At the beginning of December 2019 Jen and had to rapidly change our travel plans and ended up in Morroco at a moments notice. The first thing we decided to do was trek up the mountain Toubkal, the highest peak in the Atlas mountains at 4167m. This is definitely a trek not a climb but it was a fun experience which I would recommend. I thought I’d share a few details as inspiration in case anyone else is interested in doing so.
I’m sitting on a sparsely filled plane, amongst passengers sporting various forms of infection control paraphernalia. The atmosphere is subdued; every throat clearance or cough is met with a sea of side eye from suspicious neighbours. It has been a slightly odd trip to the Canadian Rockies in pursuit of frozen water to climb. Each night we returned from another cold adventure to warmth and food and safety, to read and discuss the increasingly worrying news of the day.
At times it has seemed extremely hedonistic to have flown across the world in this climate to pursue a minor sporting goal, and at others seems like the perfect antidote to the situation. As Will and I discuss how our future plans could be impacted by the trajectory of the novel corona-virus we are settled by the understanding that what we pursue in these mountains are available to us anywhere, perhaps even in quarantine. Mastery, autonomy and purpose.
I recently returned from Italy where I had the chance to spend a couple of days at the amazing granite crags at Cadarese. Although I’d heard of the area in the past, I didn’t really know anything about it, and was amazing when we arrived to see an entire valley of granite. The crags themselves are quite a small area which makes me wonder how many more sectors could be opened up in the future.
I recently returned from a trip lead by the International School of Mountaineering (ISM) to explore and climb in the central At-Bashi range in Kyrgyzstan. We understood this section of the range to be unexplored save for a short reconnaissance mission last year lead by the same company. After a few days acclimatisation the whole expedition team embarked on a mission to climb the highest peak in the range (according to maps and visual confirmation), understood to be unclimbed. You can see the glaciated (white) peak in the middle of the following image, taken from just past our advance base camp position.
Continue reading “When is a first ascent not a first ascent?”
You may have noticed the period of extreme summer temperatures in the UK until some time last week. I did too, and cancelled a trip to Chamonix in order to capitalise on the conditions- some of the classic routes in the Lakes and Wales take a while to really dry off, and have been in famous condition recently. Jen and I sat in the van in traffic for about 7 hours in 36 degree heat with no air conditioning. The night we arrived was beautiful though- I slept soundly in the cool mountain air, the silence a welcome novelty after a week in London.
I returned from the Bugaboos at the beginning of last week. What a trip! Great climbing, great company, and almost total isolation from the civilisation (we did get world cup updates but neither of us actually care about football so…)
The trip started with a blur of air travel, jetlag, hours of driving through pouring rain and a hike up nearly 1000m of elevation carrying upward of 35kg in an ill designed backpack. However after a rainy rest day playing cards in the Kain hut everything came back into clear focus. From then on we had great weather- sunny when we wanted to climb, and rainy when we needed an excuse to rest.
Over the last few weeks I’ve enjoyed writing a little bit about what Jen and I have been up to with our climbing, and want to continue for the foreseeable future. I decided to get rid of the ads on this site and register the domain instead of using the default wordpress.com stuff. The new URL is https://www.aguyclimbing.com – the old one and links should continue to work as well, but if you’ve got bookmarks and are so inclined you can update them.
I’ll be in the Bugaboos sans technology for the next couple of weeks so there won’t be any further updates for a little while, but I will be back, hopefully with exciting photos and stories.
I don’t love thinking about gear that much, I’d rather just go climbing. Well, thats a bit of a lie. I get obsessed with gear choices and purchasing pretty easily, so I try and avoid it. I know it’s always possible to spend more to get diminishingly small returns on improving performance or weight. Usually these benefits are at the cost of something else- durability, function etc.
However, I also really like not lugging an enormous pack uphill if it’s unnecessary. Next week I set off to the Bugaboos in Western Canada. This is a fairly remote range which requires everything you need for camping and climbing to be carried in, with the walk in taking several hours. Moreover the climbing itself is mainly technical, meaning that you really want to be carrying as little gear as possible- otherwise you will never get near your grade limit.
As always, the more you think about it, the more ‘necessary’ it is to cut the weight of your gear down. So last week, when I started really thinking about the trip, the obsession phase started. I’m going to talk a bit about a few choices I’ve made- the things I think will provide the biggest bang for my buck.
Something that climbing has taught me, over and over again, is to try and limit my expectations when tackling something new. I try not to assume a climb will be easy and also try not to assume it will be really hard. Thinking a climb will be easy is a recipe for getting caught out at the crux. Thinking a climb will be too hard is a recipe for giving up when you could have just pushed on. Confidence is valuable, complacency is not. I’ve found approaching climbs with the wrong mindset often leads to feelings of disappointment and demotivation.
On Monday we rocked up at Frogatt to take on Valkyrie, one of the lower graded ‘Classic Rock’ lines at HVS, and also one of the shorter climbs at just 20m. I had been feeling the long term build up of fatigue and wanted to just get another tick on the list. As you may have guessed, this wasn’t a great plan.
We climbed at Kilnsey on Saturday- another super steep limestone in Yorkshire. Steep enough to be climbable despite the fact that it was chucking with rain all day. Whilst the practicality of being able to climb in the rain would normally appeal to me greatly, by this point in our trip I was slightly less enthusiastic.
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