Month: January 2013

Having been called to action the night before, I was still dubious that it would be nice enough to climb. Afterall all I have seen recently is rain bouncing off the windows. As I got up and went through my usual morning routine, I was looking up through the velux in the bathroom roof and was shocked, Blue Sky!

Porth Ysgo was amazing, almost too hot at times. Dave, Robin, Sheila and I had a great time, what was even better for a real fan of the place was getting to introduce two Ysgo Virgins to the delights of this special place on this fantastic day. As such we did a tour of the classics loads of V0-V4, with a few V5/6 along the way.

As anyone who has spent a day at Porth Ysgo will know, as the day went by the skin soon thinned. By lunchtime my tips were just about hanging in there are a few poor slaps on the Incredible Shaking Man before I got it before I tore my fingers apart.

After lunch we headed down and had a team ascent of the Ysgo Crack and other great problems. This soon lead to Popcorn party and I was about 5 problems too late, as by now I was having difficulty holding anything let alone those holds. The end for me was getting a flapper on Popcorn Party.

A fantastic day but with so little wind and it feeling quite humid the actual ‘hard climbing’ condition were poor. However the climbing of the easier classic is something I rather enjoy down here, as I tend to go when the weather is poor in the mountains but good on the coast.

I have put all the photos up on SMG Facebook page in this album.

On the 22nd Jan, Nick Bullock is giving a lecture in aid of Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team at the Beacon Climbign Centre. Its £6 on the door. More details here.

They warn about bringing young children, as he will swear, a lot. So if you are easily offended you have been warned. He’ll probably have a box of his new book Echoes (My Review here), and no doubt sell you a signed copy, as all that red wine and trips to cold places don’t come cheap!

If you are a climber and use facebook you may have come across the CAC Climber’s Against Cancer page, it has slowly been gathering both momentum, supporters and followers. If you read blogs then I suspect like me you have been moved to tears on occassion. The reason why is that the man behind the charity has terminal cancer, yet faced with a ticking time bomb he has embraced life and set himself new challenges like CAC.

You can read a post of his here, or Tom Randall’s version here.

Although it was this post by an international competitive climber that really pulled at my heart strings and it still can bring a tear to my eye.

Keep an eye on their website as they will hopefully start selling T-shirts soon and in the mean time like and share via their facebook page.

 

So after having a failure on the climbing front yesterday, I came back to a task I set myself a while back, but hadn’t got round to doing it. I wanted to make the data iCoach can compile more visual, so I set to work trying to get a grip with JQuery libraries. I was expecting a similar result to the climbing, but somehow, managed to succeed.

Hopefully I’ll get round to add more as time goes by. AT the moment it just simplfies the readout in the profile page for logged indoor boulder problems and routes.

Well, today I did something I hadn’t done for a long while and try to get outside climbing with an over enthusiastic Caff. That said the weather did look alright down the Lleyn. So we headed down there this morning to Dorys.

My excuse appeared to be I forgot my rock boots, caff’s was he forgot his belay palte, a team excuse was the rock was wet. Most of the easier routes were off due to the high tide.  So we basically dorve for 2 hours to have a great cup of coffee and a cake for me, as Caff is dropping weight for his next project, in Zinc. Lots of catching up later and it was time to head back!

If anyone lost a sling down there recently, I have it, your welcome to it back if you can name the colour and make. I suspect I know the culpit.

 

I saw this on the BBC website, it was about a ‘exhausted’ climber who couldn’t make it to the top of Subluminal at swanage. He was uninjured and yet his friends couldn’t hoist him to the top of a 12m sea cliff.

So if you plan on heading to a sea cliff and don’t know how to prussik or carry out a assisted or unassisted hoist, then these are just two of the skills we teach on our Rope Rescue for rock climbers course.

These are very basic skills and could have saved the tax payer several thousand pounds in aviation fuel and flying time.