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...

 A busy year:

Thanks to everyone who bought something off beastmaker this year, we hope you're all happy with your purchases and that they are helping you in your various walks of life.

 This year has turned out fantastically in many ways for me, at times its been very stressful and i’ve definitely had my fair share of bad luck too. Its been a good year for changing my mindset and approaching climbing differently. I am seeing it more as an engaging hobby rather than something to spend all my time on, i don’t have the time, money nor conscience at the moment to jetset worldwide month after month. Part of this is getting older and gaining responsibilities but part of it is the clarity that i now see in my motivations, i know what i like in climbing and what i want to do and it doesn’t need my whole life orientated towards it with colossal holidays (im not saying the odd one wouldn’t be nice though), i’ve also found enough challenges in the UK this year to keep me more than busy and i can see 2013 filling up already if the UK was good enough for all our previous greats to push standards it is still that way for me. yes the weather’s been pretty crap but so’s reality sometimes, our weather will get crapper and more extreme the more we pump it full of energy. I reckon i’m happy with dabbling in this droughty/flooded isle, putting up 4 new 8B’S & 13 8A/+s and dozens of high 7’s (90% of which are independent blocs) is an alright tick list for a rainy year (i even had time to do some trad and a days sport). It was a funny year for repeating things. I did all my other 8’s in 1-2hrs or under, except second coming, which is my hardest ever repeat & problem i think and took more time to do than... well grannies have made patchwork quilts a lot faster.

  Its been the first year i’ve not climbed out the UK and it might have been the worst year for a loong time to do so. That said i’ve progressed more this year as a climber than i have since i started i think. Part of that has been the weather putting my back to the wall or at least creating the illusion of pressure. Being back on my board in my garage for most of the year really forced me to focus and follow my own rhythm, which is basically resting when i don’t feel close to 90% of my best but training really hard when i do. Its been a nail biting strategy as i’ve been trusting my guts rather than the formula of train though the pain and keep pushing. Much of this strategy has come from needing to switch my plans round the weather, there’s no point knackering out the pony only to find out its race day tomorrow. Either way everything which i found pretty hard at the start of the year on my board i now do at the end of my warm ups. The reason for this is the gathering of the crimp. in the start of 2011 i was much weaker on crimps than i am now, i needed 9kgs assistance to hang the campus rung on the 2000 half crimped for a set on one arm. That was about the time i did voyager, cypher, BOP, stanton deliver, nth power, primitive notion, the pessimist, dandelion mind and Bewilderness etc etc. I was also heavier then too. I tried second coming that year with Ned, neither of us got anywhere near to pulling on near the start but we figured out an easier way to do the very end, it was so fun and unlikely that it sparked up the idea that i would love to be able to do it one day. I’ve been going to goldsborough since i was 16. I had a great evening there once with Ry, Gangle, Katzy and Dunning. It really is a favourite crag of mine, with mostly immaculate rock, the crag is so barren and timeless from one vista but surprisingly near habitation if you look south east. Second coming always fascinated me, when Steve chatted me through it i could never get my head round smearing in a roof. But thats what you do, to pull on you step up to the right foot smear and tense like Mr Universe, the first holds are un-holdable without the smear, otherwise you’d just campus from them, the RH is a decent cresent crimp the left is simply a two finger half pad crimp which i stack my other fingers near and pinch. I’ve never tried a problem before where its been so hard to pull on (once you pull on its roughly a single move 8A+ into a soft 8A). Even on things like Traci Lords sit or ATHOIA, all the pull ons are quite easy (although on the latter the moves between are horrendous). This is what is brilliant hey? working the pull ons, i only know of a few dedicated boulderers (who’ve already got a good protfolio of ascents) who work the pull ons on projects for long time scales. Maybe its taking the bar too far on, bouldering becoming too niche and unapproachable? i don’t think so, mainly because of the simple fact that by November this year not only was it relatively easy for me to pull on, no more lower leg tapping to get off the floor, but i could work the holds to do what i wanted with them, and i wanted to move in a way that was perpendicular not opposing to them, which needed more power and a different left foot. It really was a fantastic effort in 2001 by Steve and a great find. Shortly after doing second coming i went back on the beastmaker to check how i was doing and i could now hang the littlest outer rung on 1 arm half crimped for 7 seconds no problem and 1 arm it at the same time, with no assistance, which for 12 months work is a ridiculous change, interestingly last year i could hold 1 pad pinky monos for at least 8 seconds and now i cant hold them at all at the moment. My drag strength has dropped from easily doing a full set on the same arm on the rh eye to needing 3kg assistance to. Mind you thats not a bad rate of decline over 12 months of relative neglect.  

Earthworm Jim 8A/+ (hope this gets some attention as is near the road and great fun)

I like this game, its tricky to play and like snakes and ladders there’s always the threat of injury to take you back down a few notches but i’ve learned this year that by simply waiting 18 months (and guessing the training well) you can prove how short sighted the minds eye is. which begs the question where is the end of the line? I’d love to try traci lords sit next year if i get the fortune. Plus Gaskins did it in a session which makes me think i can possibly do it. He also flashed the stand, again a phenomenal effort and possibly the UK’s hardest ever flash in terms of doing a single 8a move first go.

So thats what i’ve realized this year. I’ve also realized i’d like to go on holiday somewhere abroad, bouldering next year, Fairhead counts right? I’ve realized Scotland has some incredible boulder projects just 2 hrs from my house in Carlisle. I’ve also realized i can both fart and burp at the same time. I’ve realized that no matter how hard you try some projects will always be a victim to the weather, the only thing i haven’t done this year that i really wanted to is the ultimate in seeping frustration. I’ve realized i’ve said the r word too many times now.

some rubbish uk projects for 2013 if the weather holds out!

So some highlights?

Everything i did in the county is special to me but End Sequence really was great fun and it was a pleasure getting to do Chris’s Launch sequence many times over. The county as a whole is where i feel most at home, even more so now thanks to Katie and her family, whether having a barefoot jog along bamburgh, hanging out in Pilgrims on holy island before heading to bowden for some soloing.

I felt my best performances this year have to be when success and failure were a hairs breadth apart. I did Traci lords in about 30 minutes in July (just after turning 25, Greg is still the youngest ascender!!) and it took everything to break the move down that quickly and hold the swing in control. 

Rhythm was great, the feeling of hitting all the dimples right was great. It’d been shady when we arrived but just as i sat down to try the sit the sun came out and i had to wait, Then as it got lower i started trying it, i messed up the top twice and calmed down a bit then hit the perfect go, body working overdrive stuff. 

Fat Lady was the other ascent that i had to wind up the gears on, its just like a board problem and after finally sticking the long move well i had to finish it off there and then. A great day out with Micky and Katie on a busy month.

The other thing i’ve helped with this year is building Eden Rock. Aside from being 3 months of graft we’ve finally started work on the training room. Which is good as i’m keen to get back on a steep board and pulling beaks. The aim is to make the nicest/ most effective board in the world for 8th grade climbers. After 3 sessions it definitely feels a lot harder than any other board i’ve used. I hope by the time it feels easy and i can use all the holds a few more obvious gaps will appear from the blankness outside.

Some nice new ones in the county in 2012 (well ones i have nice pics of anyway)

As an aside i have witnesses or unedited video (or both) for all my problems i’ve put up this year (as i’m aware i’ve put up more new blocs this year than si o' connor ever did and he churned them out! which might flag up the bullshit radar) End Sequence is the only exception as the camera was left in Katie's car and she had a meeting in Newcastle. I do however have the footage from the session before with Katie and Ben when i dropped the very last hard move on the out swing and i’d be more than happy to head up there again if it was an issue. Lying makes no sense to me unless you’re weak and have alot to prove. Strong climbers are strong fact. Strong developers cherish undone lines alot more than done ones as they are bloody hard to find.Thankfully bouldering seems to be moving in the direction of it not being taboo to ask for proof. 

Home 8B: Floated up this on a great day out with Dave and Elsie, weightless movement on small grippy holds.

Autumns great hey? There’s something about the trees gilding their leaves that feels like a convivial rustling of a years work well spent. New growth and strength achieved and offerings of those lovely crispy leaves before winter sets in. Watching the wretched bracken die back you cant help but celebrate. I love the first day out when a cold wind barges through the space between you and the rock. I had a good October this year, something clicked, i got fired up on a line i’ve not yet done but a window opened just slightly, not big enough for that yet but it had a knock on effect and 3 other lines fell with relative ease, it felt like all i had to do was show up and pull on and my body would handle the rest. Then something very British happened, i thought oh fuck i cant go on like this, i’ve only got 2 things left which mean a lot to me, if i do them this month then i’ll be lost in a world of pointless shuffling, doing moves just for the sake of them but without being all there in my head. Like a once talented pianist tapping away in a deserted hotel bar. What’s the point really in any bouldering? Dawkins is prattling on about the pointlessness of everything on channel 4 at the minute, He’s right of course (until proven wrong), and there is solace in the miracle of us consciously floating through this brief blip in time when almost everything is possible which we set our faustian minds to, and we have so much free time for minds to wonder. I’m staring at rock nowadays and seeing it eat up life with the flicker of an idea, “i want to climb that” well thats a year gone “and that” another 3 months “and that” well that you may never do, but you probably will because you think you can” 

Nature's Angry 7B+ (stand start in the near the right of the patina shield and head straight up) Pic: by mark Savage (horizon by me not straightening it)

I am a bit lost in it all to be honest, too many projects this year and too many things undone, if it looks like i’ve done a lot, in my mind i haven't (i’m tricky to please) the weathers been great for wild plants but shite for bouldering at many venues. Bowden and St Bees are oozing green lichen that i’ve never seen before and it may well be a sign of crags beginning to be adapted by a changing climate. Also my body has changed so much throughout the year from lots of hard work/ stress/ training that its bizarre, i’ve never been so light and good on little crimps, which is great for some stuff but most climbers i know of this ilk are one trick ponies. Its time to change again, force exertion is what i have ultimate respect for in bouldering and i’ve got a bit worse at the backy side of it in the past few months. Hanging on with strong fingers only gets you so far on projects (watch the difference between Jan Hojer and Dave Graham climbing Sky to see an example of this). sometimes you’ve got to squash the angles to get the holds out of them and that means having the crush to both squeeze and hang on. If i lived in another country with loads of rock in 1 style i’d maybe just wriggle away on little edges but the joy of being here, where i am and will live for a while is that there are almost all the worlds major rock types within 2.5 hours of my house. So i may as well play on them all. But what to do when you begin to run out of things to play on? Crags are more developed now and optimism for new lines is logically waning in a sea of established classics. My mind is a powerful but short sighted thing. Within a week of it massively bumming me out and convincing me the end was nigh then i was back on some great new things. If i want to do everything i set out to then i’ve either got to reign in my expectations or meet them with a bigger window for success. I want to make that window bigger now and not try things so far out of it that it closes up to a size thats hard to deal with day after day. Real gains can be made through proper training, its not just some shallow thing for inflexible gonks to do to look strong, real training creates a base level of pure and mechanical strength for the brain and nerves to fine tune, Climbing is one of those tricky sports in that the hardest things can only be achieved when the mind truly wants them, the processes of doing a hard problem are so complex that not a single thought can interrupt the process, absolute focus propogating though to each limb, if it doesn’t then success hasn’t been hard enough earned for me. I love discovering new challenges, geology and weathering set problems that resin can never achieve. Perhaps i’m taking it all a bit too seriously?  but its hard not to keep trying to better myself with a personality like mine, the conflict is only between my expectations and reality. My climbing summed up on a billboard. Expectations vs Reality. Reality always wins but only for a moment before my expectations whisp me off again into a future that may never exist. Where i’m great and can climb whatever i’d like. There have been two moments this year of this being the case. I’m not the best climber in the world, i’m not the most powerful or the most impressive. But non of that is the reason i try so hard on some climbs. Its so that in those moments i feel what i’m pretty sure is true happiness. Struggling so hard to become better at something which will never happen unless i struggle. Schrodingers cat turning out to be a perfect pet instead of landfill. sisyphus with a happy ending, sisyphus but learning on each roll of the boulder what was going wrong, and finding that perfect spot where the boulder will sit forever, so you can always look back upon the achievement and draw upon it. As pointless as the achievement is, for me it beats anything else i can think to come up with.

Sometimes I do moves on projects that even i find ridiculous, but if they work; they work. Believe it or not this is currently the best (least power sapping) solution i’ve found on a project i’ve just managed to do all the moves (and a few decent links) on on my first session but it took all my past history of technical nous and power to combine into a sequence which worked, it can be refined next session anyhow. There’s always the possibility of a next session, whether or not there’ll ever be another one i don’t know.

Here’s a nice quote from Tom Paine, talking about something much more serious ( i was listening to a folk tune on youtube and it cropped up)

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. T’is dearness only that gives everything its value”

short summation of all the above:

Basically if you do it in a session its piss but you’ll never be as happy as if you really try on something. (if its been a few years you might start going mad).

Well its proving to be a difficult summer for myself to say the least. The protracted rain which has only relented for a few days here and there has gradually ground down my reserves of psyche to almost zero at times. I’d say i’m fairly strong minded with bouldering and will often head out even if i’m not in a great mood when i leave the house as i know its always nice to be out. With me it ends up being a trust exercise with forecasts. Luckily short term forecasting is getting better and better as the years tick by and i’ve found shower prediction to be fairly accurate given a few hours window. This is what its been like... Waiting for bombardments to stop to rush out somewhere quick drying and with a breeze. With the vegetation out and humidity Thingshave really been hard to deal with if its been wrong. Still with a little effort its been manageable and its made me really appreciate the decent weather we’ve had in the past few years.

The Lakes is a right blessing in summers like this. There are a number of venues with quick drying and overhanging rock and lots of different aspects. The latter point is something really important. Northumberland has loads of crags but around 80% of them face west. This means shade is almost impossible at this time of year, which immediately writes them off for hard projects, Ravensheugh, queens and Callaly area all have atleast some north facing sections but this means they get less wind. Where as in the lakes there are alot more options of aspect vs wind. Which then means that with a little forward planning its possible to get great conditions in an otherwise awful summer. I’ve been out trying bits and bats my current favourites being old testpieces with no ascent information other than a yes i’ve done that, how it used to be in the good old days. (e.g. starting holds and vague sequence) Its nice to step back in time on these problems especially when many of them are ridiculously hard. I’ve found a few projects of my own in the lakes to try one of which i’m super psyched for when it gets a bit colder or if easterly breezes come. 

Another good point of living back in the lakes has been the fact that there’s some proper trad nearby. Big stuff that scares me; none of that mostly highball gumpf that gets pedaled about on the grit. I’ve been easing myself into the heights slowly and following the training theory of past lakes greats by going down to Armathwaite and scaring myself shitless on their routes. Armathwaite is a sandstone crag on the river eden. Its got routes over 25m long but the best stuff is on a buttress about 15-18m high but with really nicely weathered rock. The rock isnt much travelled on the harder routes and its got the added bonus of a slopey hillside above which produces a fine layer of rain splash sediment on the rock after rain. So basically for onsighting you tend to come up against some of the finest scrittle in the UK. Its fantastic fun if you’re in the mood especially with the soft rock which might not hold a fall. There is certainly no better training for getting a strong head. To begin with i was on edge the whole way as normally i really like to trust my feet on trad as they are your base. At Armathwaite on dirty routes (and there has been ALOT of rain in june) its all about trusting your mind, knowing you’re capable of dealing with it and trusting that you wont fall off.

I onsighted some classics like Free and Easy and Papermoon with the wrong finish. The last moves being the hardest on both of these facing a soily mantle on slopers. I’ve just finished Fawcett’s book and am a bit gutted there’s no mention of his visit to 70’s ‘Thwaite as without a doubt it had a lot of the country’s hardest routes in the 74-79 years. History has clarified that much. The top roped lines there if lead, when added to the old test pieces add upto a lot of hard climbing. I got sucked into a nice looking line after finishing up the crack instead of the groove on Paper Moon. The line directly below the crack looked enticing. I abbed down it and gave it a clean with a tea towel (best thing for soft sandstone) and tried the individual moves to make sure the right stuff was clean. Once the rock is clean its similar to bowden in hardness, solid enough to be able to pull on some rubbish holds but not hard enough to take small gear, a great combination. It looked fun coming up from new moon across 2 poor slopers and pressing into the flake then running up it to the hanging crack. its probably a 3 move 7B ish boulder problem 4m off the deck with no gear then a few tricky moves to the first gear at 9m which is a good wire, then the crack is easier but not totally piss. Its probably worth E7 6c for a ground up/onsight but i’m not very good with trad grades. Its a lovely looking route anyhow and climbs some really nice rock, Lunar Sea seemed like a nice name.

I’ve also been trying to get a bit of volume in outdoors when i’ve gotten out as too much time on the board has a habit of making me more rigid on the rock. Some highlights have been an evening at St bees with Howard where i boshed out some fodder for the scorecard enthusiasts by linking the crap out of a low start on the fishermans dyno boulder. I’d love to do this from lower but at the moment i just cant understand how it’d be possible. Its a fun brace of problems anyway and doing all 3 adds upto one great new one. 

Fisherman's Bass from LakesBloc on Vimeo.

On another day Katie and I visited Fleswick bay for the first time. Its a lovely spot and if you’re ever going to learn how to fall off at height then the pebble beach works better than pads for impact absorption (as long as you land on your legs, you’ll break your wrist if you land wrist first due to the way the force dissipates in the pebbles). Having not been before i didn’t know how dry it was. There are some formidable projects there in the bowl cave if they ever dry out then please tweet it to @beastmakers Its a gorgeous spot and the friction is much smoother than the already smooth rock at Apiary etc. It has more in common with cornish shale in texture. Highlight of the day (amongst many) for me was Beach Brawl 7B+ which i accidentally did from sitting at soft 7C+ish thanks to low pebble levels and dryness,  its now one of my favourites on the coast as the holds and burliness are fantastic..