April 2011 - Page 4 of 4 - Life In The Vertical

Photo Essay: Orme and Slate

After one of the wettest nights in a long time, the rain was literally biuncing of the house and windows in the early hours of the morning. Then when I peeled myself off the bed and went out into the world a dark, dank mizzly day was what greeted me. I was so convinced about teh bad weather that I was nursing a hangover. However as we searched the internet for some dry rock, the sun finally showed itself. So we headed to the ormes for some sundrenched limestone follow by a quick route on the Slate.

Combat Rock-0476 — Katie Eye's up the Roof above on Mumbo Jumbo

Combat Rock-0478 — Katie starts the battle with the first roof on Mumbo Jumbo

Combat Rock-0487 — Llion on the start of Tears for Souvneirs

Combat Rock-0489 — Llion on the start of Tears for Souvenirs

Combat Rock-0501 — The F6a+ to the right of Mumbo Jumbo - a pleasant direct finish to Tears for Sovenirs

Combat Rock-0507 — More Mumbo Joumbo are action

Combat Rock-0515 — Tears for Fear on the Mumbo Jumbo area

Combat Rock-0517 — Tears for Fears - Great Ormes

Combat Rock-0535 — Like down town Mogadishu - You Gotta stay in the Green Zone

Combat Rock-0539 — I actually like looking out at this wind farm - Better than a Nuclear Power Station

Combat Rock-0550 — Katie out of the Green Zone and into the red - A she tackles Combat Rock

Combat Rock-0558 — Combat Rock and Twll Mawr

Jude Spanken Video and Technique Coaching

I was writing a series of coaching post for my blog, and remembered seeing Paul Diffley’s amazing short film of Jude Spanken an old friend climbing Lord of the Flies. Paul showed this during his slideshow at LLAMFF, and it reminded me of just how much of a technician Jude is when it comes to climbing. So I asked him if he’d put it up online, and not only did he agree, but did it in a matter of hours. So a massive thank you to Paul and HotAches.

During the slideshow I also saw a clip from his recent The Pinnacle, it was so good that it has inspired me next year to tick off those classic gullies on the Ben featured in the video.

The post that I put up on my coaching blog are based on what I call the Three B’s of Coaching Basic Technique. These mini articles cover:

Boot – The basics of Footwork
Balance – The Key to Efficiency
Body Position – Fine tuning your efficiency

Spring Tides = Low Gravity = Hard Ascents

A team of Sport Scientist from the UK have been crunching number in the hope of unearthing strange patterns in first ascent records. Their thought was that the proximity and allignment of the moon has had a measurable effect on the gravitation force excerted on the climber.

By comparing the first ascent data of these ‘Low Gravity Days’ to those that are normal the scientist have shown that s statistically significant effect fot the mean grade climbed. This is backed up by some rther complex and confusing mathematical model that has shown that this difference is predicted 0.0001% reduction in the force need to complete any given move on those day.

Whlst the efect is more prevalent when the moon is orbiting closer to the earth like it did a few weeks ago, typically these low gravity days occur during spring tides.