Dynamove

100 Pushups - Week 5, Day 1, Column 2

2011-04-12T05:08:00.000-07:00

Week 3 passed without too much trouble. I wouldn't say it was a coast, but I got to the end of the week 3 training plan on column 3, and was feeling confident about attacking Week 4.

No such luck. After 2 failed attempts to complete Week 4 Column 3, I was still falling 10 short on the last set. With others catching up fast, I had to admit defeat, swallow my pride, and drop down to column 2 or be stuck there for another week.

This was much better. I was finally making progress again, and the last set of each day was still tough, but achievable. Once I battled through the last set on day 3 with triceps pumped and pecs a-burnin' (the last 5 or so were just... NASTY!) it was time for an exhaustion test to determine which column to start on for Week 5.

I was ready for this, dammit. All the hard work on week 4 should mean that I'd be racing away, right? Must be good for at least 15 more this time round, surely? Right? Riiiiiiiight?

Wrong. After leaving a completely blank rest day in between, I managed a measly 40. That's only five more than I could do at the start. FIVE? FIVE?? Nooooooooo! You're kidding me! All that work just for an extra FIVE??

Well, it's not so bad, I guess. It still puts me right on the cusp between columns 2 and 3 for week 5, so my self-satisfied feelgood factor (and my fragile masculine ego) isn't completely crushed.

I'd been eyeing up week 5 for a long time, in much the same way as people who walk to the North Pole like to keep an eye on polar bears that are hovering just out of range. It looked hard. Even the programme itself says, at the end:

Week 5 was a tough one, and if you've made it this far, you're getting close to reaching your goal.

Well, having tackled Week 5, Day 1, Column 2 last night, I can confidently say, without a shadow of a doubt - it's brutal!. I could feel the lactic acid kicking into my triceps and pecs earlier and earlier with each set. I needed 35 on the last set to call it complete, and by 25 I was shaking, grimacing, grunting, howling and getting slower and slower. I just about did it, but by God it was close. I took solace in the words of Tim Ferris in The 4Hr Body when describing his preferred strength training regime (one set to complete failure):

To Failure doesn't mean giving up at your first moderately-hard rep. It means pushing like there's a gun to your head.

According to Tim, it's the last rep that makes all the difference - that last rep that you can't complete no matter how hard you push, THAT's the one that triggers your body's muscle growth response. Every rep leading up to that should just be considered a warmup for it.

Kind of makes sense. But my GOD it hurts! :)

I also noticed a couple of things that I need to keep an eye on:

My right wrist has been getting more and more painful as the training goes on
As I tire, my dominant right shoulder tries to compensate for the weaker left side, and I end up leaning over to the left with my right shoulder higher. I should probably do some work to correct that imbalance

I must say, though, that it's having a noticeable effect on my body composition. Having lost so much weight in January (12Kg in 2 weeks) when I got Giardia in Nepal, and my body started to digest its own muscle (see before and after shots - check out the left upper arm skinniness!) it's great to have some definition back again. I have pecs again! And Lise's verdict ?

(with a coy grin) Yeah, it hasn't gone unnoticed...

Yay!

100 Pushups - Day 1 - Initial Assessment #may18_100

2011-03-24T01:38:00.000-07:00

I did my first exhaustion test this morning - 35 pushups in one go. Not bad... according to the training plan that means I start from week 3. It puts me at the head of our little #May18_100 pack, but that just means if I don't stay at the head of the pack, I have teh major FAIL !

I took a video, but it was dark, grainy, and missed off my head, so there's just my tracksuited bum bobbing up and down, like a dodgy late night movie on channel 5, probably starring someone called Shannon (see Bill Hicks' classic "hairy bobbing man ass" sketch) so in the interests of taste and decency, I've decided not to post it. I'll see if I can get a better take at the weekend.

HOW many pushups??

2011-03-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Due to a combination of cajolery on Twitter, I seem to have ended up accepting a challenge - the Hundred Push Up Challenge, no less.

Simply put, you follow the training program with an aim of doing 100 pushups in one go at the end. In our case, we seem to have settled on a slightly less intimidating target - whoever does the most on May 18th, wins.

There's mitigating circumstances, and I'm getting my excuses in early - I cracked a rib playing football a couple of weeks ago - but P Biddy has even beaten me in those stakes:

if I'm starting w/a chronic autoimmune disorder that has put me in a wheelchair, I think you can start w/a broken rib!

- and besides, I'm in, I can't back out now.

Apparently videos are required. This perturbs me. But in for a penny, in for a pound, and all that. I also feel like there's an inexorable link between Brits Doing Dumb Challenges and charity, so for every push up I do on the 18th, I'll donate a pound to .... erm, a charity I haven't decided upon yet.

Candidates that spring to mind are:

- Marie Curie cancer care
- CHANCE
- Shelter
- ...?

All suggestions welcome. Wish me luck!

Everest Base Camp trek day 13 - Lurching up to Lobuche

2011-01-14T19:37:00.000-08:00

We stood leaning on our poles, gasping for breath in the cold morning air at the top of the steep hill directly behind the lodge, right at the start of the trek from Dingboche to Lobuche.

"How high have we climbed now?" asked Lise, in between gasps for oxygen that just wasn't there.

I checked my watch.

"10 metres," I panted, "only 390 to go..."

"Al..." she replied, "....don't do that."

The mornings were becoming increasingly hard, as Lise's panic breathing (Cheyne-Stokes Respiration, apparently) was getting worse, the temperature was dropping and the air was getting thinner. To start the day with a hill like that on top of everything else, just seemed malicious.

Once over the brow, we had a long section of gentle ascent, with spectacular views of Thobuche and Cholatse just the other side of the small Pheriche valley. We started to defrost as the sun hit our backs, and the morning became quite pleasant.

After a couple of hours, we stopped at the small village of Thukla for a tea break at the appropriately named Yak Lodge, where Lise tried to make friends with the yaks in the field, to no avail and to Bagbir's obvious consternation. We sat in the sun, chuckling at the fact that we were drinking tea in the sunshine at almost the height of Mont Blanc. Then we set off upwards.

The guidebook had said "...the hill immediately behind Thukla can be tough..." so I was prepared for a slog. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was the wind. As we struggled in the altitude just to put one foot in front of the other, the biting, icy wind seemed to cut right through all of our carefully layered clothing and make a complete joke of my midweight gloves. The hill seemed so steep and relentless, the air so thin and cold, the wind so vicious, we were having to dig deep into our reserves of will to keep going.

"I can't feel my fingers!" Lise gasped.

"Me neither," I replied, "...or my toes!"

Bagbir looked concerned. "Please brother, every time we stop, make like this," he started punching his fists together, wiggling his fingers in-between punches. We followed, and managed to get just about enough sensation in our fingers to realise how cold they really were.

Onwards and upwards we trudged, stopping every few metres to catch our breath and shake our hands, starting to think that if we couldn't rewarm soon, then frostbite was becoming a very real possibility.

At long last we reached the top of the hill, but still the wind blew. As we stumbled across the plateau into the field of Everest memorials, I was struck by the sight of so many piles of stones, each one for someone who'd gone to climb the mountain and not returned. The cold, the exhaustion and the feel of so many lives lost all piled on top of me, and I choked back the tears as I leant on my poles.

On the other side of the field the path began to descend slightly, and we were at last out of the wind. Before too long we saw the welcome sight of the blue-roofed lodges of Lobuche. Exhausted, frozen, and dizzy with the altitude, we flopped on the benches in our lodges dining room, and two bowls of tomato and garlic soup appeared in front of us. We ate in a shell-shocked daze.

After soup, we had the energy to head up to the room and sort out our packs. On our return, we saw a familiar face in the dining room:

"Bruce! How are you?"

It was comforting to see a familiar face, and to be able to chat freely in English. Lise and Bruce nattered for ages, I read my book and joined in now and again whenever I could shake the altitude stupor.

After dinner, we got out the travel Backgammon set again. I was determined to improve my abysmal record against Lise since we'd picked up the game for the first time a couple of nights ago - won 1, lost 6, a fact which gave Lise some repeated amusement. After the first game, however, Bagbir came over looking interested.

"Would you like to play?" we asked.

"Yes!" He nodded.

There followed an hour long session of increasing deviousness and undisguised joy at "blotting" each other off the board, at the end of which I was 2-1 up. Lise chatted to Bruce about altitude problems and her panic breathing.

We figured it was a good time to call it a night, as the next day was going to be hard work. Just as he left, Bruce handed us four Diamox, saying, "as I say, never take medical advice from some bloke you just met in a lodge, but if this helps you get a decent night's sleep... well, the worst it's going to do is not work, put it that way."

It worked. Lise got a decent nights sleep at last.

Everest Base Camp trek day 12 - Rest Day in Dingboche

2011-01-14T19:34:00.000-08:00

"Human beings just aren't meant to be at this height," said Lise, sitting in front of our room at the Hotel Family, Dingboche, and gazing up at Yet Another Stunning View Of Ama Dablam.

She'd had a bad night, waking up several times in a panic, convinced that she couldn't breathe - a common effect of altitude.

Today's rest day was therefore agreed to be a genuine rest. A gentle 2hr amble up the valley in the morning took us to 4600m, where we scrambled up the start of the huge moraines leading up to Ama Dablam. Another effect of altitude, of course, is that everything looks closer in the thinner air, and though the mountain had looked close enough to touch, we could see that it would be several hours more before reaching the rock. We returned for lunch.

A peaceful afternoon followed, with lots of reading and sorting gear out for the ascent to Lobuche (4950m) the next day. There would be no more hot showers until we returned back to Namche, so we made do with wet wipes.

Everest Base Camp trek day 11 - Carry On Up The Khumbu

2011-01-14T19:32:00.000-08:00

A cold start, with all of our water bottles partly frozen and ice covering the window.

"What kind of nutters," asked Lise, pacing around the dining room to keep warm, "come to the Himalayas in January? I mean, seriously..."

"Seemed like a good idea at the time...." I shuddered.

"You know it's minus four in here?" The wall thermometer said as much.

"Well according to my watch it's a nice balmy 14 degrees"

My watch - a snazzy Suunto job with compass, gps, altimeter, barometer and all the works, was great at everything except the temperature. It had told me it was 18 degrees in the middle of a Cairngorm winter blizzard, and was something of a running joke. In the middle of the night, however, I had checked it just to see, and it had said -2. Draw your own conclusions about the true temperature...

We ate our bowls of porridge hungrily, eager just to get started and stop freezing our nadgers off. I asked the lodge owner for some hot water, ruefully offering my nalgene flask with its half-litre of solid ice in the bottom.

In a slight daze, we set off for Dingboche, our fingers and toes chilled in the early gloom, desperately waiting for the sun to hit our valley. Songs began to play in my head, acoustic power ballads by Frank Turner - the kind Lise refers to as "dog on a string music" - and I began to feel strangely emotional.

The early part of the hike was easy enough, but by 10 o'clock the steady ascent was starting to take its toll. As we entered Pangboche, a pretty, laid-back village in a flat part of the valley, I was feeling dizzy, achy, and sick. I had to sit down.

"Please brother, rest," said Bagbir, his eyes once again studying me for signs of AMS. "I think, if you are not feeling good, maybe we stay here tonight?"

I knew that would put paid to our hopes of reaching Base Camp and ascending Kala Pattar. We would have to cut one of them, or - dangerously - our one remaining rest day.

"I'm OK, just a little light-headed," I said. "In terms of general co-ordination, I'm fine - look!" I danced a little jig, knowing that if I showed signs of becoming uncoordinated Bagbir would probably insist on taking us back down - and he'd be right.

I finished with the classic Bruce Forsyth slap-and-step-forward-with-a-grin. Lise and Bagbir looked at me in silence for a painfully long second.

"I think," said Bagbir, very slowly, "maybe we try one more hour....?"

So on we went, taking lunch in Solame seemingly right at the foot of Ama Dablam. Bagbir had told is that a Korean team had summitted it just a couple of days ago, and just below the top I could see what looked like tracks. Unfortunately neither the camera nor the binoculars could get quite enough zoom to be sure. Bagbir said they climbed on the other side anyway.

As we continued our relentless plod up the Khumbu valley, we found ourselves in a broad flat plain at around 4100m surrounded on all sides by mammoth peaks. Lhotse looked all the more frighteningly huge from this closer distance. We could see Everest's yellow band over the Lhotse-Nuptse wall, Thobuche to the left, with Pumori just visible in between.

"It feels more like we're properly in the mountains now," I said to Lise.

"Yeah," she agreed, "this place is amazing!"

Eventually, we began another gruelling ascent up the final 250m to Dingboche, with the huge scree heaps leading to Ama Dablam on our right. As we topped out, Dingboche appeared to us, plenty of lodges spread out through dusty fields.

We checked in to the Hotel Family, and immediately liked what we saw - a large-but-cozy dining room, a twin room with space, comfy mattresses, and even a private toilet. OK, so it was an Asian squat-style toilet, but I'd been practising my aim, and hell, compared to the last place, this was like the Hilton.

I changed up to clothing level 2 - fresh, thick, Patagonia base layer tights and winter-lined Craghopper trousers. Lise, meanwhile, had well and truly nested, a defiant cheeky grin poking out from behind layer upon layer of fluff - fleece, hat, sleeping bag, blanket, nearly all of it at least partly pink.

"I'm happy," she announced, "I'm not moving!"

Later, as the light began to fade, we moved into the dining room to order dinner. Bagbir took our order.

"How are you feeling now, brother?"

"Good, thankyou!"

"For dinner?"

This was a big test. I'd been pining for potatoes for the last few days, but since I'd got sick, every time I'd ordered them he'd politely suggested that plain rice "maybe better" - sometimes politely suggesting several times until I got the message.

I took a deep breath. "I'd like... the fried potatoes with vegetables and cheese!"

His eyes met mine, again searching for signs of my condition.

The universe held its breath.

"OK"

It was my turn to be happy.

We sat around the stove in the center of the room, warming our hands, swapping small talk with the others - an amiable mix of trekkers and their guides all swapping tales. At one point, a sudden loud bang from the stove made us all scatter with assorted expletives, as a piece of fuel - dried yak dung - exploded in the heat.

We talked to a young sherpa, guiding a solo Japanese client, who was worried about his ascent up to Lobuche (4950m) tomorrow without the usual rest day here. "My boss, he not have time," he said, "he say no."

We felt a little concerned for their safety. It was a sobering reminder that the sherpas put themselves at just as much risk as their clients, and if a client was insistent on ignoring the standard acclimatization schedule, what could they do?

As the evening drew to a close, we turned to bed. Chastened by the previous teeth-chattering night at Deboche, we'd worked out a plan. Before turning in, we filled our Nalgene flasks with hot water drum the kitchen and wrapped them in Lisas thick socks.

I wore my thick base layers and fleece, pulled my microfleece sleeping bag liner around me, climbed into the sleeping bag, wrapped my down jacket around the feet, pulled the provided blanket over the lot, and topped it off with my midweight gloves and beanie.

I woke up several times in the night to take layers off. Still, high class problems and all that.

Everest Base Camp trek day 6 - Phakding to Namche

2011-01-14T19:23:00.000-08:00

I'd worked today out from the map - it would be 3hrs trek to Jorsale with little altitude gain, then we'd probably have lunch there, as after that it would be 3hrs hard slog, 800m up to Namche at 3450m.

And that's how it turned out. After a gargantuan bowl of porridge, we set off at 8am under a clear blue sky. The suns heat grew slowly stronger as we followed the beautiful Dhud Khosi river up the valley, its constant gentle white water gush mixing with the tweeting birds and the clang of yak bells to make a soundtrack so relaxing you could sell CDs of it in a Brighton hippy shop for fifteen quid a time.

Counterbalancing that, however, was our own heavy breathing as we trekked up, down and across wobbling metal bridges to swap sides of the valley.

After about an hour, we began to catch glimpses of jagged snow-capped peaks beyond the already pretty high valley. Bagbir pointed out the name and height of each one as it appeared, and with each successive appearance we felt more like we were actually there - really, genuinely there at last, in the Himalayas of which we'd read so much.

Although the heat was strong in the sun, the air itself was cold and the altitude was already starting to have an effect. Every time I thought I was doing fine, we'd meet an "up" section that left me humbled and gasping at the top. The dry dusty air was starting to give me the infamous Khumbu Cough, and I was careful to make sure I drank enough water. This, however, had it's own side effects.

"Bagbir, I need to go again.... is there a good spot nearby?"

Bagbir, of course, knew all the best spots, and pointed them out to me in the same easy going way he pointed out the rhododendron trees, or the waterfalls.

In Monjo, we stopped at a teahouse for some sweet black tea, sitting on a terrace in the baking sun with a stunning view down the valley, and mighty Kungde in the distance.

"My cousins place," said Bagbir,
with a proud grin.

"Have you got cousins all the way up?" we asked.

He just smiled and nodded.

After Jorsale, the trail got steeper as we ascended towards Namche. Conversation grew thinner with the air, but when we took rest stops, we talked to Bagbir about his impressive 11yrs of experience, starting out as porter, then cooks assistant, then sirdars assistant, then full sirdar. He'd been part of a 2008 Everest summit team, and had got to the south col at 7000m, but had to turn back as his client - who went on to the summit - had used too much oxygen lower down. He couldn't stop shaking his head with a nervous chuckle as he described ascending the Khumbu icefall in a state of utter terror, crossing massive crevasses on tiny ricketty ladders to the constant creaking and cracking of the shifting ice.

About two-thirds of the way up, we came across three local women selling oranges, where we stopped for a refresher and got our first clear view of Everest in the distance.

Eventually, legs and lungs aching in equal measure, we rounded a bend and Namche lay before us, many levels of almost identical-looking white houses with blue or green roofs on steps cut into the hillside, in a manner that made me think of Spanish villa resorts. The views were spectacular - Kungde, Thamserku, and the holy mountain Khumbi Yul Lha framing the village on three sides, with a glorious view down the valley on the fourth.

We checked in to "The Nest", a very new lodge at the bottom of town with a large alpine-style dining room, a broad menu, and - oh joy, oh rapture - a hot shower.

That evening, over dinner, we couldn't help admiring the language skills of the lodge owner as he joked in Japanese with a large group.

"How many languages do you speak, Bagbir?" asked Lise.

"I think... maybe.... 15, 16?"

"Wow! How did you learn all those?"

"No education, just by guiding"

I felt suitably humbled.

Everest Base Camp trek day 5 - Lukla or Bust

2011-01-03T00:35:00.001-08:00

By 12 o'clock, our 7:15 flight was looking increasingly unlikely. Every hour, they delayed it one more hour, and this was the last day we could get out there in time to get to Kala Pattar and back with still one day's leeway in case of delays on the return.

"I reckon we go for plan B," I sighed.

Lise was not giving up so easily.

"Maybe we can get a flight tomorrow and just not go as far as Kala Pattar?"

"It's been 3 days now, and there were people on our first day who'd been stuck for three days before that. We've got no reason to think it'll be any different tomorrow, and then we'll shave another day off the trek, and then another, until we're just going to Namche and back."

"Well we still have to wait until they officially cancel it at 2"

This was true. So we were going nowhere either way.

The exasperation, lack of breakfast and lack of sleep the night before was catching up with me. New Years Eve in Thamel is a deafening affair even six floors up, and no respecter of early morning flights or musical tastes - I had laid awake dreaming of calling, in Marcellus Wallace's fine words, a couple of hard pipe-hitting so-and-sos to go to work on DJ Utzi with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.

"I'm going for a walk," I said.

I set off for yet another tour of the departure lounge - two small but exorbitantly overpriced kiosks selling Pringles for a fiver and an array of postcards taunting me with lurid close-ups of the mountains we weren't going to get to see, plus one smoking room with air so thick it might have been on fire and an array of middle-aged men outside it seemingly performing the 1812 Overture scored for phlegm-hawkers, wheezers and coughs.

On my return I found Lise talking to Bruce, an amiable English chap we'd exchanged a few pleasantries with earlier, who was also waiting for a Lukla flight. He was pretty experienced in the region, and suggested a couple of alternative shorter plans - e.g. from Gokyo, go back via the Henjpo-la and down the other valley.

By 1pm, we were told by the information desk that the flight would certainly be cancelled, but they just wouldn't make the announcement until 2. We sat there dejected as Bruce went off to the ticket desk to change his ticket, leaving us with "So I'll probably see you in Pokhara then!"

After a few minutes of shared sighs and slow head shakes, I rang Yalamber to pick us up once more.

"Just come back through security," he said, "I'm already at the check-in desk"

As I rang off, Lise came over with Bruce, and a slight smirk. Bruce said,

"I've just been offered a chopper for $250..."

Lise and I looked at each other.

"What do you think...?"

Half an hour later we were being rushed through a side door with the chopper profferer heading onto the tarmac with our luggage, but a security guard insisting we go back through security and out through the gate.

Yalamber was looking genuinely worried for the first time.

"I don't know this guy," he said, "check the bill, make sure it's right, OK?"

We were waved through security without even a cursory inspection - the guards were getting to know us by now - and five minutes later, having swiped our credit cards on a windswept flimsy fold-up table by the runway, and checked that the bill was indeed what we'd agreed, we climbed into the 4-seater helicopter and hung on for dear life as it took to the air.

Bruce had warned us that it would be a bumpy ride, so I took the precaution of opening an empty plastic bag in front of me as an improvised sick bag. I looked across at Lise with an excited grin, and made the scuba diver's sign for "Ok?" She just looked back at me with a trembling bottom lip.

The flight was indeed bumpy, but once over the initial nerves, quite exciting. The pilot rode the updrafts as we crossed the mountain ridges - sometimes by a margin of what seemed like just a few feet as he stayed just underneath the thick clouds above us.

Then suddenly, out of the clouds appeared Lukla airstrip, right in front of us. It looks tiny from a plane, but when you're doing a dramatic sweep over it in a chopper from a height of about 10m.... it looks even tinier, and makes you very glad you're in something that can land vertically.

We were greeted by our sirdar Bagbir, a tall thin man in his thirties, with smiling eyes and a constant sideways nod, and his brother Malang, who would be our porter. Malang was shorter and younger, and shy. We said our goodbyes to Bruce and went inside for a cup of sweet black tea and an introductory chat with Bagbir.

"Tonight we sleep in Phakding," he said, "maybe three hours from here."

It was already 3 o'clock, and with sundown around 6, we had to get moving, so once we'd finished our tea we set off. Lise and I put on our backpacks - maybe 6 kg or so each - and felt suitably humbled as Malang strapped both of our duffels together for a combined load of 30kg plus whatever else was in the two smaller bags for he and Bagbir.

At 2845m in Lukla, I was feeling a little light-headed at first, but soon settled into a medium paced hike through Lukla village, noting with a wry smile the Starbucks branch there.

We passed through village after village, peopled with exactly the kind of red-cheeked, white-smiled, huge load-carrying Nepalis we'd seen in countless photos, plus an assortment of unbearably cute small dumpy children in huge woolly hats. Bagbir pointed out apple trees and vegetable patches, and schools being built through foreign aid.

We had to push the pace a little, so there was no time to stop and chat en route, but we did squeeze in a tea break at Bagbir's cousin's house where we were served a plate of Nepali donuts - like yum-yums without the glaze.

"You have a headtorch?" asked Bagbir, with a note of concern in his voice as he eyed the gathering gloom outside.

We finished our teas and set off again, pushing against the tiredness and breathlessness, until we gratefully arrived in Phakding in more or less full darkness, and checked into the Beer Garden lodge.

Our previous reading on lodges in the hills had led us to expect little more than a shed with some bunks, but this lodge had a twin room with a couple of lightbulbs, two relatively comfortable mattresses, and a western-style porcelain toilet across the steps - all spotlessly clean. No heating though, and the night was cold and surprisingly damp after the dustiness of the trail.

The dinner menu was extensive, our Nepali hostess sang a constant ditty in a sweet voice, and after a delicious meal of Dal Baat, we retired. We climbed gratefully into our sleeping bags, thinking that fleece liners were the best invention ever, and were asleep by 8:30, for night of altitude-induced vivid dreams and numerous trips to the loo, up at 6 for the long next days hike to Namche.

Everest Base Camp trek day 4 - Frustrations & Recommendations

2010-12-31T07:19:00.001-08:00

We drove to the airport this morning feeling positive - "THIS time! Yeah!"

Yalamber thought the signs were good as he surveyed the airport car park with a grin - "lots of mountain trips here today"

We rolled to the check-in counter full of confidence - no scrum, that means no delays, right?

Wrong.

"Sorry sir, all Lukla flights today cancelled, I am sorry,"

Bugger.

With a 14 day trek ahead and only 15 days before our flight back to London, it was time to think of plan B.

So after another come-get-us call to Yalamber, and a detailed plan-redrawing session in the Explore Himalaya office, we now have these options:

Plan A
- fly out to Lukla tomorrow (yes, we WILL!)
- trek as far as Gorak Shep, via Gokyo Ri as planned
- climb Kala Pattar as planned, but don't go on to Everest Base Camp & back the next day
- instead, save one day by heading back down that afternoon.

This allows us to keep one day contingency at the end in case we have troubles flying BACK from Lukla. It means we don't get to see base camp, but Kala Pattar is just as high and actually offers better views of the mountain.

Plan B
- if we can't get a flight tomorrow, we drive to Pokhara in the west, and trek to Annapurna Base Camp.

ABC is only 4100m, compared to EBC's 5600m, hence the trek is a few days shorter and less physically arduous, but it's just as popular. We also know we've been OK going to that altitude before (Toubkal) in just 4 days. So it's easier, but therefore less of an adventure.

Still, an ABC trek would still be pretty awesome, I'm sure...

I have to say that Explore Himalaya have been amazingly helpful, especially Yalamber who just radiates an easy-going calm practicality, and the same goes for all the Nepalis we've dealt with so far. Take the airport staff yesterday - could you imagine anyone at Heathrow taking you out to the runway and rummaging through bin bags for a list ticket with you? I'd have had to fill in forms, ring an 0870 number, spend hours on hold, navigate an automatic menu system, etc etc...

And the food - oh, the food! Some recommendations:

- the daal baat at New Orleans (so good Lise had it two nights running)

- Momo - essentially a Nepali version of dim sum dumplings. Delicious!

- the fajitas at the Northfield Cafe (better than any Mexican food I've had in England)

- the coffee at Mandaps

- "Trekking in the Everest region" by Jamie McGuinness / Trailblazers. Everything we've found ourselves asking about Kathmandu so far, is answered in this book.

I'm going to bed now, as we have to be up at 5am for our last chance of a flight to Lukla. With a bit of luck, this will be my last post for a few days...

Happy New Year!

Everest Base Camp trek day 3 - lucked out over Lukla

2010-12-31T02:49:00.001-08:00

"This customer service is amazing," I remember thinking as I joined two cleaners, one bin man and one sharp-suited Tala Air check-in official in a frantic rummage through a small rubbish tip just off the runway, "there's no way you'd ever get this in England!"

Let's rewind a little.

Our 7am flight to Lukla was rescheduled to 9.15, but as Yalamber said, "it's not hard and fast 9.15...."

No kidding. Lukla is one of the most difficult and dangerous landings in the world, and what we didn't find in any guidebook was that flights frequently get delayed or cancelled as they close the airstrip whenever the wind or cloud picks up.

Apparently there had been unusually windy weather up there, and we met several people in the airport who had been trying to get there for days already.

A word here about the internal airport - it's chaos. None of the orderly queues that we Brits seem to default to whenever we see someone behind a counter, here it's good old fashioned Asian Crush. The staff, however, are helpful in a way that if seen at Heathrow would surely be grounds for an instant sacking (and no doubt followed by a strike vote from the union.) When our local helper left us saying "wait here, I'll tell you when to check in" yet an hour later had still not returned, an airline employee tapped me on the shoulder and said "to Lukla? Mr Davidson? We have been looking for you!" (More of him later)

It took until 11am to board the bus for our plane - a tiny twin-prop 20-seater, which we were just starting to board when the walkie-talkie squawked and the cry went up - "Lukla airport closed!"

Cue everybody off, and a further 20mins standing around the tarmac chatting to the others, one of which turned out be Lucie Dumont of Karavaniers, a Canadian guide who gave us some great tips about where to stay in Namche. Two Japanese lads said this was their second day of trying to get a flight, the third for a German group who now only had 6 days left.

Eventually the airport re-opened, we boarded the plane on tenterhooks, and to a palpable sense of nervous excitement we finally took off.

I'd studied the map beforehand, and figured that the best views would be on the left side of the plane - I wasn't disappointed. As our tiny plane rocked and swayed over the foothills, mammoth peaks aplenty came into view, including a spectacular sight of Everest over the monstrous Lhotse-Nuptse wall, tailing its signature plume of cloud in the jet stream. I got several good photos, but they're all on the decent camera so you'll have to wait until I get back and upload them.

The plane was being buffeted by the wind and banking heavily, and also didn't seem to be pressurised. I felt light-headed and got the hot flushes in waves that I've learned signal an imminent digestive revolt against too much altitude too quickly. A glance around the plane at the other faces in various shades of ashen green told me I was far from alone.

Then just as we flew over the airstrip, and we all looked down and thought "oh my God, it's TINY! You can't land on THAT.. and there's a sodding great mountain right at the start of the runway!", the announcement came back from the front - "sorry, too windy, we're heading back to Kathmandu."

The disappointment was only slightly tempered by relief that we wouldn't be going through the legendarily scary landing this time, together with surprise that they had managed to squeeze an air hostess into a plane this tiny.

On arrival back at Kathmandu - the captain signing off with "bad luck gentlemen - such is Lukla!" - at around 12:45, we were told that there might be one more flight today, and we should wait until 2pm, by which point they would either fly or cancel, and we could re-use our boarding passes.

At this point I checked my pocket for my boarding pass, and with a sinking feeling realised it wasn't there.... or in the top of my bag. Oh shit. Not in any of my other pockets either. Shitshitshit! ....and it was with our airport tax receipts and return tickets as well! Oh shit, shite and shinola...

I sheepishly explained the situation to Lise, feeling like a naughty schoolboy sent to the Headmaster and asked "so, why have you been sent to me?" She was remarkably calm and level-headed in contrast to my rising panic, and after a couple more exhaustive searches of my backpack, sent me to throw myself upon the mercy of the nearby gaggle of airport staff, clearly sharing a girly gossip session (although speaking Nepali, the body language of a group of young, same-sex employees on a break was unmistakable).

After just about managing to explain the situation - their English was limited, and my Nepali covers all of about 10 phrases - one of them ran off to speak to someone else, and returned saying "there is no problem, you can come speak to the ticket desk," then walked me back through security to the front.

As they explained in Nepali to the check-in person at Yeti Air, whose expressions of concern and occasional gasps were straight out of a silent movie and should have been accompanied by a tinkling piano, I was trying to explain that I couldn't prove I had been on the flight as I'd lost all of my stubs, when the guy who'd come to find us earlier walked past.

"This gentleman!" I cried, "he knows I was on that flight!"

Although already wearing the expression of someone just trying to get to the end of a long day, he listened intently to the two women, then turned decisively to me and said "come with me!"

He led me at pace back through security and out through a side door onto the tarmac, flagged down a passing bus and diverted it to our plane, and led me onto it where the captain and hostess were hanging out and chatting. "It's already been cleaned," said the captain, "but please, go ahead!"

I searched to no avail, and re-emerged onto the tarmac to see the check-in guy in conversation with two cleaners carrying full bin bags from other planes. He turned to me again, and said "the rubbish has already gone - this way!"

So we marched determinedly over to a small dump of bin bags just off the side of the main runway, and began tearing open the bags.

Which is where we came in.

I shall truncate the rest of the tale - the search was fruitless, and in the end we concluded that the tickets and stubs were irretrievably lost. The last Lukla flight was now cancelled, so the check-in guy took me back inside and up to the main back-office of the airline where some more explaining to the airline manager eventually resulted in an offer to provide replacement tickets for 500 rupees each (a bit less than a fiver) on the condition that our guides wrote a letter promising that they would be responsible if the original tickets were ever used by somebody.

I thanked him copiously, and set off to find Lise, who I now realised I hadnt spoken to in over an hour and must still be sitting by the departure gate wondering where I'd gone.

Practical as ever, she'd retrieved our baggage once the flight was cancelled and was waiting for me by the check-in desk.

"There you are!" she cried, "where did you go?"

"Well..."

We called Yalamber, who arrived half an hour later and, after some intense discussuions with the airline, eventually said that we could get new tickets for tomorrow for nothing. However, the conditions on the return ticket offer were too onerous, and we would have to pay the full cost of one new return ticket, and one nights accommodation for the sirdar still waiting for us in Lukla. He took us back to the Explore Himalaya office where we paid on card and adjusted paperwork, then back to the hotel, where we, frankly, zonked out and slept for three hours.

Fingers crossed for a flight tomorrow!

Everest Base Camp Trek day 2 - Thamel and Temples

2010-12-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

"What are they burning over on that side of the river?" I asked our guide Niraj, as we entered the Pushipatinath Hindu temple complex and the clouds of sweet-smelling smoke drifted across to us.

"Dead bodies," he replied, matter-of-factly.

Niraj went on to explain in great detail all the rituals and complex caste hierarchies encapsulated in the scene before us. How the ten stone plinths were reserved in caste-order from highest-caste right in front of the temple to lowest way off to the left, and the obligations encumbent on the son of the family once his parent dies. As we watched, two funeral pyres finished and the ashes were pushed into the river, where women were washing their clothes and men were picking through discarded rags.

"It's a holy river to us," Niraj explained, "it flows down to the Ganges in India."

One pyre was just getting started on the second-highest-caste plinth, reserved for diplomats and senior public officials, with the highest-caste plinth reserved for royalty.

I in turn told Niraj how funerals in England tend to be very private affairs, with all the mechanics taking place behind closed doors and a family's grief locked down behind a stiff upper lip. Lise, by way of contrast, told of how the richer Chinese families will hire women to cry in public for them.

My lasting impression of that visit was a sense that, despite the rigid caste demarcations, there was something very egalitarian about the whole business being literally and metaphorically out in the open, with diplomats burning just a few metres up the river bank from the lower castes, following the same rituals and very visibly ending up in the same river. Death, of course, being the greatest leveller of all.

Our next stop was Boudnath, a Buddhist stupa dating back to the 7th century, festooned with prayer flags and containing hundreds of prayer wheels, from the small to the size of a room. Every wall was covered with stunningly detailed Buddhist art, ten foot tall wheels of life and mandalas of all descriptions. Upstairs we visited the school of Buddhist painting where the works are produced, and saw the master lama at work, filling in the tiniest of details with a single-cat-hair brush.

The guide explained the painstaking process of preparing the canvas, crushing the stone to make the paint, freehand sketching by the master and then up to 57 days of painting that goes into a mandala, and the richly-layered symbolism embodied in the design. He also talked us through a series of photos of the Dalai Lama spending nearly 2 months producing a mandala from sand, and then, once finished, tipping it into the river. There was something about that which definitely struck a chord with us - the end product being almost irrelevant compared with the process itself. Very reminiscent of our feelings on finally reaching the top of Jbel Toubkal - "right, quick photo then let's head straight down!"

We returned to our hotel in Thamel, the main tourist district in Kathmandu. It's a bustling district of endless small shops with street signs piled high, street salesmen offering you taxis, rickshaws and trinkets while you dodge a miasma of cars and motorbikes and people offering you a "schmoke sir?" every few seconds.

However, unlike Marrakesh, they all accepted a "no thankyou" with good grace (at least the second or third, if not always the first) and the atmosphere has yet to feel in any way threatening.

Tomorrow we fly early to Lukla, and trek on from there. My next post will probably be from Namche on New Years Eve.

Namaste!

Everest Base Camp Trek - day 1 - Kathmandu

2010-12-29T05:33:00.001-08:00

"oh my GOD, Al..." exclaimed Lise as the plane banked south east and we got our first unambiguous view of the gargantuan wall of snow-capped mountains on the horizon to the north of Kathmandu, "I thought they were SKY!"

I am aware, of course, that as insights go, "gosh, those Himalayas - they're quite big, aren't they?" lacks a certain something, but as the unmistakable profile of Ama Dablam towered on the horizon, I was struck - and slightly perturbed - by the thought "that's only about 6850m, which means that somewhere out there is another one that's two whole kilometres higher than THAT..."

Emerging dazed and bleary-eyed from the tranquil bureaucracy of the airport immigration & customs, you are suddenly plunged into a kaleidoscopic chaos of smiling, nodding faces waving name cards at you, offering you taxis, hotels, treks, but even amongst all that I thought the guy wanting a tip for pushing our trolley 20m was a bit much - we thought he was a customs official.

Finding our contact - Yolamber - in a sea of faces and name cards, we forced our way across the road and into his car, and were driven through an onslaught of motorbikes, cycles and horn-tooting cars from all directions through the hectic dusty streets to Thamel.

Yolamber assured us that we would be safe from pickpockets and any other kind of violent crime, but did suggest that we should be back inside by ten, as "night is the time when evil wakes up". I listened intently for any sign of the almost obligatory thunderclaps, howling wolves or diminished organ chords that surely should have followed a sentence like that, but none were forthcoming.

Tomorrow is sightseeing around Kathmandu, I'll post more then.

Test post

2010-12-26T15:47:00.001-08:00

Nothing to see here, move along now....

Oh alright, go on then, here's a pic of the view from halfway up Great Henry at Lawrencefield

Tricks of the Training

2010-08-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

Lise has been training hard at The Third Space recently, and reaping the benefits in endurance. On Saturday - after two fruitless hours stuck in traffic on the M1, edging north towards the Peak until eventually admitting defeat - we went to The Castle where she showed me what she's been doing.

Endurance Training

1) Pick a short, easy route - like, a 4A - and whiz up it on a top rope. At the top, don't rest, but continue on and downclimb it. At the bottom, again no rest, just keep going up, and down, and up and down. Three times is probably about right.

2) Pick a longer, harder route. It should be a couple of grades below your limit, but reasonably long. For me, it was one of the long, vertical, UK 5A/French 6A top-rope routes upstairs by the cafe. Climb it quickly - don't think, just go go go - then lower back down. Rest only for 1 minute, then climb it again. Repeat (if you can!) until you literally peel off the wall and can't even make the first move.

You can gain many things from this. As well as the obvious physical benefit of pushing your endurance limits, I found I could actually continue to climb for longer than I thought I could - even when I couldn't grip anything at all, I could still use my hand as a kind of static hook on some holds. I also found it very liberating to be completely free of any fear of falling, and concentrating on climbing quickly. I tend to over-complicate things in my mind, and over-think the moves when I'm leading - probably fear of falling, even when not conscious - but forcing myself to not think, just go, I found myself making moves I probably wouldn't even have thought of with my usual slow, cautious approach.

Skills Training

3) Pick a really easy route, and climb it using only your left hand. (Tuck your right into your harness or chalkbag strap if it helps). This is not easy! I found that pretty much every move ended up as a deadpoint, but it really makes you think about where your body weight is moving, where the momentum is going to take you, and how you need to shift your feet to compensate. Repeat using only your right hand.

4) Tape your feet together (or clip them together with a carabiner) and climb the route again. It's a good ab workout, and again it makes you really focus on your bodyweight.

So what did we get from this (apart from a satisfying set of aches the next day) ?

Fun - trying something different made the session enjoyable, and a pleasing change.

Focus - it really felt like training, rather than the usual going through the motions, bouldering a bit, having a cup of tea, doing a couple more routes then going to the pub.

yyyyy-YESS!!!

2010-01-28T12:50:00.000-08:00

Sloper dead-hang up to 10 seconds. Yeah!

Bouldering at Idwal Cottage and Caseg Fraith

2010-01-24T04:44:00.000-08:00

On Monday, we set out with the intention of bouldering in the legendary Llanberis Pass, but as we drove up the A4086 in increasingly thick pea-souper fog, visibility was fast approaching zero. By the time we got to Pen-y-Pas, there was no denying it. A quick glance at the stern warning at the start of the Pyg track - AVALANCHE RISK CONSIDERABLE ON SNOWDON, all points - put paid to any residual hopes of ascending above it.

We're not going to be able to get anything done at all, are we? moped Lise, despondency creeping in - she'd hauled herself out of bed for THIS?

..we're going to have to go to a cheese museum or something!

Now I must confess, the idea of a cheese museum is not entirely without appeal - a vision conjured itself up in my head, of a huge prop-forward of a Welsh museum guide explaining -

now THIS close-combat Caerphilly was used as a bludgeoning weapon in the Battle of Bryn Glas, 600 year old, it is...look, it's still got the original hair on it!

- but it was definitely second best.

Well look, I said, while we're here, lets just try going back round to the Ogwen valley, it might not be so foggy round there. Admittedly it was more in hope than anything else, but I figured it had to be worth a try.

Luckily enough, as we passed Joe Brown's at Capel Curig, the fog became less dense, and as we rounded the long bend to get a clear view of Tryfan with its winter coat on, we perked up considerably.

Parking at Ogwen Cottage, we walked a hundred yards or so through the trees to find a beautifully picturesque little crag, with some stunning views of the surrounding peaks:

We had a lot of fun here. The rock was dry, with good friction, and the landings were all flat and level. The lower-grade problems were as good as any at Burbage South, and our particular favourite was "Problem 5", described in the guidebook as eminently pleasurable - and I'd have to agree. It feels a lot taller than it looks in the photos, believe me!

Problem 5 - the eminently pleasurable crack line

One thing to watch out for though, is the low-flying jet planes. The RAF use this valley as a low-flying training run, and on my third and final attempt at this problem, just a few seconds after I'd finally made the nervy committing move to gain the ledge in a numb-fingered, pumped-out whimpering panic, a jet came screaming overhead, a deafening crescendo that got louder and louder and louder as an involuntary convulsing scream escaped me and I felt I was going to have to either let go and fall to stick my fingers in my ears, or suffer burst eardrums and fall anyway. It passed after a couple of seconds, but by god it was loud. I dread to think what would have happened if it had flown over a few seconds earlier, while I was in the middle of tackling the crux.

As the sun began to dip below the peaks, we figured we had about an hour of daylight left, and headed back down the valley to Gwern Gof Isaf farm, to grab a quick look at the Caseg Fraith boulders behind the bunkhouse. The farm owner was very friendly, as was her Jack Russell, who followed us up to the boulders in a typical puppies' frenzy of excitement - Oh boy oh boy oh BOY, there's a ROCK!!! - and even proved a dab hand at scampering up the lower slabs itself, and licking Lise's nose as she was trying to top out.

Again, the rock here was perfect. Rounded yet juggy aretes and laybacks aplenty, but with plenty of friction to make even the tiniest of footholds viable. The best problem we found was straight up a slabby face (pictured) on tiny crimps and pebbles, before thankfully gaining a blocky flake near the top and launching a committing move over the top of it.

We could quite happily have spent several hours here, but our hands were tired and numb, and the light was fading. Definitely worth at least one repeat visit, both crags are highly recommended.

Fingerboard progress - week 3

2010-01-24T03:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't been using the board as regularly this week, as we nipped up to Wales for some actual outdoor bouldering (there's no training like that, right?) but a quick post-run workout last night showed that I'm now up to:

3 x 30-second dead hangs on the jugs

3 x 5-second dead hangs on the slopers

3 x clean 5x5x5 pull-ups on the largest four-finger edges

3 x 3-second dead hangs on the large 2-finger pockets

Getting there, slowly, but steadily.

Bouldering on the beach in.... North Wales???

2010-01-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

It's true - on Tuesday, with the snow still on the summits, and a mid-January Welsh pea-souper in the Llanberis Pass, we discovered the boulders on the beach at Cae Du.

The rock here - Greywacke - was very picturesque and kept making me think I was surrounded by IKEA prints. On the other hand, it was rather less amenable than at Llyn Ogwen, with a distinct lack of friction for our gritstone-accustomed taste. It's probably due to the beach location, more than anything else, but even on the few climbs we could find that were actually dry enough to tackle, I found it quite difficult to trust my feet. There were plenty of large shelvey edges for the hands, it's true, but unless they were actually 90 degrees or less, even they were slippery. Anything remotely sloper-ish, just forget it.

Still, there was some fun to be had. We stuck to areas 1 and 2, as areas 3 and 4 were full of what looked like (eep!) a school club, and managed to induce a minor hamstring pull on the overhung heel hook of Problem 1, Area 2 (V2**), and what might best be described as a brick on Problem 10, Area 2 (V1/V2 ***). The latter was an unnervingly high slab on teeny tiny holds, that felt to my scaredy-cat mind like I would need more than just our one mat to tackle the top half without bricking it. Definitely a good problem to try if you're in the area and comfortable on that kind of thing though.

On the plus side, the fingerboard training is definitely paying off, with my crimps feeling solid and reliable despite having trained exclusively open-handed.

First Weeks With a Fingerboard

2010-01-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

After about two years of constant "canwecanwecanwe?" / "no, you'll only injure yourself" / "but pleeeeeeeeeeeeease", and one decisive bout of steep limestone sport climbing in Spain that made us both admit that we just had to get better finger strength, I finally relented and bought Lise (well, ok - us) a Metolius Simulator Fingerboard for Christmas.

A mere four hours of strenuous screwing later (stop sniggering at the back there) it was installed in pride-of-place above the living room door, and my wrist was ready to drop off (I said STOP it!):

I've been careful to start slowly, and not overstrain myself, but I have to admit that in just over a week, I'm already seeing a real improvement. Enough to make me think it's worth keeping some kind of record of it, and that I might as well post it here for future reference and probable hilarity for you rock gods reading this who probably do a hundred one finger pull-ups just to warm up:

So here goes. All the advice I've read from Dave McLeod and others led me to shy away from crimps and concentrate on open-handed strength, so that's what I did.

I started out doing:

3 10-second dead-hangs, open-handed on the two big jugs.

Then I'd do slow open-handed pull-ups on those same big jugs (slow as in a slight enhancement of Tim Ferris' 5x5 method - 5 seconds going up, lock-off at 90 degree elbow position for 5 seconds, then take 5 seconds going back down). I could do two of these in perfect form, was really struggling by the down-stroke of the third, didn't even start the fourth.

Finally I'd do open-handed dead-hangs on the biggest flat edges (four-fingers) for as long as I could. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that that was all of 3 seconds at first. Eep!

I've been doing this above routine maybe twice a day every other day, for about ten days, and already I've moved up to the following:

3 15-second dead hangs on the big jugs

3 clean 5x5x5 pull-ups on the big jugs, can do the up-stroke of the 4th but can't hold the 5s lock-off yet

3 10-second dead hangs on the largest flat edges

2 5x5x5 pull-ups on the largest flat edges - really struggling at the end of the 2nd, couldn't start the third

1 3-second dead hang on the top slopers

I've also noticed a definite improvement in my open-handed grip strength at the indoor wall, particularly on slopers.

So I'm going to keep up the progress reports in the hope that it makes me keep at it, and gives me a bit of inspiration next time I'm feeling weak.

First Gritstone Solo

2009-08-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-24T03:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

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

A Spanish Gastronomic Paradise

2007-10-29T03:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-28T01:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-22T03:59:00.000-07:00

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

2007-02-07T10:50:00.001-08:00

"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.

You 6a Mother

2007-01-15T03:08:00.000-08:00

It's been a frustrating last few weeks, with some niggling muscle strains in my back and thigh for the last few weeks that just haven't seemed to heal properly and have stopped me climbing at anything like full strength, but yesterday I finally caught up with Lisa and Ant and became the newest member of the 6a club, by completing my first ever 6a boulder problem! Woo- as I believe they say in the States - Hoo!

If anyone is reading this from the States, by the way, it's a UK Technical 6a grade. According to this grade comparison chart, that could be anywhere from 5.11a to 5.12c (US), or 6b+ to 7b+ (French), or "a real sod" to "a right bugger" (Yorkshire)

It was no. 41 in the "Cave" section at The Castle, behind the two free-standing boulders "Lust" and "Envy" on the Mezzanine level. It had a sitting start, then went straight backwards over the ceiling, around the left-hand wall, and then straight backwards over the ceiling (crux) under the fingerboard to finish. Admittedly, it was probably one of the easier 6a's I've attempted - the holds were comparatively juggy for a 6a, but it was quite reachy, to the point where it was beyond Lise, at 5'6".

It took me four or five attempts to figure out the crux (hint: it's all about the toes of your right foot), by which time my elbow tendons were twanging white-hot and my abs were starting to cramp up - there were two separate "hang on to the ceiling with your finger tips and swing your legs from that side all the way over to this side, and just hope you've done it hard enough to reach the toe hold on the opposite wall" moves. I'm sure that kind of move must have a proper name, like a "dyno" or an "Egyptian", but I'm buggered if I know what it is - maybe I should just arbitrarily invent a name, like.... a "monkey-lunge" - yeah, that'll do for now.

Anyway, on the sixth attempt, I did the whole problem cleanly, start-to-finish, and collapsed onto my back, grinning like a village idiot and slowly getting my breath back. The trick is, as ever, to not hang around too long! With the crux being right by the lockers where everyone warms up, you get a small audience of other climbers going through their introductory contortions and watching you - raising eyebrows, nodding sagely, grimacing in sympathy at your failure to glue yourself to the ceiling by the sweat on your fingertips and suppressing a smirk when you land in a graceless, cursing heap. The trouble is you can never tell whether they're smiling because they're admiring your technique and trying to learn by watching your mad uber-l33t cl1mbz0r sk1llz (d00d!), or because they're quizzically bemused at the thought that anyone could actually be struggling with such a "punter" problem. (I mean, 6a??? Come on, that's practically a ladder! What's this guy's next "achievement" going to be - climbing the stairs to bed?) They could even be the setter of the route, inwardly shaking their head and thinking "no, you fool, not that way.... your FEET man! Sort yor FEET out! Muppet..."

After getting my breath back, and a couple of congratulatory hugs from Lise, I felt so flushed with pride that I proceeded to make a complete pigs arse of a "mere" 5b top-rope route, but I'd done my major achievement for the day and I wasn't going to let my abject failure to achieve anything else for the day stop me smiling about it :-)

So whoever set boulder problem number 41 on the Mezzanine - I think the ticket said it was some whipper-snapper who goes by the name of "Doors Off", whoever that might be - thanks for a great route, it's challenging but it never felt intimidatingly out-of-reach, and it's a really enjoyable climb. You've made a frustrated punter very happy!

Sonny Trotter's First Trad Ascent of Cobra Crack (5.14)

2006-12-19T02:13:00.000-08:00

Nice video of Sonny Trotter's first "free" (i.e. trad) ascent of Cobra Crack at Squamish in Canada. He climbed it 30-40 times over a couple of years, before finally doing the first traditional ascent.

It's a beautiful bit of climbing, really controlled and technical, with lots of finger jamming. There's a thread over at UKC discussing the clip, and what UK grade it should be, using Dave McLeod's first ascent of Rhapsody as a comparison. Although Cobra Crack looks to have a reasonable amount of protection, the odds
of being able to hold yourself to the wall long enough to be able to place it are minimal!

This picture shows the overhanging crack at more like its true angle - yikes!

Lise Cracks 6a!

2006-12-18T03:09:00.000-08:00

After a mammoth 5hr session at The Castle yesterday, Lise finally completed her first 6a. Yay!!! Not the one we'd all been trying - that one's still waiting to be solved -
but one just next to it. Ant followed and finished cleanly too. I'd have had a go myself, but I'd completely knackered myself out battling with a brute of
a 6b layback route on the feature wall ("Catacombs") opposite, which I
didn't finish, but gave a valiant attempt at.

I've been conscious of the fact that my layback / crack work is a weaker
aspect of my technique - probably associated with doing most of my
climbing inside, as it's rare that you get pure layback cracks on an
indoor wall, yet outside at Stanage they're everywhere. Also, I've been
really enjoying features-only routes recently, as I like the freedom to decide
which holds you're going to use and how you're going to attack each problem,
rather than being constrained to a particular set of colour-coded holds
which dictate a given set of moves.

So I started on a 25m-high features-only route upstairs, on a large column
that thins out into a tufa at the top. It was rated 5b, and I did it fairly cleanly,
only stopping for a rest at about 20m when I got an attack of Elvis leg. I then tried a ridiculous 6a in the corner with an outrageous
dyno that I couldn't get past, and moved downstairs to the catacombs
- my favourite bit of the centre - where I threw myself at the features-only problems until my fingers just wouldn't work anymore.

My forearms still hurt today, it's almost painful to type, but it feels....... good.

Eyeing up the Red Tags

2006-11-20T04:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a bit of a milestone for me - I made my first attempt at one of those tantalisingly elusive red-tagged 6a routes. (At The Castle, they use blue tags for 4a-4c routes, green tags for 5a-5c, and red tags for 6a+) It was a hilariously inept attempt, it must be said - I only got just over halfway, and it took me nearly fifteen minutes and a couple of disturbing pings in my trapezius muscles to get that far, with several failed attempts at passing the first overhang.

But nevertheless, I felt quite satisfied at making the attempt at all, considering that just six months ago I was feeling similarly proud of nervelessly leading 4c. Nowadays, I'm comfortably solving probably 90% of the 5a routes I attempt, plus maybe 70-75% of 5b's and around 50% of 5c's. It's definitely encouraging, and I put it down to increased confidence just as much as actual technique. IMHO, climbing is as much a mental sport as it is physical. I still get days when I just can't focus, and for some reason the nerves come piling back... usually it's when I haven't been climbing for two or three weeks.

Correspondingly I've found that the more I climb outside - and particularly the more I lead outside, the more confident I become, and the more I consider the adjectival grade (VDiff, Severe, VS, etc) to be the most reliable indicator of a routes "do-ability" for me. I've even taken to trying to train myself to judge a route by walking around The Castle looking for a route that looks like fun, but do-able - and only then looking at the technical grade to determine if my on-sight appraisal was correct. It comes in very handy when you're climbing outside without a guidebook :)

Southern Sandstone - Strange Stuff!

2006-11-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

On Monday we took a trip down to Harrison's Rocks for my birthday (yay!) and a first experience of climbing on soft southern sandstone... and very strange it is too!

The rock is SO soft that it's seemingly permanently covered with a thin layer of sand, from constant erosion. The venue has a couple of hard and fast rules due to the softness of the rock:

NO TRAD LEADING
Top ropes or soloing only
NO running your top ropes over the edge
Make sure that you extend your anchor with slings if necessary, to avoid the rope eroding the rock (yes, really)

Luckily, there's some good bolts on many of the routes, making top (bottom) ropes a breeze to set up. All the routes are short, most about half the height of your average Stanage route, and not much higher than an average boulder problem at the Castle.

One point I should make - it's REALLY hard to find unless you've been there before! We eventually sussed it out after about an hour of driving around near Eridge station. The trick is to go behind the station car park, and there's a very narrow road with some used car lots & garages and things in it. Go down there, and keep going for about a mile and a half or so.... then there's a small and easy-to-miss entrance on the left with a small sign for "Birchen Wood".

Don't keep driving up and down looking for a sign that says "Harrisons Rocks", like we did - the "sign" referred to in most directions that you'll find is actually a sheet of A4 paper with the word "Harrisons" written on it, that may well have fallen down or folded itself over in the breeze. Look for the "Birchen Wood" sign instead! And if you reach a triangular junction with Station Road, and a sign that points ahead to Groombridge, you've gone a couple of hundred metres too far!

Once we eventually found it - about 2pm - the short November day meant that our climbing time was limited, and we didn't manage to get hold of a guidebook so we were climbing truly "onsight". But we still managed to get some good routes in.

Pick of the bunch was what a helpful passerby told me was called "Root Route 3" (5b **). This one's a right sod! Fun though :) I must have hung around for nearly fifteen minutes on this one, searching for holds that I was sure had to be there - and they were, eventually, they just... well... took some finding...

Also, there's a route in the crack to the left that we both did, and reckoned it was probably about 4b / 4c. But the helpful passerby told us that was called "Open Chimney", which apparently is just 2b! If anyone can shed some light on this, please do!

More photos are on Flickr

Gratuitous Gritstone Goodness

2006-10-20T03:13:00.000-07:00

The aches and scrapes of gratuitous gritstone goodness have subsided enough for me to type about what we got up to last weekend in the Peaks, so here goes.

On Saturday morning, we dropped Lise in Hathersage to meet the MountainGirl crew, and - pausing briefly for much-needed coffee at the fantastic Coleman's deli - Ant and I headed up to the Edge.

Looking grim and imposing in the early October fog, it still felt like we were back - we headed for the very first buttress by the car park to induct Ant into the arcane mysteries of anchor-tying and climbing call sequences. After about an hour, with Ant fully indoctrinated into the Cult Of Malisms ("..always ask yourself, does it work? Is it safe? Can ah improove it?") it was time for him to try his first outdoor lead.

We chose Fire Curtain (VD), on the grounds that it was
a) short
b) only a VD
c) close
and
d) right next to an easy descent route, so that once he had tied his nachor and shouted "safe!" I could dash round and up to check it before seconding.

It's a thoroughly unremarkable route, but a good one for your first trad lead for the reasons above, plue it's out of sight of the hardcore elite climbers further down the crag, gleefully soloing E-umpteens as if they were stepladders.

Ant lead it without any problems, placed his protection really well, and tied a nicely equalised anchor at the top, and came down smiling, but said "I think that's about as hard as I want to lead today..."

(yeah, right!)

So off we toddled to find something a bit more interesting for my lead. After a frustrating couple of minutes trying to get started on Crack and Corner (HVD 4b ***), but failing miserably on holds as smooth and slippery as ice, we settled on Black Hawk Hell Crack (S 4a ***).

Stanage being as popular as it is, just as I was getting myself psyched up and sorting out the rack, someone - from a scan of the logbook at UKClimbing.com, it might have been Owen W-G - nipped in ahead of me and solo-ed up the damn thing, nicely deflating my ego before I started... but he did shout down the very useful nugget of advice - "There's some threads! Bring slings!". And there were indeed some excellent threads at about 3/4 height, just before the tricky finish. It was a really great route, up there in the enjoyability stakes with Flying Buttress in my book. As I belly-flopped over the tricky top-out I was breathless and pumped, but grinning like an idiot and feeling rather chuffed with myself. Ant comfortably seconded the route and likewise, came up over the mantle with a huge grin on his face, breathlessly enthusing, "what a great route!"

Encouraged by a solid second of a Severe, Ant reckoned he was up for trying a lead at that grade, so for the last climb of the day we chose The Bishop's Route (S 4a ***) - a meandering 25m expedition that thoroughly deserves its 3 stars. I was almost tempted to suggest that we did it as a multi-pitch, with the first belay on the obvious ledge behind the tree, and in retrospect this might have been a good idea - if you do it in one, once the leader has got past that ledge you can't see him, and the increased friction from the rope dragging round the corner can't be fun at the top.

But it was still a great climb, another route that, like so many at Stanage, leaves you flopping breathlessly over the mantle in a great ungainly slapping of palms, but chuckling at your own lack of grace and grinning like a cheshire cat at the exhilaration of the route you've just completed. Ant lead it confidently and capably, and still managed to tie a decent anchor despite the distinct lack of big boulders at the top. As the light started to fade and the mist began to descend once more, we hobbled our aching, abraded bodies down the crag and headed off into Hathersage to meet Lise after her bouldering course, for the traditional post-crag pint-and-pie-of-the-gods at the Old Hall Inn in Hope.

Aftermath

2006-10-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

I ache. Everything aches. I can hardly lift my left arm. Peeling myself out of bed this morning required a Herculean effort, but it's a satisfied kind of ache. The feeling of knowing that you pushed your body about as hard as it could go, but you had a great time doing it.

Lise was on her bouldering course all day Saturday, so Ant and I set off for Stanage popular end, with the aim of getting Ant comfortable with leading trad, placing his own protection and tying safe anchors. I'll type more when I can move my fingers again.

Goody New Shoes - LaSportiva Katanas

2006-10-09T03:34:00.000-07:00

My old faithful 5-10 Spire's have finally had their day. They were a great shoe for the beginner, but after almost a year of heavy use, they've all but lost their friction and they're curving up badly at the toes. As I'm starting to push higher grades - I'm regularly bouldering 5B problems now, and I'm pushing 5C - the holds are getting smaller and smoother, and I need a more technical, pointy-toed shoe in order to progress.

So after an agonising wait until pay day, I finally bought a pair of LaSportiva Katanas. The shop assistant said that a lot of people end up with Katanas because you can go really really small before they get too uncomfortable, and he was right - I'm a UK size 11 in normal shoes, and as of yesterday I am now the proud owner of a pair of size 8 Katanas.

They certainly made a difference straight away. I cracked a 5A screw-on-smears-only boulder problem that has been bugging me for a while, and felt confident enough to try an arrête-and-features-only 5B toprope route. I got about halfway up before admitting defeat - I think laying back against an arrête is a technique I'm going to need some tutoring in - but compensated by going straight up a 5B bolt-on route on the same rope, without much trouble.

On the other hand, I found I was almost fighting against the shoes for flat smearing. They're very concave and pointy, which makes them perfect for tiptoeing on tiny holds, but it was quite hard to get enough of the sole in contact with the surface to get a decent flat smear. Excellent friction when I did get good contact, though. So much so, that I almost had problems switching feet on holds, because the foot I was standing on had too much grip to slide it off.

And painful? feck me are they painful to walk in! They're so pointy-toed, I had to walk on the sides of my feet, looking like a ricketts-stricken coal miner. I also found I had to take them off while belaying, to restore the circulation to my tingling toes. Mind you, I'm sure that's entirely down to me choosing to go so far below my normal size, and I'm expecting them to relax a little after some more use.

I'm sure I'll get used to them soon, and where better to test them out than good-old Stanage next weekend.

How to tie knots - with animations

2006-10-04T01:47:00.000-07:00

I just found a very handy guide to tying some common climbing knots over at Grog's Climbing Knots. Each one is explained in words and animated step-by-step - a great reference if, like me, you're just getting started on "proper" trad climbing.

Dan Osman - 400ft speed solo climb

2006-09-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

The late Dan Osman speed-soloing "Bear's Reach" on Lovers' Leap in California. It's a 5.7, which roughly equates to about a 4b in UK technical grade, but still.... it's a jawdropping feat of nerve - or utter stupidity, depending on how you look at it.

I remember telling Mal Fraser about this video on our outdoor climbing course, and Mal's response was typically pragmatic:

Mal: "Dan Osman...... hmm....American lad, is he?"
Me: "He was, yeah"
Mal: "Was? Well there you go then."

Says it all really :)

To Stanage

2006-09-26T03:08:00.000-07:00

We've been absolutely run off our feet recently, and not had as much climbing time as we'd have liked, but Lise has been practically bouncing off the walls with barely-contained glee about her upcoming Mountaingirl Bouldering Techniques Workshop in (where else?) Stanage on Oct 14th. Looks like a great course, and the chance to learn from some of the best women climbers in the world is one not to be sniffed at. So I'll be travelling up with her and doing some regular climbing with the rest of the usual suspects while she's learning the tricks of the trade.

Depending on how brave I feel, I might have another go at the truly evil Right Twin Crack, which reduced both of us to gibbering defeated wrecks last time we attempted it.

Edmund Hillary's 16mm Footage of First Everest ascent

2006-09-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

I just got sent this link to a truly fantastic video on Google - Sir Edmund Hillary's 16mm footage of the first successful ascent of Everest. Sadly it doesn't include any footage of the final summit ascent - IIRC in Hillary's book I believe he says that they didn't take the 16mm camera on the summit bid as it was too heavy, but there's some fantastic footage from the days when mountaineers wore brylcreem and thick chunky sweaters, and contemplated tricky routes with a few knowing nods over a pipe. Great stuff.

Washout in Wales

2006-09-07T01:43:00.000-07:00

Last weekend's sojourn to Wales for a weekend of multi-pitch climbing ended in a complete washout. The weather was unclimbably wet, windy and - well, Welsh all weekend, and we eventually admitted defeat, returning home a day early.

It got off to a bad start just south of Manchester, when we realised that we'd forgotten our sleeping bags. "Oh, we'll be alright" we thought, "we'll just buy a couple of travel blankets from a service station..." (shudder)

When we arrived at Dolgam campsite just after 9pm, it was cold, dark and raining. We set up the tent in record time and piled in for the night.

I don't think I've ever had such an uncomfortable night's sleep. The rain and wind got worse throughout the night, with the tent bowing in us frequently, and without the sleeping bags we could hardly stay asleep for more than five minutes at a time. I lost count of how many times I woke up and just wished desperately for morning.

Once dawn finally broke, and the farmer woke us up for his money, a quick look around the windswept and sodden campsite showed an array of people hastily packing their tents back into their cars and escpaing to a B&B - that is, providing their tents had actually survived the night. Some didn't - so we took one look at each other's faces, and made a quick, sharp exit ourselves.

As we drove up through Llanberis Pass, searching for a B&B, visibility was down to no more than twenty metres. When it did eventually ease off enough to venture outside, we tried a recce up to the Tolkein-esque landscape of Cwm Idwal, home to the famous climbing sites of Devil's Kitchen, Suicide Wall and our intended target, Idwal Slabs. But with the cloudbase seemingly just a few metres above us, and what felt like the whole of Llyn Idwal coming at us horizontally, we again had to admit defeat, and return to the Tyn-y-Coed to watch the England match, nurse a medicinal pint or two, and indulge in the best post-mountains recuperative meal on the planet, their legendary Shoulder of Lamb.

What doesn't kill you....

2006-08-07T03:28:00.000-07:00

I've been nursing a shoulder injury for a couple of weeks - my right shoulder popped out, as it often does, when I threw a football back to some kids outside work, and it's been painful since then. I've also had a tendency to get twinges and gripes in my elbows.

When I went back to the climbing wall last week, I found I was being ultra cautious and over protective of my shoulders and elbows - but this was actually helping me climb with better technique. I was really focussing on keeping my arms straight to avoid unnecessary tension, and making sure of my feet to avoid shock-loading my elbows.... and almost without realising it, I cracked an overhanging 5a boulder problem that had been eluding me for months. Then it dawned on me - I should have been climbing this way all along. Caution and care were giving me a smoother, slow-and-steady style of climbing, as opposed to the brute-force, upper-body-intensive style that I'd been using up until my latest injury.

Emboldened by this success, I decided to cautiously see how far this new style would get me, and I beat a 5b route on a top-rope yesterday afternoon, without too much trouble. Admittedly, it probably wasn't the hardest 5b I've attempted, and I still struggled with a fiendish 5a later on - but even Lisa also had to admit defeat on that one, so I'm not too worried :)

Martin's back from the alps

2006-08-02T02:14:00.000-07:00

DSC_0840
Originally uploaded by cassiocassio.

Good to see that our climbing buddy Martin Storey got back safely from what looks like a very cool trip to the alps. He's got one of those insanely shiny digital SLR cameras, and takes some great shots - of which this is just one.

Good Guidebook For North Wales?

2006-07-31T04:35:00.000-07:00

We're thinking of nipping away to North Wales over August Bank Holiday, to get some climbing in around Llanberis. We've previously done a days climbing at Holyhead mountain and another day at Tryfan Fach, but we fancy exploring Idwal Slabs, or something similar. We'd like to get some multipitch climbs under our belt, and we're probably looking at a grade span of VDiff to S/VS at most.

So we need a guidebook. We really love the Rockfax series - especially the big colour photographs, which make a huge difference to the ease with which you can get your bearings on a crag - but they don't seem to have one for that area.

Any recommendations?

Freaky feet

2006-07-18T02:01:00.000-07:00

Lisa has had to take a week or two off from climbing to let her toes recover - her rock shoes are so tight that her big toes are starting to bend inwards quite severely, and are becoming painful. Anyone else get this, and can anyone offer any suggestions on how to cope with it?

We're Jammin'.... hope you like jammin' too

2006-07-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

Gritstone Hands!
Originally uploaded by Dr Snooks.

One of the big differences I've discovered between "inside" climbing and outside climbing on gritstone is that the nature of gritstone - lots of wide cracks, minimal jugs - requires a lot more jamming than I've been used to.

Jamming, for the uninitiated, involves putting your hand into a crack and then making a fist, so that your fist fills the crack and provides a wedge that you can use as a hold. You can also jam with just your fingers.

On our first visit to Stanage I wasn't really expecting this, and consequently I floundered on some routes (e.g. Twin Cracks, which frankly scared the wossnames out of me) that technically should be within my abilities.

This time round, however, I was forewarned and forearmed (wince), and used fist-jamming quite comfortably, just like any other technique. As a result, I led a "Severe 4a" route on my first climb of the weekend - Hiker's Crack - with a smile on my face the whole way. Jamming even felt like fun - but it sure takes it's toll on your hands...

Kinder Suprise

2006-07-11T00:09:00.000-07:00

Freaky contortion
Originally uploaded by Dr Snooks.

Another great weekend in the Peak District - this time we went for Upper Tor at Kinder first, before popping in to Stanage Popular for a quick one or two on the way home.

I led "Hiker's Crack" (S 4a *) on Upper Tor, which was a really nice route - after every couple of tricky moves, there was a convenient ledge to stand on while you get protection in. One of those climbs that makes you sweat and grimace, but I never felt in serious danger and got to the top with a big satisfied grin.

Lise led Pedestal Wall which was not so nice - it was technically easier, but it was much less satisfying.

We nipped into Stanage for a quick attack of Leaning Buttress Crack in a howling gale. This got tricky, and I found myself getting inadvertently wedged in behing the gap in the buttress. Fun route though.

The photos are all on Flickr, and on YouTube there are a couple of videos of Lisa and Kelsey seconding Right-Hand Trinity at Stanage, the last climb of the weekend.

My First New Route!

2006-06-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

Well lawks, crivens, and possibly gadzooks aswell - turns out that Not-Holly-Bush-Gully is indeed a hitherto unrecorded route! In our complete inexperience and inability to make sense of the definitive Stanage guidebook, we stumbled across possibly the only square-inch of Stanage that hasn't been climbed and recorded decades ago.

See full discussion on UKClimbing.com

So now I get to give it a grade - I'd say it's VDiff 4b as the finishing move to get onto the top plateau is a bit hairy, because the only bit of protection is quite low down, and there's nothing to grab, so it requires a flat-palming friction move - and most importantly, give it a name.

I'd previously said that the first new route I put down would be called Too Much Rock For One Hand but it somehow just doesn't seem appropriate here - the climb is quite short, if a little hairy.

Suggestions so far include:

"Als Brown Pants"

"Wu Tang Clan"

"Golly Hush Bully"
because it's not Holly Bush Gully after all

"Bob Hoskins"
because it's quite short but surprisingly hairy

"Chastity Belt"
because there's only bit of protection, but it's crucially quite low down

All suggestions gratefully received :)

I'll Name That Climb In...

2006-06-26T04:06:00.000-07:00

Not "Holly Bush Gully"
Originally uploaded by Dr Snooks.

Can anyone tell me what this route is called?
We thought it was "Holly Bush Gully" at the time, but having got back and looked around the photos on UKClimbing.com, it's quite obvious that it wasn't Holly Bush Gully at all. In fact, I've scoured the definitive Stanage guidebook again and again, and I can't figure out which route it is...

Picture and notes here

If you stand looking at the obvious large slabby traverse of "Fairy Steps" ( from here ) then it's literally just round the other side of the buttress to your right. From the top plateau of it, we could see the whole of "Fairy Steps"

So can anyone tell me the correct name for this route, and let me correct my logbook? Or have I done the unthinkable and unwittingly put down a new route on Stanage on my very first climb outside? Surely not...!

Any help appreciated

Ten Things We Learned From Climbing At Stanage

2006-06-21T03:18:00.000-07:00

Gritstone climbing is very different to gym climbing
Inside at the climbing wall, it tends to be all about finger tips - hooking your fingers over smaller and smaller holds, clinging on for dear life to steeper and steeper overhangs - whereas on gritstone, it's mostly rounded edges. There's often not much to hold onto, and it requires a lot more attention to balance and body position, and a lot more friction moves and flat palming.

Northern grades are hard!
Of *course* they're hard - they're Northern! :)
We led routes classed as "Severe" and "Very Severe" in Wales without too much of a problem, but the Stanage routes seem to be at least one, if not two, grades harder.
For instance, a route like "Right Twin Crack" at Stanage, classed as VS, was just terrifying. I tried to lead it, and got as far as the overhang but ran out of holds and places for protection. I tried to traverse over to the left crack, which is apparently just a VDiff, but couldn't get a hold and couldn't get any more protection in. Stuck there, balancing on one foot jammed into the crack but not actually standing on anything, cleaving desperately to the rock with a left-handed fist jam while I tried in vain to get a wallnut into a crack that was just out of reach, with my muscles running out of strength and my nerves screaming "YOU'RE GOING TO FALL AND GO SMACK INTO THAT WALL" at me, I had to admit defeat. Lise then tried to complete the climb, and although she's certainly a better and braver climber than me, she couldn't get any further, and returned back to the ground saying "That's just NASTY....".

Scouting around the UKClimbing.com logbooks for this route yields the following comment :
"Absolutely Horrible one of the Hardest VSs I've done."
Nuff said.

Falling outside is much more scary than inside
At the indoor climbing wall, every route is either bottom-roped, or if it's a lead route, it's already bolted. Consequently, you KNOW that if you fall, as long as your belayer is paying attention, you're going to be OK. Outside, however, if you're "trad" climbing (i.e. placing your own protection), you're completely dependent on the resilience of that protection. I've heard enough horror stories of falling climbers ripping 1, 2, 3 or more bits of protection out before finally coming to a halt, and consequently even on short routes like Holly Bush Gully, if you can only get one bit of protection in, it really makes you think hard before making that big lunge over that overhanging capstone.

Two half-ropes makes a lot of sense for zig-zaggy routes
Climbing with two half-ropes rather than one full rope is a good way of minimising rope drag when your route zigzags, or involves a traverse. Needs a little bit more focus on rope management, but it works.

The guidebook will give you subtle hints
...and they'll usually be very understated. For instance, the v-shaped groove on "Tier Climb" is described as "troublesome" - it's not bloody kidding!

ALWAYS pay attention when belaying!
Belaying can get a bit tedious, when everyone is nervous and making extra sure of every hold before moving on - but there's no excuse for not paying attention. Your climber could fall at any point, with no warning - especially on the mostly-jugless gritstone of Stanage - and short routes in conjuction with scant protection opportunities could mean that a fraction of a second of your reaction time is all that keeps your climber from a painful reunion with the ground.

Practise your rope techniques
It's easy to get rusty between outdoor climbs on key skills like making a safe anchor, tying good knots and rope management. We took a couple of hours in the evenings before Stanage to practise these techniques, just tying into the kitchen table or even hooking slings around our fingers, and practising the calls - and it helped a lot. When you get to the top of a route, it's not the best time to be thinking "so, how do I do this again...?".

Always put a name on your climbing calls
On a busy crag with lots of people around, there are a lot of "Safe!" calls flying around - if you can't see your climber, how can you be sure it's them? Just putting your partner's name on the end of every call (e.g. "Safe, AL" "OK, you're off belay LISE") can help avoid a lot of misunderstanding, and hopefully avoid the dreaded "You're off belay" when you're still attacking that overhanging capstone

The Old Hall Inn in Hope does the best steak pie ever
see? ...and the cottage pie is pretty damn good too.

Hardhurst Farm on-site cafe does a perfect climbers breakfast
It's one of those cafes that doesn't have a menu - you just order what you want, on the understanding that it's going to consist of the traditional English breakfast staples - bacon, sausage, egg, and burnt crunchy bits :) And you can have the whole thing in a sandwich.

Stanage Photos Are On Flickr!

2006-06-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

Al escapes the groove on "Flying Buttress"
Originally uploaded by Dr Snooks.

We had a great weekend climbing on Stanage Edge, and we've finally got all the photos up on Flickr, in the Stanage Grit group.

More to come on this later

Couple of videos from Stanage

2006-06-19T03:12:00.000-07:00

I took a couple of quick videos at Stanage, and stuck them on YouTube here

Campsites for Stanage

2006-06-12T03:22:00.000-07:00

We found an alternative campsite for our trip to the Peak District : Hardhurst Farm

Showers, a nearby pub, a cafe on site for breakfasts - luxury!

I did try to book into Stocking Farm campsite, which looked to be nice and close to Froggatt Edge, but the nice old lady who answered the phone said (and I quote) :

"So who'll be occupyin' these tents then? Are yer married couples or what? Cause this is a Christian site, an' I don't take gentlemen and ladies sharin' unless they's married!"

So Hardhurst Farm it is :)

Nice Rack

2006-06-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

It was Lisa's birthday on Wednesday, and I bought her as full a rack as I could afford. I set myself a budget, and got the best I could within that budget - and I'm pretty pleased with the resulting list:

A set of nuts, sizes 1-10

5 screwgate karabiners

5 quickdraws

3 slings, 1 x 30cm, 1 x 60cm, 1 x 120cm

In conjuction with her friend buying her a set of hexcentrics, sizes 3-9, I think that's a pretty good starter rack. We could maybe do with some longer slings, for setting up belays, and we'll need helmets - but then you have to go and try helmets on before you find the one that's right for your head.

We're now itching to try these out in the Peak District at Stanage Edge, where we're going next weekend..... but North Lees campsite is already full. Anyone have any recommendations for a good climbers campsite, near to the crag?

Post-Mountain Improvement

2006-06-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

At the climbing wall on Friday night, I noticed a marked improvement in my lead climbing since Toubkal. I don't know if it's down to confidence, technique or fitness, but it was quite noticeable. My usual nerves were almost absent, and easily conquered - I was leading 4c routes without any real trouble, and when I did get stuck, I just calmly stood there and worked it out, without getting knackered while I did so.

I think it's more down to confidence than anything else - having got through our unsuccessful summit attempt when we ended on the wrong route, and had to solo climb our way out of it feeling very exposed, even on a not-too-steep face, then a 20m wall with a rope didn't seem like a big deal at all, however much more steep it may have been.

I've also seen several other people around t'intarweb report increased aerobic fitness after spending time at altitude then returning to normal oxygen levels, but apparently it returns back to normal after about ten days, unfortunately. Bugger....

Toubkal Videos on You Tube

2006-06-05T03:36:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie - I've uploaded some videos from the Toubkal summit day to YouTube.

There's a couple of clips of the best way to descend icefields, a summit panorama, and an intense electrical storm over Marrakesh.

Back from Jbel Toubkal

2006-05-31T04:48:00.000-07:00

Me on the summit of Toubkal
Originally uploaded by Dr Snooks.

We've just about recovered from our ascent of Jbel Toubkal, the highest peak in North Africa. At 4167m / 13,665ft high, and seeming to consist almost entirely of frustrating loose scree, it's a veritable graveyard for ankle ligaments and hiking boots.

I'll post a detailed report later, but for now, here's the photos on Flickr