I’ve put a few problems up at Bowden recently, and done a bit of stabilising too but as i go into later on it can be a very sad place to climb. As a result of that I’ve also been taking a break from a project there and stretching my legs with Katie at some of the quieter venues in the county, which to be fair could be anywhere except bowden, backers or the kyloes. Last Saturday we’d planned to visit Ravensheugh but after watching 25kgs of pad and rucksack get blown UP a gully upon arrival we thought it best to head out the wind, into the woods, to some boulders i’d seen years ago. I had a lovely day as there was lots to be had in the mid to high 7’s and some friendly chap had already cleaned one boulder. Katie had a less fun/ scarier day but managed to take the piss out of me with the others enough to make it worth while. Mark, Danke and Andy had come out for the Craic and it was Mark’s birthday so he had shunned the studio lights for some tinnies and a mossy hillside.

Tomorrow's Harvest: Tricky 7Cish maybe, really good climbing up ripples and slopers. 

no name yet 7B+ ish from sitting, i didn't clean it so it may have been quietly done before. Some of the best quality rock in Northumberland is on this boulder. Sequence wise its really great with loads of hidden holds and beta. One of the best of its grade of the county non highballs i reckon.

Mark testing out his new view finders.

The boulders are just below the track round to ravensheugh and there is a craggy promontory visible as a landmark of where to drop down, alternatively you can follow the walking trail down from the ravensheugh fence and it’ll loop you down past them, they aren’t marked on OS maps, but the path is i think. there has been a bit of work done on the trail recently and it seems to be semi in vogue with walkers again now. They are easily combinable with other venues nearby at this time of year.

On the Sunday we popped over to Hepburn and bumped into a cresh of strong youth climbers. Good to see them all out and crushing (& brushing). Katie got really close to IF but it was a bit warm so i headed into the woods for a walk. I got a bit carried away and ended up walking up one of the coolest solo’s i’ve done in a long time, Its a fantastic forgotten route of Andy Cowleys called Jesus Christ pose. Its a sandstone ramp on the crag which is a boulder for the really easy start then the ground drops just as it gets hard. i say hard but there is only one hand hold on all the hard bit and its by your feet. Thanks to the ramp jutting out you pretty much just walk up the whole way and trust a variety of subtle smears. I had to clean it all on a rope as it was super mossy so ended up trying the moves to make sure the right bits were clean. I think to ground up it’d be around E6 6a but you’d want to onsight it, obviously. its a bit like doing Jasmine or Committed or one of the classic peak landing drop frighteners but with no handholds for comfort and you cant reverse it, but you could try and jump off right to safety if you got really wigged out. Another comparison would be a much longer harder version of the no hands section on great slab (E2 Froggatt). The rest is literally a walk in the park. Can i just say i bloody love slabs, they have so much more finesse than other boulders, i can one arm 10mm edges as much as i like but it’ll never beat the feeling of gliding up a hard slab. I think having that bit more time to soak up the situation is one of the things that does it, its harder to soak things in when your clawing up one minging crimp to the next. 

On a sadder note and rather than beat around the bush i’m just going to speak my mind about some of the things i’ve seen in the last few months whilst visiting Bowden. Bowden is definitely a crag on its way out. And as far as crags go that’s quite impressive!  its erosion is set in stone, it cant be undone ever...A point not to forget lightly, it's plain to see for all who visit. yet despite all the traffic there still seems to be a massive idiot to hard problem correlation going on which is adding insult to injury to the poor crag. You never visit and see russet groove looking like this:

Working Class:

Spot the holds! 

or even low 7's like dog eat dog looking like this:

 Honey comb wall:

Plenty of wrong holds covered in chalk. starting undercut has eroded loads from someone trying to use it when wet (covered in chalk bottom left. its no crime covering a boulder in chalk, but leaving it there after you go expecting people to appreciate finding problems in this state is thoughtless at best.

It seems that once people get stronger they are apparently allowed to treat the rock like its their own, to do with as they please. All this in order to hope to get up something "hard". I remember a few years ago when working class would rarely have chalk on, its black crimps look so cool when they actually are black. It seems that some problems can become in vogue and attract loads of attention over night thanks to so and so doing it. Working class is far from the best of its grade in the county, but it has a cool history. Luckily working class hand holds have some of the hardest rock at Bowden so its holding up better than some other problems. The thing that is most annoying to me is that its completely retarded. All sandstone is grippiest when it is almost totally clean. Andy Earl used to use ethanol occasionally to pull the chalk off the rock on really chalked holds at kyloe in. sometimes if its quite glassy sandstone a thin layer of chalk can help but on the grainy Bowden rock its a case of the less chalk the better as it means the rocks pores can bite the skin and even absorb a bit of sweat. It seems that more of our climbers are being strongified indoors and haven’t got much knowledge of what outdoor climbing entails and just see a problem a grade and an objective to nip out to once in a while to check on how good they are, once its done or they leave then its gone from their mind. This urgency to tick problems fast doesn't help any sort of empathy toward who might come along next and find their debris. 

Obviously this isn’t everyone but seeing problems plastered in chalk is becoming a lot more common nowadays. Fair enough it has been a long dry spell but that is all the more reason to stop for 2 seconds and brush the chalk off before you leave a problem. Although when you put as much chalk on as above you need to wet brush it off softly with water as dry brushing wont be very effective, this needs to be done carefully though as wet rock will erode fast under the wrong hands. I am also aware that i’m not without blame as being a climber i put chalk on stuff all the time, but i try pretty hard to be considerate to who might be coming along next. Considering Bowden is pretty much the only crag in Northumberland which is really suffering from traffic it is maybe the best place in the county to try and not act like a selfish twat and clean up after yourself. The rock didn’t stabilize itself in recent years and its only thanks to the efforts of the NMC members and on a few harder lines, myself, that it isn’t twice as eroded by now, nearly every problem at Bowden is stabilised on at least one hold, some have every hold stabilised and many have to be re-stabilised yearly as people wear through it with dirty feet. The starting jug snapped on cave RH recently which comes as no surprise after seeing a group of young lads on it last year saying: “this jugs wet and flexing like f***” response: “quick lets get it done before it snaps” they then tried it for about 45minutes to no avail. I’d quite like a BMC sandstone ethics for selfish dummies leaflet to quietly give out upon seeing things like this as telling someone off is hard to do in casual conversation, i need a few more years behind me before i can get away with it i think. (perhaps Grimer can do an instructional video? good excuse to go to Bowden Grimer...) Removing Bowden from all guidebooks and scorecard sites would be the next logical step if the erosion and abuse isn't held in check. but certainly a contentious one to some people especially when many do treat it with a lot of care, then again why shouldn't everyone about now have fun and wreck it in one lifetime and treat it how we like rather than slowly over several? we are doing the same with fossil fuels so we may as well have somewhere to go in our cars. A point to mull on anyway, the rest of the county is unaffected pretty much and there are dozens and dozens of crags on much better rock to pick from, many of which need traffic to keep them clean, or do it to give Bowden a bit of breathing space.

attempting to brush the chalk off Working Class: the amount of chalk i used on the holds on a new 8A+ Bourgeoisie can be seen at the far left of the image. The chalk on working class was still badly visible the following week.

Its not often we get to do this but we've been making a habit of it recently! We've got some machined holds in stock and up on the site for the first time here: (Machined Holds) and we've got some T shirts too: (Clothing)

Both products we've gone for quality on, as thats what we enjoy, so the T Shirts are organic cotton, with good durability and a funky Strong Tree design. The holds really are something else, I dont think any holds like this have ever been commercially made before, metal and wood together in smooth ergonomic harmony. I'd go as far as to say they are the best training holds i've ever seen due to the fact that they are wooden (so hard to crush), super ergonomic and so good looking that they are inspiring to climb on. Take a look and if you fancy some for your board then fire away, stock is limited at the moment but we will try to turn new holds around fast.

 Sometimes i worry i’m becoming a bit of a hermit climber, not traveling much and working a lot, yes i do work a lot nowadays! But its more that i’ve been a busy bee in the last 2 years sorting many things out. So when Katie and I got a nice little gift of a few days in Torridon from my folks for crimbo we planned a bit of a mini trip around it. I never get bored of the feeling of time grinding to a holt when your on holiday, days passing by at half their normal speed. This trip was only 6 days but it felt like a month. Much of this can be blamed on Scotland itself being so pretty and so varied it feels like you’ve travelled the world between places only a few hours apart, especially when its fully raining at A and sunny with a light breeze at B. Of course non of this is new to anyone north of the Clyde. Not that there are many people north of the Clyde. On the map of UK people it barely exists! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationpicturegalleries/6254582/Population-atlas-map-of-the-world-showing-population-density-in-each-country.html?image=1

Which is good because being Cumbrian i’m not inordinately fond of lots of people. Wildlife yes, Sheep all the better. Massive sprawling conurbations, not so much. It also leaves space for lots of nice things which are really hard to be angry at like mountains, lochs, lochy mountains, fjords, hills, inlets, munros. a hugely diverse landscape of anything you can imagine, so long as its watery or pointy. It was also before Scotland turns into Nature’s little hell park in May. Upon trying to book a nice b&B before the trip i got a lovely email back from the lady saying, are you sure you meant march not April? its just that the weather in March is so unreliable we don’t accept bookings! A good omen indeed. Ah well we could always sit in Torridon YHA drink brews on tap and catch up with a good book. As it turned out our B&B lady was well informed, we had everything under the sun thrown at us on the holiday except for the really bad wet stuff that scotland is so good at.

The ponies know the score, west facing aspect is a winner!

Our first day in Torridon we were greeted by 40mph winds and the locals Richie, Gaz, Ann Nigel and the beast of Bronwen. but not much else. Well at least it wasnt raining! we had a decent enough day out if a little short due to the wind battering us about incessantly. Richie complained about being fit but weak whilst kindly warming up all over Gaz's project. Bronwen stole my socks after demolishing the 2 decoy balls. I finally figured out the start of a project i’ve tried the last 2 times i’ve been to Torridon (albeit climbing in a balaclava and down jacket this time), only to snap a pebble off the top in a moment of wind induced stupidity, oh well back to square one. Stupid gets what Stupid does. After we'd all had enough we retreated back to the excellent Torridon cafe and I atoned for my sins with a massive bacon and egg bap. I forgot to mention that our Hostel had been engulfed by a mostly silver topped tai chi weekend; Katie must have trodden on the instructors Chi (qi for scrabble fans) as when she smiled and said hello she was simply greeted with contempt. Lovely. Although when they left on monday they did leave us with enough food for the rest of the holiday thanks to their friendly chef.

Liathach on Sunday.

Annat on sunday.

Sunday Greeted us not only with 40mph gusts but the quickest snow flurries i’ve ever seen. It was like the flurries were a tube train wizzing by Torridon station, I was simply a bystander getting in the way. The morning was just about ok as the sun was out a bit but when Katie finished and i put my boots on it was like someone flicked a switch. We hid in a cave for a bit, got out, hid in another cave again 5 mins later, made it to the cool project prow in Annat. Hid there whilst another one blasted through. Snow stops bust a bit of warm up dance out like i’ve just heard Axel F for the first time. try a few moves then get blasted by snow. Blow my top and produce a tirade about how crap life is. go back to the car to warm up. Snow stops, Ben Moon did black lung when the snow stopped, maybe i can do this because life is that cliche’d. We jog back to the prow. I Do it. Leave for the pub, massive blizzard hits us just as we get to the pub. To be honest i was more relieved than happy after this. It must have looked bizzare to the house whose rear window's face the prow. Its sometimes conditions like this that really test your mettle though, i wanted to just give up and head to the pub but there would forever have been a gnawing at my conscious that technically it wasn’t raining and that i could’ve climbed and got it done, making sure that gnawing didn’t happen was more important than actually having fun it seems. The most important thing this did was free up our itinerary for Reiff or Applecross the next day where i had more exciting things to play on.

Monday dawned perfectly azure with a dusting on the Beinns. I made concrete my overwhelming urge to drive nearly 2 hours to try a problem i’d seen in October. Katie was happy to see a beautiful new place but not so happy to see a very cold shady cliff on such a gorgeous day, somehow she still managed to be nice to me which must be some sort of inherent but very endearing flaw in her personality. Whilst the day before had physically and mentally drained me, from a climbing perspective i’d done very little. So all the ATP reserves were there but i don’t think there was much behind it to back it up. Sometimes in life you get these weird days and it kind of feels like you’ve come through alot to make them happen, i imagine its like big wallers pushing up to a final crux pitch then going to bed knowing that tomorrow you need to be firing. Except bouldering is much easier than that and all you have to do is walk out the car and up to the problem you want to try, the hard part is having the right skin, conditions, arms, core and most importantly mind to actually get up something which has tried its best to be blank. This isn't a huge problem if the problem is nearby but for places you know you’ll be spending very few hours of your life in it somewhat adds to the atmosphere. Here’s some inner rhetoric from my warm up.

Do i feel good? shit i feel ok, or do i, hmm im a bit monged out, naah i feel strong look (crimps a hold). and i’ve got pads and i haven’t been violated by a massive wave this time round, better try another climb (does scooped arete) ok well if that feels ok then you stand a chance, but is that enough, hmm lets try this other thing coming right out of leaning meanie, hmm that felt hard, i dont know if its been done before though, .. ooh i’m all excited. it was bloody good that, well i guess its been a good day no matter what then, Katie looks cold but keeps smiling at me, cubby must be short if he had to use a bucket to reach those holds, i bet its called romancing the stone because its got a Va JJ made of rock in it, thats pretty funny...

It felt like a heady mix of first night nerves and holiday excitement. The project was as amazing as i’d remembered it to be, chalkless it took me a while to remember the holds as they aren’t easy to see, this is why i like it so much. Yes the arete looks stunning to the left but i need to give everything i’ve got to this first. Nature has pulled a blinder here and i for one intend to appreciate its work by clambering all over it and covering it in chalk. There’s a vid of me doing what became Helicoidal Flow along with the annat prow and reiff arete, sufficed to say it felt just about easy enough from stand and i remembered my beta from last time straight away, the stand is a vague non line to a world class sitter though, which really put the pressure on. I would say that i did the sit thanks to a combination of luck and experience, i was starting to feel the squeeze go and my skin get cold and i’d dropped the catch once already, it felt like my chances were going and that it’d have to wait for another day. After a big rest and a brew i told my brain to shut up and put everything into it, no skin preservation no worries about picking up a tweak just try really hard. I dont know how but i hit the holds all pretty well and i caught the catch spot on. The catch hold is subtle and intricate, like every hold on the problem. You don’t know whether the catch is right or not until your feet come out and the extra momentum comes onto the hold. 

such a cool pinch.

To me this is perfect bouldering. A serene setting and some incredible rock, a line that defines bouldering. It starts from a perfect sit start and heads up to jugs to finish (its only drawback is its lack of topout) The moves are fantastic and the holds only work when used with loads of tension through the feet and are some of the most unique i’ve ever used, not a single hold until the catch hold is easily holdable with feet off. Its called Helicoidal flow due to the rock on this wall mimicking water with its strata and features. Like undertow its also a flow process. It also seems to sum up the dynamics of my legs swirling about nicely.

Normally that’d have been one of my best days ever, but to top it off there was a line as proud as misericorde or partage just to the left on older & harder rock, in the sun, with an amazing looking set of features on it including a fang like rooflet that you can pinch. Now by this stage i was feeling pretty knackered but I had half a chance if i spotted the beta fast. I stared it out and pretended that i knew what i was doing, like when comp climbers look at finals problems. I figured it out by going, i’ll try this crazy heel that’ll work. it did! then i though well you’ve got to be able to kneebar this thing, you could! Bizzarre  under guppy to get LH high. No problem. Toehook the roof? Nope your crap at toehooking remember. dynamic heel above shoulder into scoopy pod? kerching! Thanks to the sun coming heating me up by this time i was using less energy just keeping warm and got up it on fumes and by cheating with heels and knees. I topped it out up leaning meanie’s upper squeeze chimney for full points. Sometimes Aretes can be pretty monotonous, eg careless torque, arcangel, ulysees and white wand are pretty much 3star repetitive laybacking, which is great because they’re one big layback up a mega lines but its hardly varied climbing. To get an arete with so much variety move to move is pretty special. I find as i see more and more lines nowadays less and less gets that childish excitement going like i used to feel when out on the rocks. The bouldering cliff at Reiff was a real breath of fresh air in that sense as it seems to solely consist of 100%, billion year old, single malts. I guess thats why it even gets called a bouldering cliff in one of Scotlands great single pitch trad destinations. One bit of useful advice is that it can seep a bit so don’t turn up there on a wet day in a big swell as you might not get the same experience i’ve been selling. We dined out on the tai chi soup we’d been given on the beach at Reiff looking at the sun setting on the summer Isles and hills behind, free food in a setting grander than the savoy!

That was only the first 3 days of 6, i think i’ve written enough now though and i dont want to waffle on too much. I can save it for another time. Katie was the star of the latter part of the trip by doing loads of classics even after a feather filled night in the car at -5. I mostly scoffed our free food and had fun bouldering with Dave Mac. I also experienced the crappest cafe i’ve ever visited in Fort William, mainly because it built itself up to be good. (called sugar and spice or something; cant wait until i hit them with my truthful trip advisor review). And we found an artist we really like so we bought some paintings for our house https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grace-M-Cameron-Art/214221402031083 

ruining a fort william artwork, i thought it was a game until i read the sign!

We have a new machine! It's a laser cutter/engraver. It's very exciting. We are now engraving our fingerboards with it, the finish is great and it is much faster than the engraving process we used to use, leaving us more time to make more fingerboards.

The laser is great for loads of other stuff too - we have been fiddling around with it and making a few new bits and bobs. Our latest product isn't exactly ground breaking but it should be pretty handy to most climbers... 

The Beast Maintainer is a little sanding board you can use to keep your skin in fine fettle as you climb. Smooth, even skin is important for getting maximum friction out of the rock and avoiding nasty splits, tears and holes.

Apart from this, we have been very busy making fingerboards for everyone as well as tinkering with some other new products - which should be more exciting but no less pretty than the Beast Maintainers. 

Brocken Spectre whilst finding new pebbles

It sounds silly but i hadn’t really planned what to do as this year came about. Everything was 2012 this and 2012 that.  I blame the olympics personally 2013 started to feel like a bit of an afterthought. I joked in January that it should be the year of the drought (draught) after the year of the flood last year. Like Chinese animal years but adapted for our new climate. So far so good anyhow. Except i haven’t really done anything that i really wanted to do yet. I also seem to be getting busier as i get older and finding time to write anything worthwhile on the web is getting harder. As such this is a bit of a mish mash of stuff from the first 2 months or so this year, easy reading, lots of buffer just like a good trash novel. The abysmal end to last year and bad january this year really killed the motivation in me and at one point i had “nothing new to do- complete bollocks as ever” I then found a bunch of one mover projects but i find it hard to prioritize those over the bigger lines. And as such i’ve had a dabble on each but done none. The big lines have been spitting me off and i’ve been struggling to get in the closing things out mindset. Everyone needs a rest once in a while i guess, mine just got forced on me. So with a bit of trundling here and there to keep me busy as well as being a good all round workout to keep the strength up. (moving 300KG blocks for over an hour does wonders for your lower back) I’ve started to find a bit more March motivation.

January and February have passed by in a mess of split tips, wrong crags on the wrong days and the odd new problem from 7C to 8A+ but nothing great just average stuff or variations, some were great fun or great moves with good company but none were the big stuff that really keeps me training hard, after all there are enough good VS-E5s in the lakes to last anyone a lifetime of days out and you dont need to maintain a base level of 8A/+ bouldering to do them. 

Katie's lovely pic of the Lakes winter on Dad's Birthday, Later on i tried some optimistic bum boarding, sufficed to say the classic descents weren't in condition despite being white.

I’m gradually getting back on form though. Before Christmas i was about 68KG and found it hard to keep warm when outside so i ate and ate and ate over December and January and now i’m still under 70kgs! although i have felt a bit warmer whilst out of late. The best thing about the eating is that i’ve got the squeeze back and it is the funnest part of climbing for me. Unfortunately i’ve only really felt the benefit on one project outdoors so far and on the board (that and one armering the 45’s and pinky mono front levering as a dick about at the end of a session, (i’d never one armed the 45s before but had a spate of doing full repeaters on one arm on the 35s in 2010). Luckily Rob Fielding and Dave Birkett were on hand as witnesses to such silly feats (I dont think Dave was impressed at all, he's seen it all before; atleast my woodwork in the wall got a nice nod of approval though). The 55 board (or Beak Master as i've named it) is where i’ve made the best gains, just to wind up Eden Rock customers as its still shut to the public! It feels like i’ve only just got the measure of it after 2 months though so it might not be the most user friendly board ever. I’m hoping to use it a lot this year to find that elusive next level of technical incapability, that and its really really fun.

Micky cruising the 55 (its got a lot more holds on now)

The biggest visual change of 2013 is my move from Bigstone to Mountainboot company. It made sense to me after a long think over. I live in the "Scarpa North" now and was a lone 5.10 raider up here. Geordies always looked upon my shoes like a bad smell, how dare i wear those on this rock! Nearly all the hard first ascents up here got done wearing Scarpa’s whether its Dunne, Dunning or Katz’s routes and problems in Yorkshire, Birketts routes in the lakes or Andy and Malcs ascents in The County. Macleod and Malc dominate the hard FA’s in Scotland too in most disciplines. With Ricky Bell in Northern Ireland it really is the Scarpa North (In the interests of fairness there is a fairly large Boreal Gaskins and 5.10 Mcclure limestone history there, a Peckitt lead evolv yorks grit development surge and Hocking's fingers are currently pulling red chili's up behind him on hard trad and boulders). 

It was a bit funny adapting to different shoes for a week or two (i’ve worn 5.10s for over 7 years) but after a couple of sessions in the Instinct Vs’s it felt like i’d gained more than i’d lost in terms of a shoe that does nearly everything well (which considering the price of rock shoes nowadays for most non jammy people is a very good thing!). That combined with a very cool custom made pair of Vapour Vario's Thanks to Heinz Mariacher and i couldn’t be happier with what i’ve got under me. To be honest if i hadn’t been bouldering for so long that i can be arsed to exploit the difference between a linear, catch and friction heel (total nerd) then i would probably just wear the instincts all the time but there are some heel hooks which are best in a certain shoe and the instinct heel is amazing for friction heels but not catch. Sometimes that makes the difference between doing something in a session or in several. Which over the course of the year adds up. Anyway i’m looking forward to putting up some classics in them.

Classics are going to be the attempted theme of this year for me (esoteric might come a close second) if i can help it. I’m partial to the odd filler in/ blinkered problem from time to time but i’m hoping to keep the standards high this year (last year i almost managed but a few lines lead me astray) if i can get going well enough, I’ve certainly found the projects to work on, they are just getting further away with more conditionsy and harder moves on. A stressful thing at times!

Still i can always go on Holiday...