Last May my friend Paul Smitton did the 1st ascent of the Dogs dinner buttress traverse in Chee Dale calling it Pedigree Chum. This buttress is an amazing leaning wall of perfect limestone for the 1st 15-20 ft in height then it turns into the usual peak limestone rubble. The obvious challenge was to traverse this good band of rock for the full 40 meters in length! Paul graded it 8c+. Steve repeated it soon after confirming the grade and then climbed a harder version adding a V10 boulder problem crux after all the hard climbing on the original. I first tried Pedigree Chum last October just after I’d done Bat route as most of the limestone sport climbing was seeping but this was dry. I was just going on it for training to start with but soon got hooked into doing bigger and bigger links until eventually I realised I might be able to do it. I got to linking it from after the initial 6 move V7 boulder right at the start to the end but never got chance to try it from the start before it got soaked from the autumn rain. After training hard last winter this traverse was my main aim in the spring. I went out to try it soon after returning from Misja Pec in March.

It took a good few session to remember what to do as it’s very sequency and my flow on rock was rusty after the winter indoors. I got to the stage of trying to ‘redpoint’ it just as the heat wave over Easter hit the country. This made me resort to getting up at 7am to beat the heat but it was still over 18 degrees at that time in the shade which is just too hot for small crimps. I had one evening after work when it felt really good and I got to within 2 moves of the easy climbing before falling off. Gutted but psyched at the same time, as it meant I was going to do it, I went to Pembroke for a week. This turned into over 2 so I could get Muy Caliente done, as it got wet for a week, and when I returned it was too hot and I’d lost my very top power endurance I needed. I left it for the summer to do some other climbing and was wondering if I’d get another chance this year as I wasn’t psyched to train this summer. I went on it last week again and went over all the moves and did some good links.

I went back this week to do some bigger links and to get fitter on it. As I was warming up I felt really good and light so just thought I may as well give it a go. To my surprise I got through the initial 8c section to the shake out with only the pumpy 8a+ bit left. This didn’t feel too bad either and all of a sudden I’d done it! I was a bit in shock but so happy I didn’t have to return next spring to get it done. Having redpointed Bob’s 8b+, Techno Prisoners, at the cornice two nights before I’ve had a good week climbing wise! It might not be a route where you clip bolts and climb upwards but it still feels like my 1st 8c+ as it’s longer than any sport route I’ve done in Britain.

I nipped project in the bud yesterday which i started trying in May straight after Dandelion. After getting really close on my 4th session. Dropping the upper move after the hideous crux it basically escalated into mental war. I took it on in my happy, don't give a shit period, after doing Dandelion but it rapidly became more and consumed all the joy from that and belittled it. I've never dropped a problem after the crux in such a state before either. I just found myself there and wasn't quite ready for it. many sessions later, after not getting through that move it was really bugging me. And i could see my year disappearing infront of me. May, June went. July i left it and only went twice in perfect conditions. It didn't help. I stopped running and hit the board undercutting it left right and center like a midget boxer. Then after a long week back in Cumbria and some specific training on my systems board I came back armed with a secret weapon. Staintons strongest, Dave Jones. So with fresh muscles and Marra psyche we hit the crag. Both of us got ridiculously close to our projects. Dave was consistently getting to the last hard move of Dandelion, looking really solid. This was a good spur to stop mooching and try and find another gear. That day i got very close to the crux and just got unlucky on a few things. Dave got smote by the nearliness too. We Chilled out and trained/ pottered for the rest of the week. Saturday was a non starter for me as conditions were awful. But in the distance i'd sighted the rarest of things, a freak easterly brought on by the rain covering the south. Easterlies whip right into badger and make it alot more pleasant to be there and try really hard. Tuesday came and a pre match day meal at Zeugmas. I had a clear head and no stress, just the desire to do myself justice and to see this mind-leech off.

 

It's called Bewilderness to carry on the Bill Bailey theme

And it feels like it should be pretty safe at 8B+ unless easier beta is found for the crux. I've also got pics of the holds so if they ever change i'll know. For me personally it has been the hardest thing i've ever done, but much of that has been mental and i didn't have much margin when i did it yesterday, i snatched and rattled my way up it and made far too much noise.

 

I wrote a few things whilst trying it and i've attached an excerpt below. The rest are kind of diary ish so they'll stay with me.

 

My saving grace is that i always have another chance. Climbing is the best sport for this. In all other sports you can be left lamenting past screw ups for the rest of your life, you’ll never have the chance to compete in the same final twice. But the rock waits, it is always up for a fight. Or thats what your brain does to cope, it personifies the objective, it must defeat it. Where as in actual fact it is just a completely pointless bit of rock which makes up about 0.00000000000000001% of the planets land surface. It couldn’t be any less significant. Will heads turn in Dhaka or Shanghai when it is completed? No. And yet i’m happy to sacrifice so much and to pollute to travel to this blip on the planets surface. This blip now means alot to me. It is a physical manifestation of everything which has lead to my current form. If climbed it will represent what i can do on rock. I dont know if i’ll find anything like it again as finding things like this is harder than climbing them, history tells me i will and that this will be digested by my rat and diluted into a grey water of emotions stemming from all the colour in me now. Do i care about the time it takes me? no. Could i have climbed it already? yes i’m sure there’s a happy version of me in one of Hugh Everetts universes, there’s probably a few. Can i see past all that? yes but its hard to break down all these components and find a good solid reason as to why this blip of rock now has so much bearing on my life. I think it is only because i have tasted success on it only to be knocked back that my hackles are up and a vendetta has been born. It fights well too, well enough for me to need a break from it. My left arm is tearing itself up on the crux. I shouldn’t have tried it yesterday but obsession brought me back to it seeking release from its clutches, i just want to have a beer and a curry without feeling guilty...

 

 

I have had a few months off really since starting my final year of uni in September it has been pretty full on until May this year but I have now finished uni forever. So I am now a graphic designer, which is rather scary since now it means I have to sort of decide what want to do with my life. I couldn’t handle climbing full time, I don’t enjoy it that much when I can do it all the time, I want to keep it as a hobby rather than a job. Sooo I guess I will get a job hopefully doing packaging design, we will see.

 

On the 13^th September I am off to America for 3months to trad for the first half then do some bouldering we have a vague plan which includes the Needles, Yosemite, Joshua tree and Bishop but nothing is set in stone. Since finishing uni I entered 3 world cups over 3 consecutive weekends in Eindhoven, Barcelona and Sheffield I managed to make two semi finals finishing 16^th in both. Now I am trying to get fit for America that involves lots of climbing outside and a few circuits inside. I have been going down Cheedale cornice a lot and for some reason thought I would try an 8a called Roof Warrior, now I won’t really class myself as a ‘roof warrior’ but thought it would be good- work your weaknesses and what not. I did actually manage to get myself up it in a few sessions but since then the weather has gone really humid and gross and not been on anything else.

 

I have also just been to Pembroke for a week to try and remember how to place wires, I was slowly starting to get back into it towards the end of the week. Had a really nice week just doing some milage, my favourite routes I did were Test Case, Star Wars and Head Hunter.

(above E3 at Stennis Head.)

 

Only got three weeks to go now till America!! Whoop.

 

 

 

 

 

Pointblanpicture - ian parnell

 

Sheffield + Kids + Job + broken house + Trad is a bad equation, especially if the grit doesn’t really do it for you. Replace ‘Trad’ with ‘Sport’ and it just about works out if you’re keen. But the trad beckons, and after a weekend in The Lakes I was as keen as ever! So a family trip to Pembroke, with much beach action and chilled camping, was always going to be a bit of a battle of logistics to squeeze in a few routes. Ian Parnel was also there armed with two youngsters and even more difficulty earning brownie points, but we managed a couple of early starts, which for him were probably pretty late (6.30am). Unfortunately Ian wasn’t armed with a rope so morning one was Stennis/Elmeria connection on my single. Morning two and we’d blagged more ropes, but still found ourselves in the bottom of Stennis Ford with just my rope since the other lay forgotten at the top of the cliff!

 

Two fluffy ends of a sport rope would do, my route impossible on one line. I’d run out of rope for sure but we could sort that later somehow. ‘Pointblank’ was the route I’d wanted to do in Pembroke more than any other for some time, today was not ideal, hot, sunny, still, and no chalk to mark the way, but I wasn’t gonna be here any time soon, and saving things for later is something you don’t do when you hit 40! Not because you are old (but you are) but because life has a habit of just getting too busy!

 

Pointblank begins up ‘From A Distance’, a tough E6, 7c in French money with a few pegs and threads to help the head along with the wires and cams. I was surprised how hard it was, but then what did I expect, since when is 7c easy! At the junction I was pumped and the shake out not fantastic, the easy finish was very tempting, a guaranteed tic now of a classic line. But what was very clear was that I could never come back for an onsight of Pointblanc if I did that. The start E6 is too hard. Zipping up this with all the knowledge, i.e. a redpoint, would leave me in a totally different state, and make Pointblank a different challenge altogether! So it was now or never.

 

Good holds take you off sideways, comforting the mind until a series of surprise bad holds that look good suddenly have you committed and struggling with the gear. It’s obviously the last for a long way, so it has to be good! Easy to place if you are tall, desperate if you aren’t! Moving away I inspected my blind placement efforts, reasonable, probably ok, but even if it pulled my gear way out right would just about keep me off the floor 100ft away. So, into sport mode. It had to be; a desperate sequence on sidepulls had me inching upwards, searching the rock for anything it had to offer, the movement so technical it left no space for fear. Maybe this is the ultimate style of climbing. At last holds came, getting better at a similar rate to my increasing pump, the ropes hanging in alarming arcs off into space. But it was done, a proper adventure. Now I could chill, off to the beach: never has building sandcastles felt so satisfying!

 

Dear all,

We are having some technical difficulties with our server and have not recieved any emails since Monday 15th

If there are any urgent requests please call us on 0114 258 6688

Sorry for any inconvenience

 

When is a job not a job? Keith Sharples needed photos for his calendar and, with Petzl sponsoring a page (or month) I was requested to hang around and attempt to look good. That’s the skill of the photographer, but I did my hair and ironed my boxers before we drove over to The Lakes for a quick hit with 5.10 hero Mark Buzby.

 

Keith’s style is pretty chilled, a kind of ‘you climb what you want and I’ll take some shots’ type approach. There is no posing or going back for that great body shape, but it feels genuine, it’s just going climbing. But of course Keith is hoping for a good angle and hopefully a good route, and somehow we ended up at Raven Crag in Langdale where he’d already done the research and noted that ‘Dawes Rides The Shovel Head’ might look nice! Being a tad unnerved at setting off up an E8 onsight I made my way up Trilogy, an amazing E5 in the hope that maybe he’d get that awesome shot straight off. But the good thing about these calendar shots is that, each year, and thanks to Keith, he’s put me in the right place, maybe slightly out of the comfort zone, but at the bottom of a challenge that maybe I wouldn’t normally have accepted. Rhapsody (E11), Ghost Train (E6), XXXXXX (E7), Mission Impossible (E9)(that I fell off onsight) were all things I fancied trying, but never seemed to quite manage.

 

So ‘Dawes’ towered above me, some chalk to point the way, and a few pegs to convince me I was on a sport route that I didn’t look at too closely. 7c is apparently the grade of this E8, though I managed to hit the zone and arrive at the top with no idea of difficulty. But buzzing though! Trepidation replaced with enthusiasm. A venue change was the plan, but as I rapped down Keith’s rope I spotted a vague line, with a few pegs here and there. There looked to be a few holds, so a change of plan. I set off with no idea if it had been climbed, and for quite a few moments wished I’d looked properly from the rope rather than zipping down. A skin of the teeth job, but a real adventure. Some days later the line was revealed, ‘Euology Direct’, Dave Birkett (no surprise), E8 6c (8a/+). Two E8’s, but I’ll let you guess which one is harder, or if they are even the same grade!

 

 

 

This year for me is turning out to be more of a trad climbing year than a sport climbing year. I was hoping at the start of the year to do some more hard redpoints and maybe even push my grade up again. For numerous reasons it’s not quite happened this year but I’ve had a bit of a trad revival instead. On a recent trip to Norway with Steve, Charlie and Liam I climbed my first ever big wall. Kjerag is an amazing 800m Granite wall which is one of the must jump walls in Europe for B.A.S.E jumpers. Unfortunately our trip was a bit of a wash out and we had to retreat to steep sport climbing cliffs that stayed dry in the rain. But before the heavens opened for 6 days we got to do one route up Kjerag. Steve and I managed to climb the classic E5 Hoka Hey in a day, a very long day! A 4:30am start, we topped out at 10pm then didn’t get back to camp till 3am! I was wrecked the next day. Since then back in Britain it’s rained quite a lot too. I’ve been sport climbing in the week after work and trad climbing away at the weekends. Last weekend I was in Pembroke with Charlie psyched for some more adventure trad climbing. As the bird band had just been lifted we made the decision the climb at the cauldron. I’d never climbed at the very weird and impressive rock formation which is definitely one of the more intimidating places to climb in Pembroke. The outside walls have a whole host of great looking E5’s & 6’s and our target was a route called Free Masonry. This is an unrepeated four pitch E6 that Crispin Waddy and George Smith did the first ascent of back in 97. It weaves an amazing looking diagonal line all the way across the lip of the steep south facing wall, to end up climbing out directly above a sea arch which is the mouth to the inside of the cauldron itself. Crispin did the route on a number of visits over 2 years with a couple of abseils off into the sea to get out! After the interesting crawling approach through caves to get to the start I set off on the first 6b pitch. It didn’t matter which pitches we each led as the route was very sustained with pitches of 6b,6a,6b,6b! After getting off route on the 1st pitch and spending ages finding our way on the 2nd and 3rd pitches we arrive at a cave stance situated directly above the sea arch into the cauldron. As I looked out of the cave belaying Charlie seconding the 3rd pitch I was glad it was his lead next, it looked desperate! It was a very blind and committing looking pull out of the cave which he did heading leftwards (looking in) to find a very rusty stuck wire and a horrendously loose corner. He reversed to the cave to try a different way, pulling straight out of the cave. This looked way harder and very blind which he didn’t fancy either. I was spent from the other pitches and didn’t fancy it which left us with one option…retreat. Neither of us was that keen on the idea of a swim with all the gear so we decided to try and reverse what we’d done to get there. After a lot of faffing we managed to reverse aided the 3rd pitch and then climb the 2nd , as it was a down climb, and reverse aided the 1st pitch. Even though we didn’t do the route it was a great adventurous day out. We’re both keen to go back for a re-match, especially now we have a bit more knowledge about where the top pitch goes, it does pull straight out of the cave!

A few more blog posts  up on the filming of the Wide Boyz Tour! The UK leg of our tour is now mostly in the bag... all the hard UK stuff visited or re-visited. One more month til USA. Bring it on!!

 

Here's the links for the filming:

 

http://wideboyz.blogspot.com/2011/07/filming-wide-and-wonderful-part-1.html

 

http://wideboyz.blogspot.com/2011/07/filming-wide-and-wonderful-part-2.html

 

And, by the way - The 5.10 Grandstones are the absolute business when it comes to offwidths!!