy a Rockfax guidebook and go on a climbing holiday. The amount of money the author of that guidebooks gets from your group is probably less than the spare change tip you give to the waiter in the local restaurant on your last night. It is from the pocket of the author that any charitable contribution is taken. Are those offering more profitable services such as local accommodation not in a better financial position to contribute towards bolting?

Finally, the book I am working on will be entirely in English, and I doubt it will even be sold in France, so it’s hardly going to be competing with local  topos.

Argument 3: Local topos are perfectly fine.

No, they are not. They are, in general, hard to find, over-priced, restricted to small areas, amateurish, and often plain lazy. Take a look at the Céüse guide, the best crag in the world some say, not one route has more said of it than a grade and a dotted line on a vague graphical representation of the crag, an over-priced lazy piece of work that owes its existence to the fact that there is no other guide, it’s an insult to the crag and those who love it. And you can’t even buy it on Amazon.fr. I’m not singling out the guide to Céüse, it is one of the better ones. The free market has winners and losers, the reason it is the dominant economic model for the world is that we are all far more winners in the free market than we are losers.

Argument  4: Rockfax guidebooks plagiarise local topos.

That would be flattery. The only information reproduced from (numerous) local sources are the route names and grades, which are originally provided by the first ascentionists. Lists of routes are not protected by copyright law any more than the places on a map, or entries in a phone book. Copyright law affords protection to ‘original’ works as a means to protecting creative products. While there are no legal precedents for cases specifically regarding climbing guidebook information, a very similar situation of a telephone directory consisting of names and numbers in a natural order has been found not to be protected by copyright law by the US Supreme Court in 1991 in the case of Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, in the words of the court: “It is not enough for copyright purposes that an author collects and assembles facts”. All copyright law is based on international convention and so the decisions on one country are very likely to be followed in others. Anyone attempting to sue for copyright infringement due to the act of reproducing route names and grades is sure to lose a lot of money on an utterly hopeless case.

Legal arguments aside, a huge amount of work goes into checking routes and grades, approach descriptions and maps, new photos are taken and grades are checked for consistency, and then all that needs to be turned into a book. A surprising amound of work goes into correcting the errors in local guidebooks.

Talk of Rockfax guidebooks ‘stealing’ from locals is an outrageously statement. An outsider guidebook raises greatly the number of visitors to an area, visitors who need somewhere to stay, something to eat, entertainement on a rest day, they pay airport taxes, road tolls, they buy gear from local climbing shops when they need it. Without guidebooks such as Rockfax, many of these visitors simply won’t know about the areas. To support a monopoly for local guidebook producers benefits the very few at the expense of the very many.

Argument 5: Rockfax guidebooks bring too many people in to areas.

The problem is that there are so few good guidebooks to European sport climbing areas, it’s no wonder that certain places are packed with people, where other areas are under-utilised. I was at Buoux last year and found a large group of climbers operating in the 5s and low 6s. There wasn’t a huge amount for them to go at, while an hour away were empty crags filled with routes in that grade range. Having good quality guidebooks to all the crags will serve to distribute people more evenly, taking the strain off over-used areas.

Furthermore, when climbers come for a climbing trip, they generally take a week off. Most accommodation rents from Saturday to Saturday, so apart from the ‘take it easy’ first day, one-week visitors aren’t even visible at the crags on the weekends when the locals are out becuase they are travelling to or from the area.

Argument 6:Rockfax guidebooks should contribute to local bolting efforts.

Firstly, the proceeds of a guidebook are not that great. Those of us who do it, don’t do it because we want to get rich, I’ve produced three books in four years, and I doubt that the proceeds I’ve received to date have even paid for my camera. There simply isn’t the money in guidebook proceeds to make a meaningful contribution to the bolt funds unless the guide is very cheaply produced, and covers a very small area (meaning you needs to buy lots of them). To get topo guidebooks to all the best areas in the South of France would cost literally hundreds of Euros, would you buy a selective guidebook if it cost more than your rack? Furthermore, who would administer this fund and on what grounds is money allocated? It would be completely impossible to check that money was being wisely spent, and would those placing the bolts want to be paid for their time? If such a fund existed then we would be one step closer to being able to make a charitable contribution to re-bolting areas, but would other manufacturers whose businesses also depend on access to crags similarly contribute?

…

To conclude, I don’t wish to paint a picture that all local climbers are against this guidebook - One day I was out at the crag, and was approached by a visiting French climber, curious as to what I was taking photos of the crag for, when I sheepishly informed him I was producing a guidebook, he asked me if it was a Rockfax, I said it was and he shook my hand and told me it was about time. I agree.

Apart from swanning around the Caribbean, 2009 has started in a fairly similar way to 2008, with a drive down to Switzerland. I once again headed to Gryon to stay for a few nights at the Hostel run by Matt Tomlin. I was keen to try out all my shiny new ice climbing gear, notably a pair of all-too-clean La Sportiva EVOs with DMM Predators, and a pair of used Black Diamond Reactors.

<< The view from the Gryon Hostel

Matt had taken me out ice climbing the previous year, and this time I was looking forward to having shoes that fit.Our forray onto the ice didn’t get off to a great start, the first ice fall we got to had melted in the previous few days, so we went exploring an area that Matt had been told about, but had no info on. Driving around we spied an impressive ice fall and made our way to it not sure what to expect. When we finally got the the base, it was clearly not in the best of condition, the first pitch was quite wet. I had made a deal with myself that I wasn’t going to do anything silly on the ice, and that I was going to back off if something wasn’t safe. However, it didn’t look dangerous, so I headed on up and apart from one section where the river was flowing below me, separated by only a few centimeters of ice, it was fine up to a section where I had to leave the ice fall to get to a belay on a tree. I found myself on rock and frozen soil with just a layer of snow over it. I had hoped there’d be some ice there. At one point my crampons started to slide down snow-covered rock and I was sure I was going to take a fall, there was only one thing to do, I brought an axe up and slammed it in as hard as I could, hoping to avoid rock. It stuck, fortunately, though I don’t know whether I hit frozen mud, or whether I hit rock and was swinging with such desperation as to stick to it.

Matt lead the next pitch, and brought me up to the base of another, intimidating pitch. I knew Matt was planning to get back to his work in the afternoon and I played that card but he was having none of it, so off I went. I must have taken about an hour to do maybe twenty metres of fairly steep, complex ice, but did it. Matt said he reckoned it was a grade four.

 >> Me, climbing the second pitch of Geronimo

The following day I drove down to Geneva where I picked up Audrey. We headed down to the Écrins where we had arranged to rent an apartment for a week from Jerry Gore at Alpbase.com. Conditions were a lot better, though still a bit too warm for comfort. We started off with Easy Rider  (WI 3) at Ceillac, we went to look at Vermicelle (WI 5+) but it had fallen down. A couple of days later we returned to the crag to do Les Formes du Chaos (WI4), which was a great route, though incredibly busy and we hardly had to swing the axes at all! We finished off the trip by doing Geromino (supposedly a WI5 but felt a lot easier than even grade 4s I’ve done) at Freissinieres. We also had a day on some snowboards that proved Audrey is good at pretty-much everything and that I still can’t snowboard.

I’m in the south of France now, working on this guidebook that had got a few people’s knickers in a twist. I’ll have some more to say about that in another post.

A little over a week ago I was packing two bags for two different trips. One was an ice climbing trip to the Écrins that I’ll be leaving for in one week’s time, the other a sailing trip around the British Virgin Islands. I made extra sure to take the right bag less I’d end up in Antigua with a holdall filled with ice gear and no shorts.

Adrian kite-boarding. That’s the other Adrian, not me. I was taking the picture.

I’d neve been sailing before, and my experiences in boats have not been exclusively positive, a stomach-sharing stormy crossing to Lundy from Swansea burnt a particularly strong memory in my mind.  For this reason I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of living on a boat for a week. I needn’t have worried however as it was a great experience, and I wasn’t sea-sick even once, though I’m not sure I owed my sea legs to the drugs I was taking or the desire not to look a fool in front of everyone else. The ‘everyone else’ consisted of the family of my girlfriend, and they did all the hard work. They impressed me immensely by demonstrating that you can have a four captains at two steering wheels speaking two languages all at the same time and still not sink. I was allowed to steer for a bit, though I think the auto-pilot was on, and I was a little suspicious that the steering wheel I commanded was pink, plastic and attached to the boat via a small suction cup. It did have a horn in the middle though. And indicators.

Audrey windsurfing.

I didn’t take my climbing shoes, and there would have only been one place with rocks worth exploring anyway. For any climber heading out that way who happens to have happened upon these words, I can honestly say The Baths on Virgin Gorda are worth a look at, though I wouldn’t head there just to climb. Here’s a photo:

The Baths at Virgin Gorda: you could probably climb here.
I’d rather race sea turtles.

The best part, for me, was trying to spot as many exotic creatures as possible. Under the water one of the first things I saw was a huge ray, calmly flying escorted by a sucker fish. Spotting enormous sea-turtles was always a treat, and the colour and variety of other fish made me feel like I was swimming around an aquarium. The only other places I’ve been snorkeling are Thailand and Kalymnos, and really, they don’t even come close. Above the land it was great to watch the  pelicans diving in to get a mouth full of fish, the giant iguanas basking in the sun, and the slightly out-of-place groups of ageing home sapiens trying to get off a dingy at the beach when the waves were crashing.

The week went quickly, and soon I was back on land, feeling slightly queasy due to the fact that the world doesn’t rock from side to side in quite the way I had become accustomed. Then it was to the air where we got the world’s most chilled-out safety briefing from the Caribbean’s Favourite airline, Liat. Liat, where the seats aren’t reclined so much as ‘laid-back’. Enjoy da view.

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week,
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.

Dixon Lanier Merritt

…

Oh and if you could all go and buy some of my books (Winter Climbing+ Trad Climbing+ and Sport Climbing+ it would be much appreciated as I’ve run out of money and it’s not as though I have an extravagant lifestyle of anything. Cheers.

www.positiveclimbing.com

New year’s day seems to be a good point to do a bit of blogging, so here we go.

In the early 1990s I set about developing a crag not far from Swansea. It was, and indeed still is, a neat little collection of stepped roofs with a steep slab at the top. I did eight new routes on it, but they were never very popular. Its unpopularity was nothing to do with the quality of the rock, but rather the protection of the routes. It was early days in the development of bolting in South Wales, and so I was under pressure not to bolt where routes could be protected by trad gear. Also, I didn’t have much in the way of money to cover the crag with bolts, and to be honest the money  consideration was of more importance than the ethical one. I harbour tall-masted suspicions that many ethical stances owe more to impecuniousness than moral fibre, but that’s a moot point.

I got in touch with some locals, namely Alan Rosier and Chris Wyatt, and was delighted to discover that the South Wales Mountaineering Club would stump up some cash to buy bolts and glue. Emails circulated thanks to the local guru of bolting, Roy Thomas, and soon a number of people volunteered to  show-up and help with the sizeable task of rebolting the entire crag.

In the week before Christmas I headed to the crag, and began the job of removing the old bolts. I was pleased to see that the stainless through bolts that had been added more recently were in good condition, even the ones that get splashed by the sea. The other bolts fared better than I had anticipated, the 10mm Petzl ‘self-drill’ bolts were in reasonable condition, though there were signs of rust, so they would be replaced. I was more surprised to see the 8mm RAWL bolts I placed were not that corroded, I had covered all the bolts I placed with Plastic Padding ‘Chemical Metal’ so as to deter anyone from stealing the bolts, and this seems to have made a big difference to how long they lasted. A couple of bolts did sheer when I tried to remove them, but most came out with just a bit of effort. The only bolts that were seriously dangerous were the ones with aluminium hangers, so worth making a mental note about that.

The following day everyone showed up, Roy Thomas and John Bullock brought their drills, bringing the drill count up to three. There were seven people at the crag in total, and the weather held off enough to rebolt/retrobolt seven routes.  With fifty bolts eagerly awaiting being stuck into the rock, we made sure that all the routes would be pure sport routes. We also added a direct start to a route I had done on trad gear called ‘Captain Hook’ the start would need a point of aid to get to the first decent holds, but after that it could be climbed at about 6c+. I returned a couple of days later to finish the job by placing the last nine bolts. I also cleaned off a line on the as-yet untouched left hand end of the crag – and am looking forward to climbing it later in the year.

A couple of days after Christmas I went to the crag and reclimbed a few of the routes that had been affected by storms removing holds, and was pleased that they could still be climbed, if maybe half a grade harder than they had been. It was good to see some of the routes getting climbed already: Chris Wyatt had a go on the newly-added direct to Captain Hook called Renaissance (6c+), and I even bumped into Dan Dyson, the person who got me into climbing way back in the late 80s.

So, a pretty good end to the year – though it was also nice to get Steve Mac’s 8a at The Castle done on the last day of the year. Hope it wasn’t a fluke…

Happy new year!

Topo at http://www.rockfax.com/publications/miniguides/item.php?id=158

The last three months have been spent mostly on working on the French guide. The whole of November was spent driving around the south of France, checking out routes, and taking lots of photos. This may sound like fun, but in fact could there be anything worse than walking into the crag each day, with ton of camera gear and a laptop and spending the whole day just looking at the routes when you’re there on your own and can’t climb them! Still, I’m sure there are worse places to be.

A very wet Orpierre

Actually the first two weeks were better as I was climbing with Audrey, though the weather was not great. Starting at Orpierre where it was so wet the crags were almost black, we checked out Sisteron, though didn’t climb there, instead we went to Volx and had two days there. It doesn’t matter how much it’s been raining, it’s always dry at Volx! After that we went to Buoux and the sun came out. We did some great climbs, I think my favourite was Le Rut on Excaliber, a brilliant way to the top of the crag in six pitches up to 7a, I took my camera and got some shots. We also had a day at the far end of the crag, where we just ticked everything. My best effort was to finally tick No Man’s Land, I’d been on it years ago and just got pumped silly, this time I got it – what a brilliant route.

>> Audrey on Le Rut, Buoux

It was a shame to leave Buoux, our next stop was Claret, where we spent a couple of days in the sun. Audrey returned on the TGV, and I hit the road to get some crag shots. I visited Seynes first – I wish I could have been climbing as it was in perfect condition depsite the earlier rain. I got the crag shots from the road, I had hoped a track opposite would give a view of the whole thing, but there were too many trees to get a viewpoint – a common problem. After Seynes I went up to the Gorge du Tarn, where it was pretty cold. It was of course stunningly beautiful and I soon realised that I would need to get to the other side of the gorge to take my crag shots. I found a path and followed it for what seemed like forever, until I could get a perfect view of the crags, but by then it was too dark. I marked the spots on the train with twigs with the idea of returning early the next morning, but the next morning it was cloudy! Getting good crag shots is a pretty big job sometimes! I quite the Tarn with a plan to retun in the spring when the sun is higher above the horizon and I’ll have more time to get the shots I need.

Some crags in the Gorge de la Jonte. I fancy that crack on the right…

Next, I drove down the valley to the Gorge de la Jonte. Another beautiful series of quite large crags. I bought the guidebook (another €20 – I’ve spent more money on French guidebooks than I have on French diesel) and tried to get more crag shots, though I reckon it will take a fair bit of hiking, and again I’ll go back in the spring when the shadows of the opposite side of the gorge aren’t making life difficult. From the Jonte I went straight to a place called Thaurac that Dave Jones’ Europe guide gives two stars to. I wasn’t too impressed as there was a busy main road below the crag ane the river looked like more fun. From Thaurac I headed over to Russan. I’d been here once before with Tim Glasby and Steve McClure some years ago. This time I was just taking photos. I had hoped to cross the river and get the best vantage point, however the other side of the rive was a tangle of vegetation, no paths that I could find, and to cap it all, the army were conducting exercises at the time. The next day I bush-whacked my way to the rive from the crag and found the idea of crossing the river to be quite ludicrous. I took some shots from the wings, which are good but not quite as good as I wanted, so in a bit of a huff I got in the van and went looking for a Decathlon in which to get a boat. I couldn’t find any Decathlons, which was odd as when I don’t need one they seem to be everywher, so drove to Buis-les-Barronies to visit Ollie. I’d had enough of van camping – all the campsites were closed now so I hadn’t had a shower in over a week. I checked into Ollie’s gite, and spent the remaining few days visiting the local crags and checking out the lines on my topos.

Russan and the river that will be overcome… next time.

Plans for the next couple of months involve rebolting a crag from my past – Rams Tor on Gower with bolts from the SWMC bolt fund, I might even get some help. In January I’m going to be going sailing in the Carribean – and I’m hoping I don’t get too seasick. In February I’m going to be hitting the road and after a week or two of ice climbing, it will be back onto the rock to finish this guidebook before Easter.

www.positiveclimbing.com

Well, Winter Climbing+ is now out of my hands and into the loving custody of Alan James. Neil, Ian, and I are all really pleased with how it’s looking. Ray Eckermann is doing the illustrations again, though not as many are needed as was the case with Sport Climbing+ and Trad Climbing+. One thing that is going to need illustrating is the ice axe arrest: to communicate to Ray what we need to have illustrated, typically I have supplied a sketch or photo. To detail the complex technique needed to perform an ice axe arrest, Ian Parnell and I met up to go to a park in Sheffield and look completely daft mocking up an ice axe arrest on a grassy bank, in August. However just before we headed out, I noticed that Ian was bringing a book that clearly showed the arrests, and the plan was to use this book to ensure we didn’t miss anything important. It quickly dawned on us that all we had to do was refer Ray to the book and we could miss out all that silly messing around in the park with offensive weapons.

The last two weeks of August were spent away from the frustrating weather. Audrey and I took her van down to the South of France and spent a couple of weeks lazing around on the beach, and climbing at Chateauvert and Céüse. I was particularly impressed by Chateauvert, what an amazing crag, a shame it won’t be in my French Rockfax. Céüse was of course brilliant, though most of my time was spent taking crag photos. We were a bit unlucky in that it was quite cold in the shade for the first three days, but then just a bit too hot in the sun. On the fourth day I got to see what made so many people go to Céüse in August – the conditions in the shade were perfect, and we did a few routes which were just immaculate, and made the walk-in worthwhile, and that’s saying a lot.

I’ve relocated to London now, and will be dividing my time between London, where I’ll be available for coaching on plastic, and France, where I have a heap of research still to do. I’m hoping to get some ice climbing and some snowboarding done this winter.

www.positiveclimbing.com

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!

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Well, I was back in the UK for four whole weeks before I felt the need to get away. This time I flew from East Midlands Airport to Milan where I met up with a bleary-eyed Audrey, who’d left London the night before and driven almost non-stop in order to pick me up. I didn’t complain that she was an hour late. Audrey had a bouldering competition in Grindelwald, Switzerland, so I tagged along and took some photos that Anne Arran expressed an interest in using in her column in Climber. Unfortunately I picked up a cold before I left, and it soon became Bronchitis, which necessitated a visit to the Doctor. Within an hour of deciding to see a Doctor I found myself being examined, followed by blood-test, and ten minutes later I’m walking away with a bag of medicines, and only £50 poorer (the excess on most travel insurance policies, hence I don’t bother with insurance much). On getting back to Sheffield, I found out that I could reclaim some of the cost – so popped into the surgery on my road to find out how I could do this and the receptionist admitted she didn’t even know what my European Health Insurance Card was. Why is the NHS always so unimpressive?

Anyway, the bouldering comp was a little on the dull side. I was hoping to get some photos of people bouldering with the Eiger behind them, but the wall was covered and so that really wasn’t possible. However, it was nice to go for a walk in some scenery that is so Swiss even Disney would consider toning it down. For me, the highlight of the competition was the Slovenian competitor who found a way of doing a problem that involved moving into another problem. Obviously, neither the setters nor the judges had imagined this might happen. He was awarded the problem (he was the only competitor to top it), which prompted the French to complain about how he managed it. Basically, he climbed off his problem into a groove and then reached to the top hold on the problem. However, to do this he had to cross some black tape, usually indicating ‘out of bounds’, I thought this was a bit of a spurious argument in that the intention behind the tape was to stop climbers grabbing the edge of the board, not passing in the space above it – which is what the Slovenian did. So at the end of the first round the climber was asked to do it again, this time avoiding the invisible ‘out of bounds’ area of space above the top of the board. With some personal delight and avoiding the area in question, he did it. Almost no-one was spectating at this point, but for me it was the highlight of the comp. I love devious sneaky solutions, and full respect to those who find them! There are photos on my website if you’re interested.

Once the competition was over (can’t recall who won, it wasn’t a Brit), Audrey and I headed to Cresciano, where I’d never been before and got a good couple of hours’ climbing in before it started raining. The rain continued for the rest of the trip. We headed to Magic Wood, but the rain came even more quickly there. Next we went to Arco, a favourite place of mine, though perhaps more for the ice-cream than the polished holds. We had a half day there and ticked off some old favourites, though after being ill 6c+ felt more like 7c+ - though I recall Massone always feeling a bit hard for the grade!

Back in the UK, and feeling much better, I’ve been crazily busy with running coaching days in the Peak District, and enjoying it immensely! Certainly the weather has been so much better in the UK than it was in Switzerland and Italy. I went climbing yesterday with Jamie Veitch and Ian Parnell – we went down to Cheedale and worked our way through Chee Tor E2s and E3s – it has been a while since I plugged gear in and, well, it all felt a bit hard and pumpy, brilliant though.

The rest of the month is going to be pretty busy with coaching, plus I’m finishing the layout of the last who chapters of Winter Climbing+ which is getting me pretty psyched for next winter, though I want to have a good summer first!

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