Month: January 2009

As a Llanberis resident for several year now I have climbed more than my fair share in Vivian Quarry, as the closest piece of rock to my home, it is possible to be there within minutes from the hub of the modern climbing world, the ground up coffee bar in V12.

As part of Padarn Country Park, and home of the Slate Museum, and Lakeside Railway, Vivian quarry is a focal point in the village. Dog walkers, tourists and local families wander around here and often look up at sight of a climber scaling the seemingly blank rock.

Vivian Quarry moved into climbing folk law when Stevie Haston stole that fabled knife from Pete’s Eats and cleaned his way up Comes The Dervish, one of the most famous of all slate routes and one that is attainable by many. This route has been attributed to starting the Slate Boom of the 1980’s, and you can’t mention the history of this route without bringing up Tom Jones’ immortal words to a security guard, ‘Its Ok man, we’re experienced rock cats’, as he was about to make the third ascent.

What Vivian has become known for is some stellar climbs that are quick and easy to access from Llanberis. Often people climb a route and lower off in a pseudo sport climbing fashion. However, during re-equipping some of the routes I realised that there was an overlooked enchainment that I dubbed the West Face of Vivian and having linked all the pitches over two days believe it to be better than White Slab on Cloggy, mainly because it is sunnier, drier and right next to the road! It has since received and in a day ascent, and is probably better that way.

The route starts up Mental Lentils which is often one of the first routes people climb on Slate; easy, reasonably well protected and approximately 30 seconds from the car park make it suitably popular. The route was first ascended by Paul Barbier, aka The Mental Lentil, a name acquire due to his eating habits during the early years of the development of the quarries. Paul once told me he only ended up living in Llanberis because he miss the bus to Bangor, and ended up stranded in the village.

After the warm up you are faced with the diagonal crack of Monster Kitten, a few years ago I had an day of climbing easy extremes in the quarries, and went to finish the day off by climbing this route. I had become particularly cocky and nonchalant during the day, and knowing the route well I cruised up to the long step to a good hold. Missing the foothold completely I felt like a right twat as I rocketed down the slab!

Topping out here you are on the long forgotten Dwarf in the Toilet level, interestingly this route is named after a particular accommodating small person in the toilet of London Pub, and further conformation of Redhead’s depravity and humour. The exit from here is the slab is Too Bald to be Bold, and is one of the poorer pitches on this outing, however with the addition of a bolt on a ramp above the hard climbing allows easy access to one of the great and forgotten pitches of the quarry, Turkey Chant where a memorable hanging belay above a seemingly bottomless groove gives a true feeling of exposure, something of a rarity in the quarries.

Lowering off onto the conscience level gives the feelings of a big wall route, where pendulums and abseils are used to link the path of least resistance. If you feel particularly fresh at this stage then you can take in a couple of the routes on this great slab. Its developer Mike Raine had a challenge of his conscience when bolting this slab originally, however some of the run-outs will have you questioning more than your conscience. Two routes that are good and echo the general feel of the West Face is Is It a Crime? and Mike’s newer addition The Full Monty.

Most peoples calves will be on fire by here, and will opt instead to head straight to the Dervish slab to tackle that uber classic route. Where if your calf muscles aren’t pumped they soon will be such is the way of ‘The Dervish’. The only new climbing on this enchainment is The Missing Link pitch above the belay of the Dervish, and is pretty scrappy, and I would recommend that you only climb it if there is no one below, as traversing to the pitch will often dislodge some loose scree. Despite its scrappiness it does open up the whole west face link, turning a series of single pitch routes into one long multi-pitched outing.

A random lower-off in the middle wall allows another pendulum/traverse across to the Ritter Sport Level and the final pitch of the West face of Vivian. Now you can climb one of the classic slabs here like The Madness or Two Tone/One Step beyond. However to give a suitable finale then I recommend Ritter Sport a steep crack that gives the calves a suitable rest, before a final thin slab leads to the final lower off.

Well back in 2003 DWS had finally gained momentum from a small fringe activity to one of the mainstream activities, illustrated by the growing size of the festivals that had been arranged. Now you can even get a rock fax guidebook to the best places. This video includes footage from Connor Cove, and Roscolyn. Including an onsight ground up new route climbed by Johnny Dawes, leo Houlding winning a speed climbing competition and some absolute nutter jumping off the top of Electric Blue (and no it wasn’t a climber, just some kid from one of the local caravan parks!)

Just wondering whether anybody out there has got an old mobile phone they would be willing to send me, my phone finally seems to have given up the ghost. I just thought a few people might even have a stash of old antique phones. I currently have a Nokia 90 ton brick phone, with no camera, so pretty much anything that will make a call and send text messages would be an improvement.

Basically I am in the market for anything that is either a. free or b. very cheap that will take my sim card. One of you might have a something laying around and collecting dust? I am morally bankrupt so if you’ve jacked a phone off someone and need to get rid before the five-O track you down, then I’ll ask no questions;-)

If you want to contact me to discuss terms best to contact me via my snowdonia mountain guides website

A typical view of badminton, delicate and gentle

Anyway I was sat in watching the One Show last night, probably a habit I picked up on the back of Strictly Come Dancing, due to the lovely Irish presenter. It was a particularly random show as one of the Bee Gee’s was on talking about 50 years of said band. During the show they went back to his old room in Manchester, and there is a keyboard in the corner of the room, so the Bee Gee says ‘the keyboard wasn’t in there when I was growing up’ and the present replies, ‘That’s a bit of luck you would have been in your room playing with your organ all day…’

Anyway I couldn’t stop laughing for five minutes after that, so you can imagine that later that evening when someone asked where the cock was, I nearly wet myself. Not as much as the receptionist of the sports centre was when I asked for a badminton bat!

Now I don’t think I had gone through puberty fully when I last played badminton. I was obviously fitter back then, as I had assumed that it was a sport for girls. To a certain extent it had a similarity to hop-scotch in that only the girls present seemed to understand the scoring system and who should be serving. To say that I spent an hour blindly chasing a cock around probably isn’t the best thing to admit to but that is what it seemed like.

My worry that girls would be better than boys at this sport was quickly confirmed when one of my opponents started to fire the cock at my head with startling accuracy. I then remember that this particular girl was just as deadly with snowballs, and start to realise why there is a route in Vivian quarry named after her! So after a few direct hits my reactions sharpened up and I manage to dodge the cock in a matrix style, with the whoosh of the cock as it narrowly misses my ear.

Now by the end of the first game I was a sweaty mess, by the end of the hour I had fallen on my arse about 20 times, inadvertently attempted to do the splits five times, and well and truly had my arse beaten by a bunch of girls hitting a cock at me. The best thing was every time you miss, fall on your arse or do something else stupid, everybody can have a laugh at your expense. To that end I hope that the people I played against got good value out of me, as half the time my racket appear to have a gapping hole in the strings.

Now that should be the end of the story, but after a night sleep I feel that I have been sodomised by an entire commando platoon, and then beaten savagely by a bunch of pigmy horses. Why does playing badminton, make you hurt so much? It is meant to be good for you!

The true badminton, aggressive and hard hitting!

Well I was following home tractor tonight, and if it wasn’t for the fact i was stuck behind it for 5 minutes I wouldn’t have noticed that Mammut the manufacturer of some of the best performance mountaineer clothing must be branching out into farm machinery. As you can see from the mixer below!

Anyway if you’d like a new accessory for your tractor then visit this mammut, but if you’d prefer a fantastic set of thermals for the winter season then this mammut will help.

Mammut’s latest and innovative thermal underwear advert

West Face of Everest

In mountaineering news this week, are the preliminary results from the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition. In this ground breaking piece of applied research which took measurements from over 200 people on the trek to Everest base camp, rather than the usual technique of making subjects endure hours and weeks of confinement in a hypobaric chamber to simulate the effects of high altitude and the associated physiological adaptations. Alongside this larger test, a smaller group of people were tested progressively higher on the mountain and have shown that some people are capable of withstanding the lowest ever levels of blood oxygen ever seen in conscious humans.

One of the reasons for the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition was to try and find a reason for the difference in people abilities to adapt. “The findings suggest that the amount of oxygen alone isn’t the secret to physiological success. Other factors could be how much oxygen a person’s haemoglobin can carry, or the efficiency of the cellular factories known as mitochondria, which use the oxygen.”

A further arm of the research is the genetic factors of adaptation, that follows on from Cynthia bealls work on looking at the DNA of Tibetans and other highland dwellers that points towards a major gene being responsible for the amount of oxygen a single red blood cell can transport around the body.

Despite all this research it is likely that the whole process will be multi-faceted, and whilst genetics may well make up a part of the acclimatisation progress, in terms of mountaineering where anything except the highest mountains are attainable by the majority of climbers, all this research might do is help us understand the mechanisms behind these individual differences. To examine this we need to look at how humans adapt to altitude.

The reason we have to adapt, the graph showing the reduction in the partial pressure of Oxygen with height gain

To understand the extreme adaptation to altitude you have to follow the series of physiological events that happen as we lose the levels of oxygen we experience at sea level. The first sign of hypoxia (lack of oxygen) is a change in the acidity of our blood. When this change in pH is detected the initial response is to increase our breathing and heart rate to counteract it. If a few hours down the line your body is still under stress from low oxygen levels, and the associated elevated level of blood acidosis level then a bicarbonate feedback loop in the kidneys known as the renal response kicks in and we start to get rid of blood plasma to concentrate the haemoglobin (Red Blood Cells that transports oxygen) in the blood.

In terms of how each person differs then things like the tidal volume of the lungs (The amount of air we take in with each breathe), our VO2Max (general fitness level) or maximum heart rate will potentially add variation to the speed and level of adaptation. Also people differ in their levels of red blood cells (haemoglobin) at sea level which of course will effect us when at altitude.

Our bodies go on changing and in an attempt to maintain cerebral function blood flow is increased to the brain, this leads to the swelling of the brain and in extreme situations the onset of High Altitude Cerebral Oedema (HACE). There is research to show that some people are more likely to suffer from cerebral or pulmonary oedema, if they have had it before. In fact modern randomly controlled trials have included people with medically diagnose HAPE being given medication to combat it and then fired up to altitude to see how effect the drugs are. This research has lead to showing that Diamox, Dexamethazone and Nifedipine can be used as a prophylactic against Acute Mountain Sickness and HAPE.

The next adjustment we make with altitude is a metabolic response where we realise Erythropiotin or EPO from the kidneys. Now EPO is the drug that Tour de France cyclist use to increase there red blood cell count, along with the chance of having a stroke, without the need to train at altitude. It is virtually impossible to trace as it is naturally occurring, the only way it can be detected is by measuring the red blood cell count, above a certain level and an individual is deemed to be cheating. At altitude this is perhaps my favourite piece of the acclimatisation process, as it shows how marvellous we as humans are at adapting, as not only does the kidney release the EPO the bone marrow has moved EPO receptors to the surface of the cells in anticipation. As a result the body starts to produce more and more haemoglobin, increasing the efficiency of moving oxygen around the body.

If the exposure to altitude is prolonged then a our muscles can lose up to 20% of their mass. There is a thought that if the majority of the muscle loss occurs between the capillary and the mitrochrondria, then by reducing the distance between the oxygen rich red blood cell and the part of the muscles where it is needed, the mitrochrondria then the exchange of oxygen is far more efficient.

Graph showing the increase of efficiency of gaseous exchange in the bodies acclimatized at 5800m and subjects at sea level

It is only after all these changes occur in the body that we are fully adapted to our new rarefied air environment, and people like the subjects on the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition can record the lowest blood oxygen level ever. It has been hypothesis that if you were to be dropped off on the summit of Everest from a pressurised helicopter, you’d be unconscious very rapidly and dead in minutes.

Photo copyright: Leo Houlding: Sunrise on Everest

What some of the altitude research might show rather facetiously is that the majority of people who summit the highest mountains do so by forms of cheating, if you are to look at how World Anti-Doping Agency defines erogenic aids (drugs to aid performance). In my limited research the best effort I have seen to date was by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler who summited Everest without the use of Supplemental Oxygen, Diamox or other drugs that have been shown to give you an unfair advantage at extreme altitudes.

However in an email from a friend of one of these ascentionist I got news that they had used Aspirin and Sleeping pills, so there is still a very limited potential to improve on the style of ascent. Although it has to be said that although aspirin thins the blood, and helps people perform at moderate altitudes it has no proven significant physiological effect.

It should be noted though that there is a cost to not using these enhancements that was established by R.B. Huey through research into climbers of Everest and K2, in a which it states “Individual mountaineers not using supplemental oxygen had a significantly higher death rates during descents than did those using supplemental oxygen (p<.001). This pattern is especially evident on K2, where approximately 1 in 5 climbers not using supplemental oxygen died during descent.”

There is a wealth of research that looks into altitude, the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition is one of the more well known through the TV documentary about the efforts they made, not to mention the size of the sample they had, will undoubtedly lead to a stream of papers the first of which was published back in 2007 in a Critical Care Journal. Similarly small research expedition like the one from the Bangor’s School of Sport Health and Exercise Science have the potential to unearth just as much interesting research albeit in a less public fashion.

Many years ago now I had an English teacher who during a parent-teacher evening said, ‘well mark doesn’t like me and I don’t like mark’, as such he didn’t offer much in the way of help when it came to learning. As such my parents asked my next door neighbour to tutor me in English. He managed to find books that really inspired me to read, the type of swashbuckling adventure every school boy loves.

One of these books was ‘We Die Alone‘, written by a war historian, telling the story of one Norwegian Soldier who had attempted to make his way into Norway, by way of the Shetland Islands on a fishing boat, to training up locals in sabotage, and tasked to take out an airfield the following spring to free up the passage to St Petersburg and the Russian front.

The mission goes wrong almost instantly, and the story follows Jan’s attempt to escape and evade the occupying German forces, across mountains and Fjord’s. What your left with is a mix of Bravo Two Zero meets Touching the Void. The back story tells of a extremely kind and caring local communities who risk everything to get Jan to Sweden.

I really can’t recommend this book highly enough, if I had the money I would love to make a film retracing Jan’s epic adventure. Telling his stories alongside my own attempt to follow it.

I am loath to tell you anymore, just incase you go and read it.

Well like any self-respecting young (well youngish) single man, I spent Friday night doing what so many young people do (usually for pocket money), baby-sitting my friends kids. So when I should have been down the pub chewing the cud, or out partying I was sat praying to the patron saint of baby sleep to sprinkle magic pixie dust by the crate full to ensure the said babies remained comatose.

To give you an idea on my baby skills, at one point when I was ‘helping’ their mum get them dressed for bedtime I sat for five minutes wrestling a 6 month old child into her PJ’s and set against that competition I thought that I would win, but I’d have more chance of redpointing F8a than putting even a top on this stubborn baby. Her mum was virtually wetting herself at the sight, but I’ve heard child birth weakens the bladder!

I don’t know how the parents do it, they juggle dressing one child whilst bathing another, and arranging next weeks global budget with the chancellor of the exchequer. Whilst as soon as a child hears the word ‘Mark’ll put your coat on’, the bottom lip goes, there body goes ridged and behind the crocodile tears I am sure I can hear them laughing at their uncle incompetent.

Having got the kids settled in bed its amazing how quickly parents will abandon their children with basically anyone willing to give them a night off. Sure at first they will be all clingy and miss there kids if they have to leave the house for five minutes, then a year down the line they’d happily send them away for the weekend with a serial killer. Like all good baby-sitters I instantly raided the fridge for food and booze, only to find out rather disappointingly for me, but a sensible choice given my position of ‘responsibility’ for the evening, that there is only one beer in the fridge.

Just as I am getting into a film I hear “whaaaa!!!”, for some reason whenever I hear that sound I instantly freeze, as if being totally still and quiet will make a child go back to sleep, anyway it seemed to work that time. However just as Bruce was about to unleash a can of whoop arse on the terrorist the screaming started again.

Venturing into the room, i breathe the manta, ”don’t panic, don’t panic’, and start to settle this screaming cherub, who’d have thought something so small can scream that loud. As I fail in my job of settling, I realise or more to the point smell that my work is perhaps not done, and I am going to have to change a nappy.

Now I have done this twice before with proper adult supervision, and back then I swore I’d never do it again. So I was about to phone the parents to come back up the road and change her, ‘their child, their pooh’, when I realised I’d forgotten my phone and therefore didn’t have the parents number.

So as I started changing my third nappy I was hit by the thought of ‘Oh my god, what the hell do they feed her?’. For someone who outwardly looks like sweetness and light, she can produce vileness that is inversely proportional to the sweetness that comes out of her mouth! That is the sweetness that isn’t the vomit that she seems to save up for her uncle when he’s wearing his favourite hoody.

Now I don’t have a dog because I don’t like clearing shite up, so I try to hold my breathe and get on with it. Realising that I am about to pass out I gasp for air and instantly start gagging, and narrowly avoid following through. Although a part of me feels that puking on a baby might be a sweet form of revenge for all those ruined tops.

Anyway it only took 30 minutes to change the nappy, clean the shit of me and the baby, find some clean PJ’s, wrestle them on and put the now quiet baby back to bed. Just in time for her older sister to start shouting ‘mummy!’

As I walk into the room she looks at me, smiles and says ‘Mark, Pooh-Pooh’

Noooooooo!

Anyway after my fourth nappy, I returned downstairs to catch the end credits of the film I was watching. No sooner had they finished my friends returned and asked if they had behave?

‘Yeah, They were no bother at all!’

NB: NO CHILDREN WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF THIS STORY. IN FACT THIS IS A FICTIONAL PIECE OF A SERIES OF THINGS THAT COULD HAPPEN TO A BABY SITTER. IT WAS MEANT TO BE FUNNY BY THE WAY.

Well I spent 30 minutes this evening up Llanberis Pass as the light was fading, trying to capture a photo within 20ft of the Jerry’s Roof Lay by, with a friend who after getting a DSLR for Christmas is like a dog with two wositz running round trying to get photos. Anyway I though I share my efforts with you.

Over the years I have read many books about ‘How to Improve your climbing’, some of them have been very helpful, whilst others have been less so. Although there are some new books out like Coaching Climbing that is aimed at coaches helping young climbers train. Many of the activities in there are great for helping anyone’s climbing. However one of the best book I have read on the subject is a rather old book called performance rock climbing is a great all round book on training and skill acquisition. There are a couple of good book by eric horst on conditioning for climbers and training for climbers.

If however you want to learn about rope work techniques then consider getting hold of Libby Peter’s Rock climbing: Essential Skills and Techniques.

Alternatively if you were to get Climber Magazine this month you’d get an excellent training edition, with multiple articles by Training Guru Neil Gresham, as well as some other writers specialising in nutrition and sports injuries.