First Gritstone Solo

On Sunday we pitched up at Birchen Edge just after lunchtime, figuring that if it's going to be busy everywhere then we might as well take advantage of the easy walk-in, laid-back atmosphere and good range of low-grade routes there. Neither of us really felt like pushing grade too much, the weekend was about relaxing and getting away from work more than anything else. Especially after The Midge Incident and Lise's unsettled mind yesterday.

So we arrived at the Edge and headed straight for the far end, where we found the only unoccupied bit of rock past the Emma's Dilemma area.

Let's just boulder a bit round here first, said Lise, and proceeded to do just that.

After a few warm-up foot moves around the base of The Gangplank (M **) she thought out loud:

I could solo this, you know

So off she went, looking calm and confident all the way. As she topped out, I thought

Well, so could I!

...and off I went, without really thinking about it. I actually found it perfectly OK, with only one point where I felt the rising nervousness as I contemplated a typical gritstone mantel top-out at about 8m. But I quashed it down as quickly as it arrived, and just went ahead with the move - which was fine - and topped out with a satisfied grin on my face.

Now, admittedly it's only a Mod. That's the lowest grade anything ever gets, and it was practically a staircase - the slew of people on UKC describing their ascents as no-handed / one-legged / juggling fire on a pogo stick shows it's not exactly a difficult route by any means - but still, 10m is not a distance you want to fall, and as someone who is no stranger to what could best be termed EPIC HEAD FAIL, I felt a little chuffed at having had my first ever solo.

I'm not in any hurry to start soloing harder routes, but it did feel like I crossed some kind of threshold, having done that. I was confident enough in my footwork (thanks Jack !) to KNOW that I wouldn't fall, and that's a rarity for me on grit, where every hold is rounded and a pebble is classed as a Good Foothold. Maybe there *is* some improvement in my technique after all...

Campsite review: Greenacres camp site, Edale, S33

Stress was building up for Lise and I, so we nipped up to the peak district on Friday for an impromptu weekend away from it all, ending up at the Greenacres camp site after the usual Hardhurst farm was full.

The view from Greenacres campsite
Originally uploaded by Dr Snooks

This site is a bit more out of the way - continue on into Hope, turn right just after Old Hall pub towards Edale, keep driving after you think you must have gone the wrong way, under the bridge, after the spooky farmhouse on the corner, it's on the left just after the pony trekking place - but has a really pleasant view, decent toilets, spring water on tap... it's actually pretty good. The only negative was the trains going right past the bottom of the site - but stay at the roadside end of the fields and it's fine.

There's a bit of a slope going down away from the road, so pitch your tent with your heads facing away, but the ground seemed firm and well-drained. There's a dedicated washing-up sink by the toilets, and you can get tokens for the hot shower from the house.

We arrived about 11pm on Friday, and were rewarded with a jaw-droppingly beautiful night sky, the likes of which I haven't seen for well over ten years. The Milky Way was clear and bright, with so many stars it was hard to pick out even the familiar constellations. We brewed up on the Trangia, layed back, and watch in wonder for a full half an hour, letting the images settle in to our memories. Beautiful.

Stanage End: The Midges Descend

On Saturday, we headed up to Stanage High Neb, hoping to avoid the crowds of youth groups we could see swarming over the Popular End like hordes of dayglo GoreTex-ed ants. But no luck - it was such a clear day that even High Neb had us queueing for routes. Further over, we tried Crow's Chin (likewise) and then settled on Stanage End, where the queues were at least shorter. I led Prospero's Climb(VD**) to get myself going, and felt comfortable and confident on my feet - something of a rarity for me on grit. It's a really pleasant route, with decent gear and only one hairy move up to the mantel (pebbles are your friend!) with a satisfying layback above. In fact, the gear was SO good, that there's a red No. 6 Wall nut still on it, free to whoever can get it out :) Recommended.

Next we wanted to do Crab Crawl(S 4a**), but ended up getting halfway up the arete on it's VS 4c neighbour, and backing off. Lise was having a bit of a wibbly day overall, the stress of a monster project at work not quite departing as quickly as desired, so we headed round the corner as the afternoon sun began to deepen and bronze, to The Ariel(HVD *), so that she could get at least one successful lead under her belt and not feel bad about the day.

However, the midges had other ideas. As she got halfway up the opening slab, I began to feel itches and tiny pinpricks on my arms. I looked down to see my exposed arms covered in what must have been nearly fifty midges, crawling and nipping away. I quickly transferred the dead rope to my left hand and brushed off my left arm with my right hand, then reversed the pprocedure. I looked back at my left. It was covered again, already. WHAT THE...? I brushed off again. They came back again. Now I could feel them on my neck. My forehead. My ankles. My FACE. I could feel each bite like a tiny hot needle. ARGH!

Thus began a shredding endurance test, trying to brush the ravenous midges off any exposed skin whilst still belaying safely and trying not to inhale insects or panic Lise, who by this time had reached the top of the slab and was having trouble rounding the left-hand corner to finish. Looking up, I could see her frantically swapping hands between holding on and swatting midges away from her face. I could hear her increasingly nervous cries of "....Al....!" as her strength and belief began to fail in the face of the insect onslaught. In the end, the midges won, and she had to lower off. All this while a late-arriving quartet of testosterone-fuelled rock jocks with boulder mats and bravado sized up a brutal-looking test piece next door, suppressing their smirks at someone struggling on a mere HVD.

That just left the problem of all the gear on the route. I had to go up and finish it off. So I tied into the leader end, and top-roped up to the top of the slab, feeling like Pig Pen from Peanuts. I must say, though, that the slab moves were actually very pleasant climbing, and if I hadn't been in the process of being devoured alive, it would have been a thoroughly enjoyable route.

As I got to the highest bit of gear, and began the traverse around the corner, the constant midge battle heightened the sense of exposure while I figured out how to make the move. Ah, THAT's it! Feet high, and THERE's the crucial left-hand hold. Right, now to edge round and hope there's a decent exit on the other - ****-ing ****-ard MIDGES! - side. The finishing moves proved to be really quite fun, and protectable if need be, making it a highly recommended route if it wasn't for the ****-ing ****-ard MIDGES!. Building a belay at the top surrounded by a cloud of them was not a pleasant experience, with Lise crying out from below - "AL! HURRY UP! I'M BEING EATEN ALIVE!".

But build a belay I did, and Lise cleaned the route almost faster than I could take in, then I lowered her back down as soon as the last piece was out. A double-quick hurdle down the descent route led to us foregoing the usual rack organisation, it was a case of "just get it stuffed into the bag and let's get OUT OF HERE!". We ran down through the heather, as Lise told me that the macho quartet of burly boulderers had spent five minutes battling the midges, and then beat a hasty retreat calling "Bye!" over their shoulders. Which made me feel a bit better :)

All in all, there's definitely some high-quality climbs up at Stanage End, but I would recommend either going there earlier than late afternoon, or stocking up on insect repellent so powerful it's on the verge of illegal.

Captain Kirk on climbing mountains

This is just so wrong, it's ..... right in a very strange way...

A Spanish Gastronomic Paradise

Well, after a hectic summer at work, and the sudden change of weather from "ooh it's raining! Ooh, it's windy! Ooh, there's a bit of su.... oh no, my mistake, it's raining again..." to "Ok, I admit it, it's Autumn" Lise and I returned to Spain to try and catch a few days of sun-baked limestone, with our eyes on the magificent El Chorro gorge.

However, the weather had other ideas, of which more later...

We discovered an amazing hotel, the Hotel El Juncal just outside of Ronda. It's all very stylish, in a black, white, chrome and glass, Phillip Stark kind of way, so it felt deliciously naughty tramping back in wearing our mud-caked mountain gear, but the staff were very friendly and helpful, and their command of European languages put us to shame.

The main thing, though, was the food. Ohhhhh, the food! It's a gastronomic paradise, with its own vegetable garden and vineyard, and a chef who really knows how to cook. There's no menu - well, there is, but it has no choices, the chef merely publishes what he is going to create - but my god it's good. Favourite dish had to be the Iberian pork, and the curiously-named "sky bacon" dessert. The in-house-produced red wine is really drinkable too. Highly recommended.

Just a couple of things to note about getting there:

The directions on the website are really hard to follow. What you need to do is go to Ronda, then from the big roundabout on the north-east side of town (by the big supermarket) take the El Burgo road (A366, IIRC). Just after the hospital, only a mile or so out of Ronda you'll see a big gate at a little turning on the right. Take the turning, but don't go through the gate, turn left as soon as you've turned off the main road (like, ten yards in) - you'll also see a big white sign a way back from the road that says "El Juncal". Aim for that! It's a shame you can't see the sign from the other direction... took us a couple of hours to figure that one out!

There are two main ways to Ronda from Malaga airport - along the coast and up, or up to El Burgo and across. Either way, the drive is stunning, with some jaw-dropping views, but the road from El Burgo is poor. We couldn't get above 20km/hr for much of it! Stick to the main roads. (cue Brian Glover voice: "stick to the roads, lads - stay off the moors, and may god be with you...")

Spanish Castle Magic

Lise and I nipped away for a week of sun, sea and sport climbing in the Costa Blanca. Well, there was certainly sea, and we managed to get some top rock time in between bouts of rain - for sun, we'd actually have been better off staying in London. But nevertheless, we did some great routes in some fantastically dramatic settings. Sadly, no pictures, as all our cameras got nicked in a burglary, so I'll just have to link out to other people's pages :-)

Puig Campana is the most impressive of all, with some classic expedition-style routes up the main face. Sadly, the weather was never quite good enough early on for us to have a crack at these 10-hour-plus marathons, so we tried the 4.5km hiking route on our first afternoon. We got almost as far as the saddle, before turning back due to time - we really didn't fancy descending the massive scree slope in the dark.
(What IS it with scree? Everywhere it's bloody SCREE! After Jbel Toubkal, I've had enough of bloody scree to last me a lifetime...)

We managed to get a full day-and-a-half's climbing in at the beautifully dramatic Sella, which I guess is the Stanage of the Costa Blanca. Hundreds of routes, single and multipitch, from F3 up to F8c+, and most pretty-well bolted. The setting was absolutely gorgeous, with views that reminded me of shots of Yosemite - great towering orangey rock faces either side of luscious tree-covered valleys.

We started on the easy routes on Techo del Rhino, and they were - well, ok, nothing special, but very polished. So much so that people told us There's a 6a round the corner that's easier than these!. For us, the most enjoyable climbs were right at the far end, in Odra. This sector reminded me of Stanage High Neb - quality climbing, but a nice peaceful sense of being away from it all. Highlights were:

• La vergüenza II - a really enjoyable, technically easy, long, ledgy climb reminiscent of the Bishop's Route at Stanage. Make sure you take at least 12 quickdraws for the route, otherwise like me, you'll either have to skip clips near the top (eek!) or traverse left and finish on the adjacent La vergüenza I


• Con mallas y a lo loco - which Lisa led, but I didn't try, as I'm still getting pain from my broken big toe. She loved it, and it looked scary but a great crack climb, with laybacking, jamming, bridging and a crux that took several attempts to work out. It looked to be a bit of a "bling" route aswell, with lots of people wanting to test themselves against it.

A word of warning - Sella has some BIG ants, like really REALLY big. Practically small puppies, some of them! Be prepared to potentially get stung, as you stick a finger into a small pocket that's already occupied. I found a handy trick was to flick chalk at them until they move :-)

Route of the week, however, had to be Aniversario at Marin. Marin is a lovely calm setting, sun-baked and peaceful, and feels "away from it all" enough for me to do my first ever climbing-without-a-top-on without feeling like a cheesey rock-jock.

Aniversario itself is a really fantastic 5+ route, climbing up the craggy side of a cave on sharp but decent holds, and then getting very balancey and technical at the top as the footholds peter out to tiny nubbins. Lise led this valiantly, but sadly my toe got the better of me and I had to back off the second.

A word of warning - although the guidebook says "it is possible" to top out and scramble down the gully round the side, it feels VERY exposed on the top and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're very confident. Bring some maillon rapides (the bolts didn't have any chains when we were there) and lower off instead, it's just so much easier.

Also well-worth doing is the no-honestly-that's-the-way-it's-meant-to-be-spelled "Jhonny" (4+). It's a two-pitch route going up the corner arrete, with a lovely feeling of exposure as you round a big bulge towards the top of the first pitch. I led this, and had to swallow hard and gird my loins to make these moves, but the climbing is not technical, just fun. The guidebook gives this route three stars and only two for Anniversario, but we think Anniversario is worth three.

All in all there's a massive amount of quality climbing in the Costa Blanca, and we only got time to scratch the surface. Final words of advice -

• most of the routes are HARD, if you're not comfortable at UK 6a and above, then you're probably best sticking to Sella and Marin
• Bring a 60m or 70m rope if you have one, and plenty of maillon rapides for lowering off routes without chains
• If you bring a small trad rack aswell, you'll be able to do many more routes, as lots of them are listed as bolted with some sparse sections, or bolted for 3 pitches and trad for one, etc
• If you're looking for somewhere to stay, as a climber you can't get better than The Orange House. It's run by climbers, it's full of climbers, and there's no shortage of friendly people who'll chat and recommend routes/crags/restaurants, you name it.

Tips for the Toubkal trek

I got a mail from someone in the US who's going to do some trekking in Morocco in a few weeks, and wanted some advice. He found our Toubkal photos on Flickr, so he sent me a Flickr mail.

I started typing some quick notes, and then a few more, and a few more.... until it ended up as a pretty long mail, so I thought I'd reproduce it here. That way "teh Googul" will pick it up, and other people will find it, so here goes:

Our trip was pretty much entirely focussed on Jbel Toubkal, so I can't really give any advice about anything other than that and Marrakech, but here goes - hope you'll find this helpful.....

We wanted to "do" Toubkal because we're planning to do Mont Blanc next year and hopefully go to the Himalayas the year after that. So we first wanted to get some experience of being self-sufficient at a decent altitude to make sure that we'd both be physically OK. Then, with a bit of practice at winter mountaineering in Scotland, via the frontrunners for the title of Loveliest Couple Of People In The World, Dringo Adventures, we figure we're approaching readiness for some "proper" mountaineering.

The main problem I had was the heat. I got some altitude sickness at Sidi Chamarouch (~2300m), with a bit of nausea and dizziness, but actually I think that was probably more to do with being out in the blazing sun all day than the altitude. If you're going up to altitude, you'll need to make sure you drink 4 - 5 litres of water a day.

We were there in May, when the heat in Marrakesh was 40 degrees C, and although the air is cooler at altitude, the air is thinner, so the sun is scorching hot and the UV is more intense. Make sure you wear lots of high-factor sunblock and ALWAYS wear a hat - in Marrakesh, after we got back from Toubkal, we had breakfast on the roof of our riyadh. It was 8:30 in the morning, and I thought I'd be OK without a hat. Nope - I got heatstroke inside half an hour, and spent the next two days in a nauseous daze, taking a cold shower every hour to try to keep my temperature down.

Marrakech is like a rabbit warren of narrow, winding, un-signposted streets with no pavements, where people, cars, motorbikes and donkeys will come at you from all angles, at great speed, with no warning. It can be really difficult to find your way around - if you're lucky, someone from the riyadh will help you. If not, carry a map and check it all the time.

Jmaar-el-fnaar (the main market square) is pretty hard to describe - if you've ever been to Glastonbury festival, it's the same kind of bustling mass of sounds, smells, and people trying to sell you stuff. It's crazy, especially on an evening. Keep your valuables safe, because pickpockets are rife.

...and don't stroke the cats! There are hundreds of them all over the place in Marrakech, and they all look so diseased it's quite distressing.

A general bit of advice for the whole country - it *is* an islamic state, so women should dress "appropriately" - i.e. cover up. Cleavage is a definite no-no, and even bare arms can cause offence. On the other hand, men will shake hands with you a LOT, and are quite happy walking down the street hand in hand. That's just their way...

We weren't so keen on Marrakech, it was too hectic and "in your face" for us - we much preferred the mountains.
In the lowland cities, the people are Arabic, whereas in the Atlas mountains they're mostly Berber, and generally a lot more laid-back. It helps if you learn a few words of both languages, which are quite different - e.g. "shukran" is thankyou in Moroccan Arabic, whereas in Berber it's "barakalaufik" - because the Berber people we met seemed to be quite proud of *not* being Arabic, and prefer to speak their own language :-)

Not many people speak English, except the people who make their living selling souvenirs to tourists. On the other hand, just about everybody speaks French, so if you have passable French, you'll get by fine.

As for getting around, we got a taxi from the airport to the riyadh in Marrakech, with a very friendly driver called Mohammed who spoke *only* French, but who was more than happy to take us up into the mountains to Imlil, to start the Toubkal trek. We also arranged with him that he'd pick us up from Imlil at 2:30pm in 4 days time, and he was there.

You can't buy Moroccan currency outside Morocco, but you can get it at the airport. Likewise, you can't get a trekking map outside the country, so make sure you get one at somewhere like Imlil.

From Imlil it was all on foot. The path was usually pretty clear, and there are obvious stopping / camping points at Aroumd, Sidi Chamarouch and the Refuge du Toubkal. There were also a couple of huts on the way where you could buy cold drinks. It's only *after* the Refuge that it gets tricky :-)

Mules - on the way up, we were determined to carry all our own gear, so we sweated and trudged in the heat with 20Kg backpacks, while muleteers passed us on their mules every half hour or so, saying "you want a mule? you want a mule?" and looked very bemused when we said no. It was hard work without a mule. Very hard! On the way back down, we sent our gear on ahead on the back of a mule, and it was a hell of a lot easier.

Oh, and if you do happen to stop in Sidi Chamarouch, these two guys (wearing mine and lise's sunglasses) - are very friendly, and will talk to you for hours. They run little souvenir stalls, with a lot of overpriced tourist clobber - model camels and stuff - which you might not want to buy, but remember that this is their only source of income, and you're expected to haggle.
If you do happen to meet them, make sure you buy from OMAR before anyone else - he's the guy on the right.
I got my attack of altitude sickness when I was just about to look in his shop, and then when we we on the way back, Lise spent the last of our money elsewhere while I was haggling with him, and he got quite upset. I still feel a bit bad about that, so buy from him first, and tell him I told you to do that - he'll probably remember me :-)

You'll have a great time, especially in the mountains. I also have a friend who went trekking in the Rif mountains in the North, and ended up getting invited on a free tour of a "Kif" factory, much to his delight... although I wouldn't recommend doing that anywhere else... the police are pretty strict

Hope that helps, if you want to ask anything else, feel free - I'll look forward to seeing your pics on Flickr!

Cairngorms Ice Climbing Pics on Flickr

"AAA-aaaal!"
Originally uploaded by Dr Snooks.

Just got back from our weekend of winter mountaineering / ice climbing in the Cairngorms, of which I'll post more later - but we got some great pics, particularly of the Cairngorm Plateau in dramatic sunshine.