Blogs

Having just returned from a month in northern Spain to a medium sized alpine peak of emails, post, and various other less identifiable chores, I have been left wondering how ‘Groundhog Day’ translates in the context of a climbing life. It could be base camp blues, it could be a stiff neck from too much belaying (or a 25 hour non stop drive home from somewhere more sunny and southerly), or it could be 6.30pm on a rainy Tuesday evening driving to the local wall for quick training session. There are still rope bags in the back of the car, an explosion of chalk across the passenger seat. The sound of Peter Donaldson’s voice closing the Radio 4 news merges with stronger memories. The headlines again... The everyday world of home and work fades as your mind wanders off somewhere in Europe, somewhere before, in another reality perhaps.

Northeast Spain has arguably more world class sport climbing than any other region on the planet, and includes many of Europe’s finest crags. With the prospect of a whole month to spend climbing in the region, my objectives were quietly ambitious, and my schedule refreshingly relaxed. At Siuarana, after warming back into the unique style of Catalan edge-crushing with a quick redpoint of Cop de Cigaro (8a+) at L’Olla, I turned my attention to what for me is the proudest line on the area’s most awesome wall: the soaring blunt arête of Dogma (8b+) at El Pati. Climbing with my friend Adrian Baxter is often a humbling experience, due to the sheer speed and ferocity with which he crushes hard routes. Having just redpointed the awesome arcing line of Megrana Profundo (8b+) in super-fast time, I knew he’d send the much longer but less intense Dogma pretty quickly. Sure enough, he dispatched it the following day, having not even worked the final, sting-in-the-tail overhanging finger crack at 45 metres. Aid’s amazing performance in sending this massive line on his first redpoint, and onsighting the final crux of the route, must have inspired me – I managed to get it done the following day.

I’m naturally an endurance climber, and realising that Dogma had got my stamina up to perhaps the best level yet, as soon as we returned to Rodellar Adrian and I turned our attention to what is surely Europe’s finest 8b+ endurance pitch: Geminis, the epic line that slices through the heart of Mascun’s mighty central amphitheatre, Gran Boveda. It’s a route in a million, and Adrian again showed the way with an extremely stylish second redpoint on our first day back. The crux of the route comes at around 38 metres, where a mean tufa shaped almost exactly like a cobra’s head spits at you right between the eyes. To pull off the series of moves up to and past this venomous stalactite, you must remain extremely cool and keep the mega-pump at bay, remembering a very precise series of foot movements and body-twists that unlock the mystery of Gran Boveda’s apex. On my first attempt, I took a huge fall from the very last hard move. Now I knew I could do it – but how soon? The psychological pressure of the looming redpoint that night was intense: we only had two days left. I think I’ve always thrived under pressure, and I clipped the chain the following afternoon after a surprisingly smooth ascent. Later that night, over the burble of the Mascun river and the chink of wine glasses at El Puente, I slowly came to terms with the best pitch of sport climbing I’ve encountered anywhere.

As the jet lag finally fades, the memory of climbing perhaps the best long climb I've ever done intensifies: Moonlight Buttress in Zion National Park, Utah.

After a week or so over Easter getting into shape on the epic splitters of the world's pre-eminent crack climbing area, Indian Creek (near Moab in south east Utah), Matty Rawlinson and I gunned our silver Mustang west on Interstate 7 and hit the 15 south for Zion, in search of what was allegedly the best multipitch route on North American sandstone.

After an enforced (and probably fortuitous) extra rest day due to a traffic jam of several aid climbing teams on the lower pitches, we made another crossing of the freezing waters of the Virgin River just after sunrise the following day, with the awesome monolith of Moonlight Buttress towering above us. The first three pitches of 5.10 and 5.11 climbing passed by quickly, and the sun hit us just as we finished the third pitch. From the second belay to the last, the climbing is incredibly sustained - every pitch is 5.12 or 12+ (E5 or E6 in British grades) for seven pitches. Nervously, I set off up the first hard pitch, and after a tussle with the boulder-problem start I began to marvel at one of the best dihedrals I have ever climbed. The route continues on up the gigantic open-book corner for another forty metres of hard 5.12 climbing, until the notorious 'flare' pitch is reached, guarding entry to the magnificent headwall.

It was only 2pm by the time we reached the ledge at the end of the flare - we were doing well, both free climbing every pitch leading and seconding. But the effort of the climbing was beginning to show, and we shared an energy bar and the last of our Gatorade before I set off up the stupendous 'London Wall pitch' - number 7 - which fires up a pin-scarred locker finger crack for eighty feet. I looked back down the line of the rope as I reached the belay: it fell almost perfectly straight down to Matty on the ledge, winding through a series of colourful purple Camalots and yellow Aliens. That must be simply one of the best crack pitches anywhere, I thought, as I clipped the chains.

The two remaining hard pitches after this went by in a kind of dream, and I reached the belay at the end of pitch ten with cramping elbows from dehydration. My body was tired, and my mind had been blown into orbit by the astounding day's rock climbing we'd had on Moonlight Buttress. It simply must be done by anyone capable of free climbing it. Equally, it makes for a brilliant day or two-day aid route: it is a climb in a million that defines the often-heard Yankee catchphrase 'stellar'.

What a great start to the new decade! After ice climbing in North Wales over new year, in some of the best winter conditions experienced there for a generation, I headed out to the Alps for two weeks. Along with several days shooting some ongoing photography projects, I managed to squeeze some climbing and skiing in too. An enormous amount of snow fell in the Chamonix Valley in early January, and I enjoyed some of the best powder I've ever skied.

Ben O'Connor-Croft and I had a particularly memorable day at Grand Montets. We got the first lift to the top, skied untracked powder down to the top of the Rive Gauche Wall above the Argentiere glacier, abseiled down and climbed the classic WI6 icefall 'Nuit Blanche' (The White Knight), then skied back to Argentiere in time for tea. I'm not sure if there's anywhere else in the world where you can combine downhill skiing and ice climbing with such convenience! (By the way, Nuit Blanche is outstandingly good, one of the very best pure ice routes I've ever done, for sure).

Another highlight for me was skiing Cosmiques Couloir for the first time, one of the most sought-after and notorious off-piste runs in the Valley. Abbing in off the Cosmiques arete with skis on your back and 1000 metres of forty-degree snow beneath you, with the odd cliff to keep things interesting, is one of the most thrilling and unforgettable downhill experiences in the western Alps. And the extremely fast powder run back down to to Cham off the old mid-station is the icing on the very large cake of this classic descent.

I was back in the UK for one day at the end of January - just enough time to charge camera batteries, upload a few thousand RAW files, and wash my clothes - before a thoroughly uncivilised 3.30 am alarm call to get a flight to Amsterdam and meet my 14 clients for Jagged Globe's Kilimanjaro Lemosho Glades expedition. Despite two clients having their flight from Leeds cancelled, they amazingly still just made the connecting flight out to Tanzania, and the next morning I had a full team of 14, supported by 6 local guides, and no less than 55 local porters and staff all waiting for the starting pistol.

We enjoyed clear weather and stunning views of the mountain on the approach trek across the Shira Plateau. On the climb up the Barranco Wall, conditions closed in and the mountain remained veiled in cloud for the next 24 hours - thankfully we were not scheduled to summit until the day after. We left Barafu base camp at 1am on the morning of Saturday February 6th, and our ascent up the steep scree to Stella Point was lit by some awesome electrical storms building on both sides, over the Seregeti Plain to the west and the Indian Ocean to the east. I was understandably a bit concerned about this, but by 8.30am all 14 clients successfully made it to the highest point in Africa, Uhuru Peak (5,893m), under clear skies but with those threatening clouds still approaching. We all made a swift retreat and eventually reached Mweka Camp down at 2800 metres late in the afternoon, after a 17 hour day and almost 5000 metres (that's about 16,000 feet) of ascent and descent! A tremendous effort from my clients - very well done by all of them.