Month: December 2008

Well I really can’t talk about climbing all the time, so i thought today I’d offer some light entertainment from my Brother, who is trying to make it as a stand up comic. I went to see him compare a local comedy night in Bournemouth, when I last visited home, however he makes regular journey’s to London and other comedy clubs/nights across the UK. For me though the funniest thing I have heard was his “internet Single Mum”. I think it made it onto Colin Murray’s Black Hole on Radio 1.

If you missed it is here in all its live glory. If you’d like to hear more of his comedy then he has a regular slot of BBC Radio Solent, and his YouTube page is here. PS don’t listen to the Jason Donavan Joke if you easily offended!

Hope it brings a smile!

Well if the weather near you was anything like it was in North Wales today, then the only excuse not to be outside was injury, illness or death. Even I couldn’t fake one of those and despite an 8.30am start I still forced myself out of bed before lunchtime. I don’t know whether it was the company, destination or weather that kept up my enthusiasm for escaping the confines of Llanberis or a mixture of all three, either way the morning found me travelling down to Craig Doris on the Lleyn Peninsular, .

For anyone one who has heard tales of loose rock at Gogarth, then it is generally accepted that the Lleyn makes Gogarth look solid, and parts of Craig Doris make the rest of the Lleyn look like a kids play park. The real question is why would anyone climb there if its that loose. Well to a certain extent it is the ultimate climbing adventure within 10 minutes of you car. Quite often it is a total juxtaposition at the bottom of the cliff, where radiant sunshine and picture perfect sets of waves crashing into boulder beach make for a utopia. Half way up the cliff it is a different story, as the situations you can get yourself into are totally wild, as long and committing pitches mean that as well as a full adventure rack you need to have packed your cahooners.

Some people can’t get enough of the place, although it had taken me over two years of absence to return to the crag. The sheer power of the climbing experiences it offers, often stay with you for a long time and I for one get the feeling that if I play here too often then the odds get shorter and shorter. Its like playing Russian roulette over and over again, every time there is a 1 in 6 chance of carnage, but the fact that you keep rolling the dice means that eventually the gun is going to go bang in your face.

Despite this the climbing is great, if an acquired taste. However like rotting cabbage brie, if you have the taste for it there’s nothing finer. Unfortunately I am still injured (see the top excuses), so was just photographing Sam and Matt today, who eventually got stuck into a dare I say it a classic of the crag Absent Friends. Coincidentally the first ascentionist phoned me just after I got back in, and filled me in with the history of this route. The absentee in question when the route was first climbed was Ed Stone. Who whilst I never knew him, was a strong and much like figure of the Llanberis climbing scene during the rock and dole years of the late eighties onwards. The routes position and quality seemed a fitting tribute to the man.

Sam and Matt had a hard time on the route, but given its been impossible to get out climbing due to the weather, I think they did alright on the aging fixed gear. After Matt got to the first peg and backed off with ‘illness’, Sam then stepped up to the plate and pulled it out the bag by getting higher before his guns gave out. Managing to free the rest of the route between resting and occasionally falling as holds exploded. It made me think about the dirty issue of style of ascent. Now the style police would have said that their ascent was simply not one or given it french free, dogged, yo-yo etc.., as there were rest, falls, and as many ‘tactics’ as we could find (I include myself as part of the ascent, even if it was only as a supporting role) .

Many years ago I visited the Czech republic, and was introduced to a different ethic, whereby an entire team head out, and by hook or by crook an ascent is made. This can include standing on shoulders of other (combined Tactics), resting, aiding, even free climbing is allowed. The main aim of the day appeared to be to laugh at everyone else antics as well as your own. At the end of the day you hoped to have got up a route, but if you hadn’t, as long as you’d been having the most fun was all that was important.

Whilst I sympathise and understand the need for a style of ascent police at the top end of our sport. After all how else are you going to know whether climber A is better than Climber B? For every other Tom, Dick or Harriette at the crag surely they are less concerned with the art of ascent and more interested with whom they are climbing with and enjoyment they have. I remember reading somewhere, maybe even on an Internet forum, “I climb for fun, it is a hobby after all”. Remember “the best climber is the one have the most fun!” (who did say that? Bridwell?)

If you want to set the proverbial spark to the flame then there is nothing more flammable than mixing mention of BMC, Bolts and mixing it together with an Internet forum like UKC. A particular classic yet done to death thread was re-ignited when Jack the UKC editor innocently put fuel on the embers when placing a news item that covered the BMC announcing a second round of applications from bolt funds to the Better Bolts Campaign.

I swear that the UKC user johncoxmysteriously must have written a programme that flags up any thread with the word bolt in it. As the original new items is timed at 15.32 and his the first reply 15.33 which sums up his belief well, ‘WTF is wrong with these people? What on earth is their mandate for encouraging – worse, paying – for people to litter the countryside in this way?’

I guess you could say that John doesn’t like bolts, he apparently guards the Internet like a latter day Ken Wilson. Which to a certain extent is a good thing as a counter point to any argument, especially one done so fanatically, really is helping the other side win. The sensitive nature of the subject is probably highlighted by the facts that not one, not two but I think four BMC employees, not mention several ‘active’ volunteers, got involved with the arguing with John and a couple of other supporters.

Whilst it is all well and good the likes of John having a go at bolts, bolting, bolters and BMC policy it is unfortunate that the BMC is a democracy, and that the majority of members that get actively involved at area meetings voted in favour of bolts. Although there are some caveats to their supply with terms like ‘like for like’.

One argument is that the re-equipping is taking place only on the harder routes, however there has been many easier route re-equipped across the UK from Portland to the peak and back across to North Wales. Where the thread really got funny was when the BMC representatives wade in, and it became a bun fight. It was kind of a shame because John is an intelligent guy who doesn’t miss a trick, hence I am trying to use my words carefully, because rumour has it he is a lawyer. So once the BMC representative start to attack his arguments then he attacks back. Even if his ideas and thoughts aren’t in keeping with the majority you’ve got to like his enthusiasm, god loves a trier after all!

It just seems that this particular debate happened a few years ago now, and John either missed it or failed to accept that he lost that particular fight. People alway get heated because if your an activist for the replacing of bolts you know how long they take to place, as well as all the hard work of facing off a minority like John. Conversly if you put your money were your mouth is and actually go out and remove bolts from where you don’t agree with, you know how much effort it takes.

I have sat in both camps, removing a bolted aid route from Parliment House Cave, because no one else seemed to want to take responsibility for keeping Gogarth Bolt free, and actively re-equipping the Slate quarries and all the criticism that goes with it. Basically you often end up in a lose, lose situation

Well I spent a quiet day knocking together a short video of a climbing in the slate quarries. All the footage was atken several years ago now, but includes an amazing solo by Neil Dyer of The Untouchables a F8a arete. The edited isn’t flawless, but I don’t think it’s too bad for an afternoons work.

I hope you enjoy!

This is a fairly common situation for even the most experienced of climbers, as the pressure mounts on an ascent the ability to maintain that good and efficient footwork and technique is lost. There are a few climbers who can stay cool, calm and collected in the most difficult of situation, and it takes a lot to rattle there cages, however most mere mortals are blessed with healthy dose of self preservation. To a certain extent you need to train yourself to switch off or ignore this natural reaction to stressful situations or at the very lest learn how to use it to help rather than hinder your performance.

Whilst the mechanism for the stress may be different, in that being pumped may lead you to think that you are close to falling off might be the ‘stressor’, or simply being run out a long way from gear may have a similarly stressful effect. Whatever the ‘stressor’ the effects are a stimulation of what psychologist refer to as the Hypothalamus Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) axis. Often this is associated with a certain amount of worry or cognitive anxiety, and the results of the HPA axis stimulation is physiological arousal, that we often experience as somatic symptoms. These symptoms are numerous and include increase heart rate, butterflies in your stomach, sweaty palms or jittery feeling. In fact a whole raft of physiological changes that we evolved for a fight or flight response.

Modern sport psychology has look at how this can have effects on performance, and quite often this has included looking at the issue by using a climbing task as the stressor. There are two suggestion as to how that stress effects us the first is the conscious processing hypothesis, that basically says that the stress causes addition thinking load on a brain that only has a limit capacity for thought. When you reach a certain capacity you no longer make the movements automatically, instead you have to consciously think through every move, and in essence revert back to being a beginner. It is often referred to as paralyses by analysis.

A second theory is that of processing efficiency, here the hypothesis is that the additional cognitive load makes you process movement less efficiently. To compensate for the loss of movement efficiency you increase the effort you put into the task, which in climbing will lead to a vicious cycle where if you were pumped you worry and grip harder and become more pumped.

So what can you do about reducing the effects of stress? Well there are several things you can do but everyone is different, so what works for one person, simply won’t be effective for another. The first thing is that higher levels of confidence can buffer against the effects of stress. The second thing we can do is find a way to relax, as relaxing helps counter certain somatic effects of the HPA response to stress. A third strategy is using self-talk to stop and counteract the worry and cognitive anxiety.

In terms of footwork and technique sometime a mantra can help deflect the thoughts away from the stress, and towards good technique. So if you find yourself losing you footwork technique, start says “Every foot hold counts”, “Drive with my feet”, “My feet are solid”, “I am solid”. These mantras will help fortify you technique and remove the focus from the stressor!

IOC Olympic Museum / Allsport / Getty Images
A gymnast competes in the rope-climb at the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece

Several months ago now the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC)announced that it had been recognised as the the international governing body of competition climbing. Whilst this might seem like it has paved the way for climbing as an Olympic sport there is still much work to be done, in order to see climbing in the Olympics.

First there is an certain amount of political mess left in the the wake of the IFSC, as the UIAA was until recently considered the a international federation for Alpine pursuits like climbing and mountaineering. However their work was many in the domain of ‘real’ climbing rather than the ‘artificial’ competition climbing. Whilst I don’t know the exact catalyst, at some point the IFSC split from the UIAA.

At present the BMC expresses that it is ‘warm’ to the idea of having climbing in the Olympics, however, as the national representative body for mountaineers and ski mountaineers the BMC has a wider remit than simply competition climbing. Sadly though the BMC seems unable or unwilling to throw its total commitment behind a bid to get at least climbing in the Olympics for reasons of not being able to promote climbing. It might seem ridiculous to some people, but it is a BMC policy to only promote climbing to existing climbers. Which means that promoting an Olympic bid might well be seen as going against that policy.

When researching this I found that climbing already has an Olympic history, when in 2006 the UIAA were granted permission from the International Olympic Committee to run a competitive event in conjunction with the Turin Winter Games. It was possible this event that lead to the IOC recognising climbing as a sport. Previous and more interesting than that was that mountaineers have already been awarded Olympic medals, in awards similar to the Piolet D’or. It was decided in 1894 that at each Olympics a gold medal would be awarded for the best mountaineering achievement in the previous four years. The first medal was awarded 1924 to the British Everest Expedition where the whole team was honoured. Over the next few Olympics several medals were awarded for mountaineering including the first ascent of the North Face of the Matterhorn.

Eventually, the Olympic foundation felt that mountaineering wasn’t appropriate to honour, and we arrived at the situation we are in today. Now interestingly when I chatted to a guide friend of mine we start to chat about the possibility of not only indoor sport and bouldering competition, but also ice climbing and ski mountaineering races. I was unaware that people raced across the alps, but imagine an event as long an arduous as the marathon, but staged in alpine terrain. The words amazing came out of my lips, way more interesting than watching a bunch of emaciated climbers struggle up and improbably steep piece of fibre glass.

Which begs the question of if climbing goes through the process, which will undoubtedly be long and expensive to get into the Olympics the sports are kept in only if they are popular with spectators, both in the stadium and on the television. The problem that climbing faces is that whilst climbing is exciting for the participant, unlike events that have head to head races where observers at home have the jeopardy of will there country or chosen athlete qualify and/or eventually win, climbing simply doesn’t have that.

To make climbing gripping for the audience, we might have to design events specifically for the Olympics, bouldering might well be the answer, although a dyno competition might well be as interesting as the High Jump, unfortunately it might be hard to build a Big Wall to have a speed climbing event up!

Carrying from last nights blog about old climbing films, I remember that for a presentation a few years back I ripped off a very old climbing film and brutally cut it down to 4 minutes. The film was shot by the legendary climbing photographer John Cleare, and as such the angles are a testament to his ‘style’ which captures not only the climbers but the architecture of the climb. The film was shot on ‘old school’ film, none of this video, miniDV or digital capture, and non destructive non-linear editing.

The very filming of it would have had a considerable cost in the developing and film costs alone, then the film would have to be cut and spliced by hand. A sound track recorded and added. Things that I can do in an afternoon on my laptop now, would have be a slow, tedious and manual job, that if you got it wrong were not as simple to rectify, as hitting the undo or Apple-Z buttons. What you get is one well thought out piece of quality film rather than a series of bedroom production companies knocking out a vast quantity of Amateur Hardcore.

If you like to see old school films on a variety of subject, then you can access the British Pathe archive online via www.itnsource.com. You have to register, but when you do there are a host of old news and showreels that were shown before films in the cimema. In particular I like the film of the dinowic slate quarry’s when they were actually work, as well as some very early mountain rescue footage from around North Wales. Pure genious!

Anyway I have put the edited version of The Climbers here. Not sure how long it will stay up for, as I don’t own the right for it. DMM did pay for the restoration of the film, and have shown it at several Film festivals over the years, and as such deserve the credit for saving this film from slipping away into the dustbin of history.

When I first moved to Wales my house mate brought the Jimmy Jewel video Total Control, in this throw back to the 1980’s when VHS had made it possible to film on a budget. Alan Hughes early forays into this media had hints of utter brilliance with characters to like Johnny Dawes in Stone Monkey, Gogarth and of course Total Control. I hadn’t seen this short film for several years, but went round a friends for dinner tonight, and watched the original film in the original format (VHS format), as an aperitif.

I made me think how long it will be until the younger generations forget the VHS/Video media, and it gets left to the annuals of history along with Betamax, tea strainers and C90 compilation tapes. Trying to make some of the younger groups I work with believe that there was a pre-internet, pre-mobile phone, pre-computer age is hard enough. Anyway in the distant times before we had electricity and desktop editing, Total Control was THE climbing video of it’s generation. Staring the late great Jimmy Jewel, who made a name for himself soloing many routes that still cause a degree on difficulty by today’s standards.

In the original edit, rather than the more modern ‘director’s cut’ which is apparently ruined by a Jim Perrin voice over, rather than the original John Cousin commentary. Jimmy Solo’s a selection of north wales classic route that are very aspirational, the fact I have managed to climb all the routes often several times, and still can’t see how Jimmy stays so cool throughout each ascent, says a lot about the man mountain. Sadly jimmy life was taken when a slip whilst down climbing an easy route, but that is the wager you put down every time you solo.

Anyway the film is a classic, a must see, I believe that Alan Hughes has put a compilation DVD with Total Control on it. Now before all the young climbers complain about the sound track, bear in mind that it was recorded in one take, at the local ‘silent cinema’, where the organ player saw the film once and then played whilst they watched, like back in the good olde days. If you’d like to buy the directors cut on 80’s Birth of Extreme at V12 outdoors

Often in climbing we here of daring ascents, often through second or third hand accounts that then get passed on like rumours through an office, and before long Sally’s having an affair with Frank in IT, and what is her husband going to do if he finds out?

Rumour becomes a fact and then that fact becomes either a myth or legend depending on whether it is good or bad for the individual at the heart of the myth. If we look at two well known climbers Dunne and Dawes. You might argue that whilst legend has fuelled Johnny Dawes mythical status in climbing, for John Dunne the opposite has occurred.

Everything positive I have heard about Dawes has been positive, whilst Dunne has struggle to do anything right if I am to listen to the ‘rumour’ and third hand stories. The problem is though that these rumours are unconfirmable, unless we were actually there the details are lost the instant they happen.

One problem comes from what NLP calls first access, which refers to the fact that when something happens around us, even before we feel, hear and see it our mind will have already filtered that information, and with each telling of the story the details will be altered. Like a constant case of internal Chinese whispers.

I once sat round a table with Johnny Dawes, who recited the first ascent of a desperate Gogarth route, the story was intense and detailed. Everyone was enthralled by the tale. When he finished, Trevor who had sat through the story turns to Johnny with a wry smile and says “Johnny, you lying B*&%$!@, I belayed you on that route’.

The chances are the story was a true one, but happened at a different time on a different route. The problems is do you trust the storyteller, were they there, and if they were do they remember it accurately? Remember its all rumour, myth and legend!

I have been busy today trying put together a short video on rope rescue for climbers. That concentrates on escaping the system, which is a skill that if you are going to go on to climb multi-pitch route, or in serious places like sea cliffs then you will need to learn skills like this. In particular even just being able to be able to lock off a belay plate could free up your hands to help yourself.

I once turned up to a rescue where the belayer hand been holding onto the rope for dear life, not wanting the casualty to fall any further for over an hour because he couldn’t lock a belay plate off. The belayer had to wait for others to come to his aid.

The video is here, and there is a short article on cautionary tales about climbing accidents here.