Month: July 2009

With the Apocalypse being predicted to start tomorrow, in the form of another blanket of rain covering the country. It has been a while since I heard the words Jet stream and over the UK, but it seems like we are set for another damp summer. The Monsoon starts here.

Someone climbing on Lliwedd in traditional Style – Big Boots, rain and a rucksac

Photo stolen from stirling-aventures

I had to nip into Bangor today to have a new exhausted fitted to the truck, it had sounded a little throaty when I went to work last week and by the time I returned it had totally blown! I was expecting a huge bill, but £68 later I have a slightly quieter and no doubt legal truck again. Whilst I was in Bangor I had to exchange my Heart Rate monitor at School, as I had quite literally run the battery flat on the first one I borrowed.

I also had to get some blank CD’s and DVD’s so as the Exhaust Centre was just a stones throw from PC World I headed over. Now I hate PC World, it is more often than not staffed with people whose idea of customer service is to generally ignore everyone inn the shop other than there co-workers. I once went in to buy a Mac, and after waiting for 15 minutes for someone to serve me I left and brought one online. I wouldn’t have minded if the shop was busy but there were more staff than shoppers!

My real hate is I go in there so infrequently that the shop has totally changed round every time I go, and they seem to be able to design the aisles so that you can’t actually see what’s down them without walking along them. So I walk in and after looking lost for about a minute, I was actually asked what I was looking for. To which the reply came you need the recordable media aisle.

Recordable Media, they are just CD’s last time I went shopping, however at least there customer service had improved. I look for the cheapest and head to the till, where what can only be described as the ‘work experience’ kid was on the till. I say ‘work experience’ but I am probably given school kids a bad name. Anyway this boy serves me, and manages to totally screw up selling me two items, by running my card through four times, yet selling me nothing.

The supervisor comes over and says ‘Sorry, your card is frozen, you’ll have to phone your bank to clear it’ and promptly walks off. So I am left standing there CD’s and DVD’s one hand and a useless piece of blue plastic in the other that used to be a bank card.

‘and what am I supposed to do about buying these CD’s’
‘Phone your bank’
‘So I have to drive back to Llanberis, phone my bank and drive back’
‘You could go to Bangor High street’
‘Cheers for that, any chance of a discount voucher for the inconvenience’
‘Well we could try another till’

I was flabbergasted I mean they were just going to let me walk out, and deal with my bank, after they basically screwed up and caused the problem in the first place! Anyway the other till worked, but I swear they are a special breed in that shop!

Other than going to hang out with a friends kids in a soft play area with a really bad hangover. Not a good place to be when your head is throbbing, around what seemed like 100’s of rug rats screaming at the exact frequency of my hangover, turning my brain into mush.

As ever the plans had been laid down days before, an evening cragging with Llion where he was allowed out pre-sleepy time. I had received a call that he was too knackered two hours before we were due out, and I was suddenly disappointed that I hadn’t gone for a longer run in the afternoon. Instead I went and had a bit of a power nap, and no sooner had I put my head down Llion phone again, he had found some energy and was keen for some bouldering.

I now had to find the motivation again for a Bouldering session, it had been months since I bouldered outside, and I felt that I might take a shoeing. I wasn’t wrong, problems that I would usually walk up were hard, and some were borderline impossible. However, I should mention that I did touch the top on Johnny’s Wall, but lacked the moral fibre to actually try and hold it, mainly due to the shock of actually getting that far.

Despite having a hard time the Cromlech boulder did prove to be the social epicentre of North Wales climbing that they usually are. There was a very impressive role call out, and maybe because the crags were still damp and the weather not that warm, the crags were empty, but the boulders were rammed. A team were on Fish Skin Wall by Llyn Peris, before heading over to the Pac Man Boulders. Baby Dave and Caff were strapped to Mr Fantastic both making an ascent of this V11 Trade route. The daddy of Bouldro Si was lapping the same problems he has done for years dealing out the ultra BETA for those who haven’t spent too long on the boulders. The Haston Girls were tearing down there as well, and even the Bullock came past for a natter having been top roping some desperate route somewhere.

Pads are shared along with stories from the week, and the whole palce becomes like a big natural playground full up of numerous Peter Pan types. The mums and dads getting a quick evenings climb in, the young wads climbing at the sharp end of the grading system, and me just chumming and enjoying the rock, the movement and the craic

I might put a mini circuit up at some point for the Cromlech Boulders, as there are several great problem/eliminates on both the main blocks and the surround area. One in particular is great because it has several finishes to a traverse. If you like the first finish is for girls, the next for the ultra vixens, the next is for boys, and only the men get to the end. I barely made it up the girls finish last night!

The night was finished off by most of the climber heading to the Gallt Y Glyn, some for a pizza and a pint, but mostly just for pints. Anyway I should really try and get out bouldering more, as I used to be OK at it, but now I seem to lack both the strength to pull and the moral fibre to top out on some of the higher problems.

My foot slumps onto the acclerator, as I come through the Llanberis Bends, they are my favourite collection of bends in the world. I think most locals have intimete knowledge of them, the racing line. Most days I am just cruising totally in control, enjoying playing with gravity, the feeling of G on the body, as I throw the car the car round the corners.

To a certain extent most adults have that need for excitement, for some it is just driving a little fast from time to time, for other they need to drive everywhere on the very edge of oblivion, a fraction of a point of the co-effiecent of friction away from disaster.

I heard of the legendary climber John Bachar’s death a few days ago, a fall whilst soloing. His body found at the base of the cliff, alone. I read a few threads on him, and one post that stand out was that ‘our sport is so unforgiving’. I have to agree, having seen the darker side of our sport when things go wrong, I can only agree with that statement.

However I am not sure many of us would climb if that wasn’t the case, football, rugby, tennis, cricket, just aren’t life and death affairs; whilst climbing and other extreme sports are. Anyone who’s shocked by that probably shouldn’t be climbing. People who are starting out may think they are safe on the ‘easier’ routes, but statisitcally you have a greater chance of an accident and injury. One that is backed up by Life Insurance policies costing less if you climb above E3.

There is some research into ‘risk-taking behaviour’ some of it looks at unsafe sex, some dangerous driving and others have looked at the reasons behind participating in high risk sports. One of my favourite piece of research was that women who had been attacked or abused were more likely to have a car accident, the hypothesis was that they can’t get sympathy for the actual event as to reveal the truth of where the real hurt happen is to emotionally difficult and social taboo, instead they enage in risk to gain sympathy for a more socialably acceptable form of pain.

There are common themes, two of which come from what is refered to the auto-regulation of emotions. This proposes that there are two possible hypothesis. One says that we engage with lifethreatening situations because we don’t feel much achievement in our day to day lives, so climbing helps fulfill a feeling of accomplishment and achievement. A darker side to climbing is that it is used as a outlet to forget about lifes worries. Where people with high than average levels of anxiety and worrying thoughts use climbing to divert there thoughts away from them. By risking everything they can forget about there mortgage, job worries or any other worries they have.

This form of using climbing as an escapist activity, helps keep people on the level emotionally, however it can be argued that they need to address the underlying problem, rather than be unneccessarily reckless, as ‘our sport is so unforgiving’.

 Anyway, John was no doubt out engaging in risk for his own reasons, sadly this hero of the climbing world found out that climbing can sadly bit back.

Now I got an email from my mum last week about a roll of film she found whilst tidying up various bits of junk I had left at home. Apparently, my younger brother needs both a recording studio/games room, a study and my old bedroom. Anyway after the panic of whether or not the photos were going to be fit for my mum to see I started to wonder what they were. Apparently they were of ‘climbing’. Which really isn’t that much of a surprise.

It has been probably 6 years since I last shot anything in film, although I still have a couple of old rolls of film I have shot from way before them, one I think isn’t even mine, I just found it in a room I moved into! Anyway the photos arrive and they were of a random trip I made back in 2001, and some random Pass scenes.

It was an amazing trip, one that perhaps help some the development of climbing in recent years. The pictures are of Ivan Tresch and Ben on Messiah, attempting to climb it ground up. The route is E6, when you think these younger climbers are now 8 years down the line climbing E8 ground up, it shows the long term effort they have put into developing the skill of onsight ground up climbing.

The random photo of Llanberis Pass I think has the now Mrs Katz, and a friend of hers Vicki, although not really sure who they are?!

I was working again  today at well known outdoor centre, which has a massive store of equipment,  that every morning I work there I usually have to pick up some piece of equipment, map, rope, GPS, you name it and they have it. Now for the client there are very few rules, just treat the kit with respect and hand it in at the end of the week.

Ben one of the first reality TV stars to make it to the mainstream media, it seems years ago that he was ‘Castaway’ off the coast of Scotland in a precursor to Big Brother. Unfortunately he has plagued our screens ever since on country file, Extreme Dreams and other programmes.

Ben Cracknell needs no introduction, one of the most highly decorated Olympic Athletes ever, he was joined by Ben FOgle on his last big challenge programme was to Row the Atlantic, which we all got to see the BBC short series, Through Hell and High Water, which documented there epic effort to not just row but race across the Atlantic.

In there latest challenge the pair, are going to attempt to Race to the South Pole, which seems ridiculous, as far as I am concerned the last time people raced there Scott had to say, “I am going outside, I may be sometime!”. In the first programme that is documenting there attempt, I was a little disappointed as there wasn’t one clip of them in Antarctica, instead there was just a series of training runs for the event, and the dilemma of having the first celebrity who was going to join them having there American TV series rebooked, and having to find a new non-celebrity nutter to race with them to the Pole.

It was almost embarrassing watch them try to work as a team, on one of there training events. They worked less effectively together than some year 9 school groups I have worked with on team build sessions. What I was hoping for was a shining display of well trained men working like an even more well oiled machines. However I guess we will have to see how they do in the White Desert under race conditions, my hope is they do better than Bear Grylls (I really should share my Bear Story).

I guess I am going to have to wait till the next episode of On Thin Ice to see how James Cracknell, Ben Fogle and Dr Ed (Non-celebrity).

As is the theme for my weekends I was working again at Plas Y Brenin this time I was instructing on a Single Pitch Training Course. It is a real privilege to work on these National Governing Body Award courses, as we get to instruct the instructors, unlike most courses I work on, we are here to deliver a syllabus, so it is more about delivering the goods that are required by the Training Boards.

I often find it a little surreal working on these courses, as it was only a few years ago that I qualified as a MIA, although I have been an SPA and ML (summer) holder since 1997. The best way I can describe it is that it feels that all of a sudden you have gone from just another instructor to someone who instructors to be are constantly asking you questions as to how to do something, or what to do in certain situations. At first it feels rather strange that you don’t so much have a lot of responsibility but suddenly you are the ‘expert’ in the field.

One of my colleagues asked me a bizarre question related to the role of would be expert when I was sharing a lift back from the Brenin, he asked how I felt writing my coaching book, as he had worried in his last job that who was he to write something with authority. A bit like the instructing the SPA training, in that I should be not worried, but concerned that what I say is often taken as gospel by many of the those people I instruct. As such trying to say the ‘textbook’ answer is often the best solution, meaning you have to have memorised the text book.

I responded say that yes I could have worried about whether people ask who am I to write a book, I am not a Neil Gresham or any other big name climber. What I am is an instructor, who has spent a reasonable amount of time thinking about what he does at work, and gone onto study physiology, psychology and effective coaching to a Masters level. So whilst i might be just another freelance instructor delivering a whole manner of courses at a wide range of centres, I actually feel that I have something to not so much add as collate on behalf of other instructors and climbers to the field of coaching people to climb harder. As to be honest a lot of my book is lesson I have developed from other instructors. All I have done is been bothered to put them together in a book, designed for any climber to improve there game.

Anyway the weekend was a great despite being drenched on Upper Tier Tremadog on Saturday. Tomorrow I have to deliver a day on the Walking Group Leader Award Training, hopefully a day like today is on the cards where i didn’t get wet!