Every year Tom Randall (maybe a few others if they're not wimps about the weather) and I, go to Millstone for a birthday ascent of Master's Edge. We're into the forth year now and things are starting to get daft. Initally the idea was just to go and climb the route but gradually we've been wearing more and more stupid things. First year we were sensible, second year, was suits and top hats, third a banana and transvestite (weird) and this year a gorilla and Crocodile.

As normal Tom and I were in the car park first, looking as stupid as ever dressed as a gorilla in 80's lycra and a crocodile with a fluffy head piece......then nobody else actually turned up. So we pushed on and decided to get going.

Croc was up first and casually cruised up to the last crimp, but his croc snippers were too cold and a quick decent was made.

Gorilla then followed but had issues with his head piece, couldn't see the smears and also had cold smittens, which quickly resulted in a rapid decent. With head piece removed gorilla made an ascent and with croc not having any of it, his snippers soon after grasped the finishing jug.

A good day out for Croc and Gorilla. I dread to think what it will be next year, Mankini in January anyone........?

The after party

So I've just got back from The Orco Valley in Italy. I got picked to go on the Italian Trad Climbing Meet, which was happening there, by the BMC. I've never been on one of these trad meets before so it  was cool to go and meet and climb with new people, even if some of the foreign belays did look ever so slightly dubious. It was also good to go with two other English guys, Staffordshire Andi and Plas y Brenin Dave, always a good laugh and good trip value.

After not climbing more then one consecutive day in a row for around 3 months I wasn't expecting to do anything too desperate. hopefully just some classics I'd not done before (I've spent around 5 weeks in Orco before) and maybe some nice new routes. Anyway things evolved during in the week and one thing turned to the next and before I knew it I was on one of the hardest cracks in Europe and trying a new route which would probably be my most difficult in the valley.

So yeh the highlight two days for me have to be climbing Greenspit and Gloves of War (in the same day) again and ticking off a locals project to create a new route.

The Greenspit day was so strange, I took up boulder beast Michele Caminati as he was keen to practice his jamming, anyway my second go on the route i just thought I'd give it a dabble. I set off cold, with some old baggy tape gloves on and with a fudgey sequence. Weird thing was I managed to do it again! every jam just felt like a bomber. the sketchy fist in the middle of the crux which always felt like it might rip, I could pretty much shake on it and I didn't even have to slap on the end slap move. I've only just got back climbing, haven't done a jamming route for over a year and I somehow pulled this out the bag, pretty flipping weird. I now realise how on it me and Randall were, when we were out in the States. I can't believe Century only gets 1 more grade then this!!

After Greenspit i took a Ceczh guy up to Gloves of War as he wanted to practice his offwidthing, so it was a pleasure for me to take someone up to a route me and tom established a few years back. It was cool that i managed this again, first go aswell, not a bad day really.

The new route i did was shown to me by a local who had aided the line, but he wanted it to be freed. It was a pretty cool line, 45 degree roof with fingers and flary hands. It ended up being cruxy at the bottom and sustained at the top, where on redpoint I had a worrying moment where I was so pumped I couldn't go again to the fist jam and had to cross over the top and venture into new squence time. fortuately it didn't screw me up that much and i managed to just about fight my way to the top. it ended up being 7c+/8aish. Called it 'Pump up the Pony' due to the wee shetland pony at the bottom of the crag.

Anyhoos by the end of the week I was completely papped and had started to feel like I was getting ill again. may have over cooked it a bit really. I'm back working and climbing now, but I'm going to have to be so careful not to get too psyched and over do it too soon. See how it goes really.

Orco bringing up the goods... the line of 'Pump up the Pony'

short vid here of Didier making the first ascent of Greenspit (you get the idea, flipping amazing crack climbing):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isSRroZA2vo

As I didn't have the energy to climb over the last few months, (as I gradually started to get better,) I thought it would be cool to go and brush a new route ready for when I was fit to climb again.

As you might have guessed the new route was at Burbage South. Burbage South has been a bit of gem for me over the last few years, i've spotted and climbed a number of new lines (8 I think) which in some cases I've been very surprised haven't been done before. Anyway my first new route and some of my hardest new routes have been at Burbage South so it holds some good memories for me and has to be my favourite gritstone crag. hard classic and historic lines and projects, great solo circuits and all abit damp dark and daunting, I flipping love it.

Anyhoo the new route i was on was on the wall everybody walks past (the French Kiss wall in the second quarry) all the time without looking as they expect it to be wet from seepage, or if its not wet, there are no belays so people can't be arsed basically. When it is dry (usually the end of summer) and you've been bothered to carry you're stakes in and ab down you'll find crimpy little holds, dirt from seepage and conditions to be too warm to climb it and sack it off. However people being lazy and giving up at the first hurdle are missing out, as I think this wall offers some of the coolest quarried grit climbing anywhere. It's kind of like climbing 'The Tower' at  the Edge Climbing Wall (and everybody loves 'The Tower'...... and don't say you don't,) but without clipping any of the quickdraws and with a spikey landing. You just need the dedication to experience to climbing.

I'm not going to go into much detail of the route apart from it has some cool unique (obvioulsy its grit) moves which involve tick tacking around. I'm actually surprised this wall was dry as people have been telling me i've not missed much being ill as its been so wet this summer, so I'm now quite happy I just climbed the wettest wall in the peak :)

for conclusions sake I gave the route E7 6c, which adds another high E to Burbage South, making it definitely the knarliest crag on grit, (and don't let anybody tell you Wimberry is more knarly, flase info mate ;)

by my calculations Burbage South has:

13 x E7

5 x E8

4 x E9

1 x E10

Pretty spicey if you ask me, get yourself there its amazing!!!

Photos: Richie Patterson

there is little to talk climbing wise over the last 3 months. I'm still trying to come out the other end of some kind of virus. It's really fustrating as I haven't been able to climb or work properly and everytime i've done anything active its set me back. I've just had my best year of climbing ever and was just starting to make even further improvements quickly and to suddenly be knocked back has been difficult. However the last  week or two I feel to be making some improvements. I've been at work and managed to do some climbing, even managed to do some links on a project i brushed up when i couldn't climb, which is cool. Certainly don't feel like training quite yet but give it another month or two and hopefully......hopefully i might be able to get back on it.

What i have really learnt over the last 3 months is the dark art of resting. As climbers we are absolutely terrible at it. we get a tweak and ignore it, the tweak becomes a niggle and we still ignore it, then the niggle a full blown injury and before we no it we're out for 2 months instead of just intially laying off for a week. Or in most peoples cases just continuously climbing on an injury and whinging about how they can't get up their latest project. Anyway....i'd recommend to rest at the earliest possible point. although 2 weeks may feel ages, its better then 1 year!

With this virus some of the time i've actually felt like climbing hard, but no as soon as I do that, the next day i'll be wiped out again, so i've had to really learn how to lay off.

Anyway I've been occupying myself with other things like drawing and watching the Olympics :)

hopefully i'm getting there now, I've toproped some links on a new little motivater project, but for the time being lets not get too excited and come back steadily (because i'm too pscyhed to have even more time off) so this stupid thing doesn't shut me down again. yes mate

Chris Hoy, Mo Farah and all Team GB, what legends. if sport pscyhes you up, check the clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19215464

I have done no climbing over the last month, I haven't been to work and I've missed a climbing trip to Farihead (somewhere where I desperately wanted to go). I've basically been ill, which has been an absolute bummer. About a week ago I was so tried from chopping vegetables I had to go and lie down. I went for a walk along Burbage South and was so stumbly I fell off a mini outcrop of rocks and slid down a grassy banking landing in a soggy heap at the bottom. A few days ago i fell asleep in the middle of the day......I've never done that before, I felt like an old man!!

Anyway I dread to think what i'll be like at climbing when I get back to it, we shall see. Although I'm generally feeling a lot better, I reckon it could be another 2 weeks until I'm able to do any form of training again. Anyhoo, we shall see, but its starting to feel like along time now.

before getting ill I did manage a quick flash of the underated arete 'Speak the Truth' at Hall Moor Quarry and as standard procedure I then made the First Ascent of the other side of the arete to give a much more smeary and technical experince. However anybody wishing to go there may want to take a good selection of brushes as I forgot mine when I went and had to spend an hour brushing the other side of the arete with a stick....... so as you can imagine its not the cleanest.

Below is a link to a short video of Ben Tetler making the 'First Treeless Ascent' of Speak the Truth E7 6b

Everytime I'm at the climbing wall I'm still always amazed to see people effortlessly hang off holds on fingerboards with one hand. They make it look really easy, so I think its really easy, go and have ago, fail miserably and can't even take my feet off the floor. some people can hold 1 pad edges longer then I can hold a blummin jug, its not normal!!!

Obvioulsy some of these people can climb substantially harder then me, but there are some who don't climb as hard at all and it really makes me think... flipping heck if I could do that I might be able to get up something myself.

So, at Christmas I gave myself the task of trying to hang the low middle rung of the beastmaker for 8 seconds with 1 (straight) arm. A really simple excercise and I gave myself until next Christmas to be able to to it. However at the beginning I couldn't even hold it for a quarter of a second, I could  get more air time by just jumping. I had to have 8-10kilos of assitance to be able to hold it for just 5-8 seconds...then i'd fall off.

However a few days ago i had an absolute breakthrough, I managed  to hold the edge for 5-6 seconds with no assistance, not big numbers compared to strong wads, but numbers nevertheless. I've no idea how it happened but I suddenly found myself hanging with the ability to even watch the clock as I was doing it...multitasking, oh yeh. It's not quite the 8 seconds yet, but its progression.

So I've been psyched for trying to get better recently because i came to the conclusion I could only climb cracks and slabs. Infact I was actually disappointingly surprised that I couldn't even climb slabs this week either, after failing on a load. Anyway over the last few sessions i've sacked the cracks and slabs off and have been going to Raventor.

I've never been down there on so many consecutive sessions (4 to be precise), and if i have been down there i've certainly never climbed in the central part, where the big boys cook, i've always slinked off to the out skirts, to let my crimp uncurl unnoticed. Recently though I just bit the bullet and started to try Mecca. Its more like a boulder problem at The Works as generally there is a queue to get on it, but thats fine it gave me chance to meet some new people and watch to learn all the different sequences on it.

I was pleased at how well it was going in just a few short sessions. Yesterday, on my 4th session on the route, I managed to do it some how. For somone who has only used the back of their hand to climb things for the last two years and can't even do 1,4,7 on the big juggy rungs at the Climbing Works I was pretty psyched.

After doing a load of offwidths/offwidth training for so long, I decided it was time to give what most people would call real climbing another go. Whilst training for my offwidth America trip I did do other 'normal' climbing, however it was never my real goal or purpose and offwidths were always at the front of my mind whenever i was thinking about climbing.

Its been pretty strange coming back from America, as I set out to do a specific climb two years ago, and two years later i managed to do it, the training I did for it had little relevance to any other climbing  and I didn't have any other goals that the specific training would be useful for. Anyway,  I have liturally gone from offwidth mad to completely stopping the training, thinking and doing offwidths in a matter of a plane journey. To be honest I haven't been that bothered and I've been glad to move onto something else.

I have started testing out a few bits of training that i've never done before, to see if I can actually get a bit better, so I don't have to use my heal, knee, head, etc on every hold to jib my way up stuff (because it gets annoying after a while).

After a couple of months training I headed out to Spain for a one week quick hit sport climbing trip with Katy, Mawsons and Hazel. The aim was to see if I had actually improved... Having not done any sport climbing for around a year and half I was pleasantly surpirsed to find myself onsighting 8a on my first day as my 3rd route of the trip. Obvioulsy this is not big numbers at all compared to world standards, but it showed me I was already starting to move in the direction i wanted to after only a couple of months.

I'm psyched and ready to improve on the stuff i'm crap at.

So in Mid November last year i came back from one of my most successful climbing trips i've ever been on, YES, me and tom actually managed to find the crag and tick everything that we wanted to

We had been training for this two month trip for two years not knowing how it was going to turn out, so to say we put "all our eggs in one basket" is an understatement. Our expectations on what we wanted to do were HIGH.

Anyway below is a summary (even though its quite long) of our trip

Vedauwoo - Wyoming

This was the first place we visited. It is known as an offwidthing heaven, where the cracks are wide, flared and tough. The reputation of every route in the area being a complete sandbag is known internationally and skin loss on them is a certainty.

Tom and I had only allotted 2 weeks to repeat the areas hardest wide fests and felt we may as well warm up in the country in ‘a hard man area.’ We had set ourselves a goal of repeating ‘The Big Five’ – Vedauwoo’s five hardest offwidth routes, Lucille 5.13a, Spatial Relations 5.13a, On a Wing and a Prayer 5.12c, Trip Master Monkey 5.12b, Squat 5.12b.

In the first week we had both repeated the last 4 on the list all in super quick time and I’d also made the first ever onsight of ‘Squat’ as my first route of the trip.

During the second week the emphasis was put on repeating the nationally famous ‘Lucille’. This is a massively intimidating line, being a 40ft horizontal squeeze chimney roof. I managed to make the 4^th onsight of this route, which I was so happy with as it was such an iconic route and one I had been waiting to climb for so long.

As an added bonus, because we finished what we hoped to climb so soon, we managed to climb all the hardest offwidth boulders in the area as well. Most were flashed or onsighted with the two hardest taking a couple of sessions.

Salt Lake City

There was only one route which we had in mind here, ‘Trench Warfare’, Originally put up by ex-pat Brit Jonny Woodward. We knew that it had never been flashed before so (as with every other route) we knew to give it our best shot first go. I managed to flash the route adding an extension to it in the process, and Tom managed to flash the original, then promptly soloed it afterwards, awesome!

Century Crack, Moab, Utah

So this was the route that we had been training towards, for two years, a route strong man Stevie Haston had failed on. A 120ft horizontal roof of perfect size 5 Friend and then another 25ft of vertical grovel.

The approach to the route is a journey within itself. It’s situated right in the heart of Canyonlands National Park, so backpacking permits need to be obtained, 2/3 days of food/water and a massive rack of size 5 and 6 friends all need to be taken down. The drive down is a gruelling 3 and a half hour 4x4 ride which sickens you before you’ve even made it to the climb.

When we first approached the climb you can see it from across the Rim and the whole route is so big it just looks like an innocent hand crack. Then after abbing in and walking up the approach gully it really starts to hit you. The route is an absolute monster, it just blew my mind. I hadn’t expected for it to be so big, exposed and aesthetic. The few photos I’d seen of Stevie working the route hadn’t prepared me for scale of the whole thing.

After we’d finally found our feet again and stopped tripping over things from looking up to much we got to work on the route. By the end of the first day we’d done every move on the route, but only ever done links of 20ft sections.

We only had two days of food, water and permits with us, so the next day we knew we would have to leave after climbing. As we had done all the moves the day before, we decided that it would be a good idea to try the route as a whole to see what it would really be like to try and link the whole thing together. We had left the gear in the route from the previous day of working it and didn’t strip the route as we knew it would waste far too much energy for the rest of the days climbing. Unbelievably both Tom and I climbed the route on our first redpoint attempt to make the FA.

Tower enthusiast Crusher Bartlett, who originally solo aid climbed the route had come down with us and it was so cool that he got to see me and Tom climb the route. There is a piece below of what Crusher said about the route after we had climbed it:

“Watching Pete sending Century Crack was definitely one of the all-time best displays of rock climbing I've ever seen. And that's saying something. I've been climbing over 30 years. In that time, I've witnessed many top climbers: Lynn Hill boldly launching herself up the then-aid climb Vandals; a gifted, inspired Skip Guerin displaying a cat-like grace on the boulders; a young Jerry Moffatt demonstrating his own gift of brute determination and hunger, Ben Moon cruising the Eldorado testpiece Rainbow Wall for its first onsight flash. These ascents are engraved on my brain—the very best climbers pulling it all together, showing the rest of us the potential that we all have, if we could only dig as deep. Thanks Pete and Tom!”

Zion National Park

After climbing Century Crack the plan was to go and try to repeat the former hardest offwidth in the country, ‘Gabriel’. This was only put up in 2009 and had been a project to the previous generations beforehand. It was Pamela Pack who eventually made the FA along with her climbing partner Patrick Kingsbury, who made the second sometime afterwards.

After acquiring some Big Bro’s and a Valley Giant to protect the crack with, we went to find the route. The style of this route hadn’t really been what we had been training for as it was a lot wider and the techniques to climb it wasn’t by using stacks and bat hangs, but by using an upside down chimney technique. This position felt a lot more solid then I had been expecting and I managed to climb the route on my first day trying it.

Indian Creek, Utah

We moved onto Indian Creek where there were two main offwidths that we wanted to do. First was the world famous ‘Belly Full of Bad Berries’. Before going I knew this route hadn’t been flashed and knew that it was my style of offwidth climbing. Professionally I did 10 pull ups to warm up and then managed it on my first go, but not without running it out at the top after the guidebook had sandbagged me on the amount of Friend 5s to take.

Next up was the slightly harder but less well known newer addition to The Creek, ‘The Price of Evil’. It was more of trick route and once you knew the trick to the crux it felt ok. I managed to climb it in a day, which was cool as again, it had previously been a project from the past with Bob Scarpelli trying it and more recently Pamela Pack, before Mason Earle eventually did it last season.

Century Crack 2, Moab, Utah

Nearing the end of the trip we realised we had done all of the main routes we had wanted to do and so decided to go back down to Century Crack to try and do it placing the gear on lead.

We knew we would not be able to place all the gear that had been pre placed when we initially did it, so had to thin down the rack to about half the number of cams we used. Again, we both managed to do the route placing the gear on lead. In the end I placed seven #5 cams in 140ft of climbing making the start of the route incredibly bold. At the end the ground is a lot further away and only massive falls would have been taken if we’d fallen.

I couldn’t believe we’d both managed to do it again.

A load of other climbing was done within this trip, these are just some of the main highlights. It’s definitely one of the best climbing trips I’ve ever been on. Amazing!

I've finished climbing offwidths now, maybe if I find others I will climb them, but for now i have other plans. Lets hope I can reach these aswell.

Thanks.