Month: January 2009

I am watching the discovery channel and this programme caught my eye, it follows Rob Babers journey to the summit of Everest. Now with a title like Deadliest Climb, I am fully expecting over egged pudding. Rob is a Managing Director of head 4 heights, and previously had climbed the highest peak in every European country in a record time of 835 days, knocking 4 1/2 years off the previous record.

Rob ascent was just how I imagined climbing the worlds highest peak, massive amounts of suffering, struggling to acclimatize, shit, vomit, piss and dead bodies everywhere, and lets not to mention ridiculously over the top base camp facilities. Now Rob ascent seems to have been supported by Motorola, so he could make the first cell phone call from the summit, after an antenna was installed on the Chinese side of the mountain.

What I really like about this programme though was the fact that they used the same narrator as Deadliest Catch, which if you haven’t seen it, is a equally crazy documentary programme on crab fishing in the baring straights off the coast of Alaska.

I recently saw a topic on UKC on complaining about out source production to the far east to help keep the price, down and someone asking whether there was a manufacturer that still made harnesses in this country. I found this a little odd, as whilst I would love to buy British, I am totally aware that this is becoming increasingly harder to do, as more and more companies are forced to ‘Out Source’ production to stay competitive.

It therefore seemed ironic that after the commercial pressure forced the production over seas that we are now worrying that not enough is being manufactured in the western world. Imagine how much a harness would cost if the factory manufacturing them was in London! Any manufacturing left in the UK is typically in areas that are suitably deprived so as to keep the wages lower than if they were in more economically vibrant areas.

Until the entry of a few of the poorer eastern European countries to the EU, Wales was an objective 1 funding area. This basically means it is the bottom percentage of local economies in the EU, and as such got a extra social funding and subsidies to keep and encourage manufacturers to stay or relocate to the area. This funding has dried up and many companies have been forced elsewhere in search of lower overheads.

Despite this one company remains as locally based as it can be, DMM designs and manufacturers climbing hardware in its Llanberis factory. One of the reasons it can still do this is probably due to the lower wages that are on offer throughout the area. The average wage in Gwynedd in 2006 was £15900, compared to £18000 across the rest of Wales, and over £20000 for the whole of the UK.

What DMM offer and maintain to this day is a state of the art manufacturing solutions for hot forged aluminium, so much so that they even manufacture other people carabiners in house. They are probably the biggest employer within the llanberis, after EuroDPC, although most workers at this drug manufacturing company seem to turn away from the hills and head to the coast.

Before we complain about sending manufacturing overseas perhaps we should look at why it happened, and the answer is that we as consumers were unwilling to spend what it would cost to manufacturer stuff in this country. To give you an idea as to the complexity of manufacturing a ‘simple’ carabiner. I have uploaded a video factory tour I shot for DMM a while back.

The Secret Life of Krabs from mark reeves on Vimeo.

I am often asked when I am going to make my next climbing film or why I haven’t released anymore climbing film or why I don’t enter one of the short films I have made to film festivals. The short answer is I am miserable so and so, and simply can’t be bothered anymore. The longer answer revolves around my dislike of film festivals.

Now this statement needs clarifying, as if you ever attend a Film Festival as a viewer they are great. However as a film-maker who puts weeks and months worth of effort into making a film, and no matter how good or bad that film is, all you are often offered is a ticket to the event. No hotel room, no travelling expenses, very little that makes you think that the film festival is actually saying thanks for the content. I have even had to pay BANFF for my film not to be shown there, and year on year they still send me a request for cash (I mean content)!

Now whilst a large production house might be able to afford sending a representative to a festival. Small independents film makers who lets face it make up the majority of climbing films, don’t have large budgets. If you look at Commited, Onsight, or Echo Wall, they probably had a production budget of less than it cost for Touching the Void producers to buy the rights for Boney M’s ‘Brown Girl in the Ring’.

Yet these independents are knocking out really good stufff, showing great innovation. Dave Brown from hot aches, manufactured his own boom cam. Paul Higginson, has his own dolly jig that he films some great climbing action, as well as landscapes. You will probably find that the travel expenses are the biggest financial outlay for adventure film-makers, after they have fork out for a high def camera and Editing Suite.

The financial reward for making films isn’t that great, like most things in our industry it is only the fact that those involved are in it for the love of the sport that keeps them in it, and knocking out passionate films. If I make a video now its simply for fun.

Yesterday, (Saturday 10th January) Mike Raine chair of the BMC cymru/wales group arranged a working group to do a spot of tidying at tremadog, working on some of the approach paths. The work that has been carried out here has very much been in collaboration with both the National Park and Countryside Council for Wales, a working relationship that has been going on for over two years now. The result of which has been a woodland management plan in conjunction with the BMC who are landowners at Bwlch Y Moch, which has resulted in a grant from the Better Woods for Wales to help fell the the invasive sycamore’s to promote the more native species.

Anyway the work day was very successful with 10 climbers attending and resulted in the improvement of the approach to Christmas Curry and Rio area’s of the crag. On hand was professional upland footpath builder, and local climber Mill’s, who helped show the amateurs how its done.

With any in the next few weeks a team of lumberjacks will be turning up to clear out selected trees, which will hopefully let more of the famous tremadog sunshine onto the crag, helping the crag dry even quick on the rare occasion that it rains there.

For more information check out the tremadog wiki.

Well this weekend I was helping five people train to become mountain leaders, the national Governing body award for leading groups in the mountains of the UK during summer conditions. I was working for local course provider and one of the main protagonists of the first wave of the development of the Slate Quarries, Andy Newton. The weekend was fraught with difficult weather, so on the Saturday we had to stay low and avoid the unavoidable ice. Even on the south side of Llanberis Pass there was ice everywhere, and careful route choice helped us to avoid it, whilst the rest of the world seemed devoted to finding and climbing whatever lines they could.

As if like a miracle over night the weather changed from being desperately cold, dry and calm to being ridiculously windy and wet. At least it meant that the ice had gone, however standing out in the rain all day makes far from a positive learning environment, and personally I was happier with the freezing but fine conditions we’ve had for the last couple of weeks.

As such all winter climbing activities will be suspended until we get the next freeze, we are already on the second one this winter season.

Well, After a lot of messing about with different compression software I final got a version of my film Amateur Hardcore ready for the web. If I remember correctly, and the chances are I don’t, then it was filmed five years ago in 2003, and was a documentary on the then key members of the north wales bouldering scene who fought the work-play dichotomy and won at the very least the free to explore the great bouldering in and around North Wales. Anyway the film is nearly 50minutes long, and probably better quality than 80’s VHS, I hope you enjoy it!

Why don’t I make video’s anymore? Well maybe I’ll blog about that tomorrow?

There are other films on this blog.

Between The Rain
Meglaphobia
Various Short Films
Old Man of Hoy

Untitled from mark reeves on Vimeo.

Well apparently the sevevth round of the BMC leading ladder is upon us, as I was busy route setting with a few other locals for the Beacon Climbing Centre’s leg of the competition. I was lucky as I got to set the 7a and 7b, and for once I hit the grade on the head (I say lucky as with hard routes the holds are tiny and easier to drag up the wall!). It is a little harder than you might think setting to a grade. Often I get asked to set an easy and hard route, giving some leeway in the grade. For competition though it is a far harder task of setting route of very specific difficulty, hopefully I have put up a couple of routes that will stand the test of time and the criticism of the hardcore at the wall.

I would like to think that I have done a good job, they seemed to climb well when we checked them anyway, this means that there are around 10+ new routes of across the grade for the BMC leading ladder, so if you fancy a journey across to pit yourself against them come on over. If not I am sure the locals wads will eat up the 7th grade routes.

Well its been a roller coaster ride at this crag, and I guess that from the outset it was never going to be an easy transition from a crag being banned to climbers using it through a land ownership loop hole, when the real issues of what caused the crag to be closed were never really put to bed with the adjacent landowner.

As such from the outset of the new agreement there has been trouble brewing, and Mr Webb has rightly or wrongly been gunning for climbers. He has tried many things from intimidation, to using the local media and police. Finally he has come up with a counter claim of the land ownership issue, and the BMC was forced to advise the closure to the central section of the crag.

Baring in mind that several climbers have sneaked down to climb at the crag throughout the previous ban, will the latest BMC advice that ‘until the ownership of the central section of the crag is resolved we felt we had no option but to advise people that there is no access agreement for climbing on the central section’ be honored by climbers 0r will they risk the chance of a civil prosecution for tresspass?

There is more information here on the BMC website.

One potential question is how the whole issue has been dealt with by the BMC. Anyway we’ll see what the situation is next week!

There is some more background information on the issue here and here

Well you know its the new year, simply everybody has got something for sale on FleaBay. I am no exception to this, in a desperate bid to make some cash to pay of what I managed to drink over the Christmas and new year period, as well as fight the credit crunch. Whilst I am not selling off my climbing rack yet, if things get any worse on the work front who knows? (Is there a pimp out your own arse function on Ebay?)

Anyway I have put 6 photo’s from my recent UKC article on the Slate quarries, my thought was it might be interesting to see whether people would pay for an image! Anyway the links to the items are:

Rainbow1
Rainbow2
Rainbow3
Rust and Ruin1
Rust and Ruin2
Rust and Ruin3

Well many of my viewer are coming from Andy’s Website, cheers for the link Andy my traffic is up somewhere in the region of 6000%. This is coming off the back of the post I made about his attempt to Solo the Harlin Route on the North Face of the Eiger. After Andy emailed me late last night and I responded. Andy then went onto used both his and my correspondence and blog for his latest posting.

I like this kind of interaction in the online media, none of the anonymity of UKC, a sort of old school rules point to point debate. I really wanted to respond to his latest email more thoroughly, although I simply couldn’t be arsed, as i was busy rendering my old film Amateur Hardcore to quick time file. (yes my vimeo account has reset the 500mb limit)

Anyway I did send a brief email, offering to ghost write more of Andy’s Blog for him, hopefully Andy will post it for me😉