So today we looked at Assisted and Unassisted Hoist, using a belay plate and a petzl reverso 3.0 in guide mode. We also added an extra piece of mechanical advantage, and also added in a DMM revolver, which made everything a lot easy.

The other skill we concentrated on was escaping the systam and going into a abseil rescue with the rope we were climbing on. Sounds easy, but it is actually very very hard to do, as there are many small components that make up this one piece. Ady went through it many times and he pretty much got it dialled on the last go.

I can only imagine the knot his mind was in by the end of the two days, however Ady asked if I could write down the sequence last night, and today we took a series of pictures of every stage of that rescue, and a few others. Hopefully Ady is going to email the pictures, as I used his G12, which was much better at indoor snaps than my D80. If he does, I am going to put together a PDF of the rescues, shot by shot. Hopefully it will be of help to a few of you guys out there.

Anyway I am off all next week, so I hope the rain stops, so I can try and get out. ALthough need to send a group text this evening to drum up some partners.

I have just recieved a text from a friend who is keen to head up there this summer, we have set the dates, and a small team of my best friends, those people you see in my photos, are heading up. I have checked with them and they are happy to have a couple of people along on the trip to enjoy this summit of a lifetime. The dates are 8th to 12th June, if you are interested the route climbs up a 200m high sandstone sea stack, the crux is an traverse into an E1 off-width crack, as such you need to be very happy on that grade and I will want to know the routes you have lead/seconded recently as a form of vetting. I am sorry but this is a route of a serious nature.

The cost will be £600 per person, and several of these days may well be sat around waiting for the weather. We can arrange to pick you up anywhere between North Wales and The North-East tip of Scotland. Accomodation will be in either the bunkhouse, tent or Bothy (The tent might be useful if we climb the route quickly and need to head south rock climbing through Scotland!), and you will enjoy my great homecooking.

This is a climbing trip where you will be guided up routes rather than an instructional or coaching course.

Imagine you are caught out by a storm high up on a mountain cliff, or you are stuck at the bottom of a sea cliff. How are you going to get out of that situation? Well the Rope Rescue Course for Rock Climbers is the answer. During this course we will cover many of the basic skills you need to know to help you self rescue yourself from many situations when rock climbing.

Of course the situation might not be a small incident, but a minor or worse still a major accident, during the course we will help you to identify these potential hazards and pitfalls and help you to avoid them, as well as give you some skills to get to a casualty quickly and safely to administer immediate first aid.

The course looks at teaching you in a progressive fashion, building up the skills in bite sized chunks until by the end of the course you will have a variety of skills and techniques to help you rescue yourself.

The course content typically includes:

Tying off a belay Plate

Escaping the system

Basic Hoists

Snatch and counter balances rescues

Ascending a rope

Traversing problems

The Rope Rescue for Rock Climbers Course is running on the weekend of the 28th & 29th August and costs £150 per person. This includes instruction and a small selection of specialist equipment. It is expected that the climbers will have there own personal climbing equipment.

For detail contact Mark here. For the mean time here is a short piece on escaping sea cliffs that I wrote for PYB.

How to Big Wall Photos

I have decided to offer a “How to Big Wall Course” over the weekend of 15th & 16th August 2010. I guess it is the last date that would be available to anyone heading out to Yosemite to attempt a Big Wall. What this course offers is a run through all the skills you need to convert all your UK Trad climbing skills to Big Walling.

The course is ideal for anyone wanting to ascend routes like Salathe Wall, The Nose of El Cap or the Regular NW Face of Half Dome. The weekend revolves round a series of skill based workshops, that gradually build new skills in small chunks until at the end of the weekend you will have put them all together to realise just what it takes to Lead a pitch of aid or french free, fix the ropes, allowing the second to jumar. How that second can jumar past roofs or deviations in the fixed line, and how the leader can haul.

The course is £150 per person, and is based on a maximum of four people attending, if you’d like to find out more visit the link to the course here, or contact me here.

I don’t know how many of you watch Hollyoaks Later on E4, but Niall of the cast is heading for a fall. Well one of the joys of my work is occasionally you get ask to get involved with some really fun projects, and working with Lime Street pictures the production company behind the hit TV show hollyoaks, was one of those times.

My first day on the set I was expecting to see a host of Hollyoaks Later honey’s wearing very little. Unfortunately I was disappointed as not only were the ladies in short supply, but my hero of Hollyoaks Tony owner of Gnosh II wasn’t on the mini break to ‘Scotland’. I spent around a week spread out over a month in and around the set, involved behind the scenes either making sure a cameraman didn’t fall off a cliff, or helping to rig the set at the top of a cliff.

The week long special that Hollyoaks Later has been running which despite being sold as being set in Scotland was actually film just outside Rhydd Ddu, pretty much all within 400m of the station up the path leading to Snowdon the highest mountain in Wales. So whilst many of the cast and crew travelled from Chester, all I had to do is nip a valley over.

The cast and crew were great to hang around, and really down to earth. They were all as excited as I was to see the final stunt that we had all been so busy rigging. Even the actor who was actually going to take the fall was looking forward to it. I had a chat to him about it, and after he saw me rigging some scaffolding 20ft out over a 80ft drop.

I asked him how he was going to prepare for an 80ft fall, for there were not stuntmen to step in for him, in stead they were going to chuck the actor off the cliff on a piece of string, well a long piece of Kevlar/dyneema rope. Breaking him at the last possible moment. His answer was he was going to go when the director shouts ‘Action!’, or he hoped he was! I felt sorry for the cameraman that was going to have to following him off the top of the cliff top platform.