There's no place like home

I just got back from a trip back to Scotland. I forgot what a beautiful country I come from. I brought my shoes and got out bouldering one day at Muchals. The climbing wasn't too amazing but the setting sure was.

Old Video

I was looking through my laptop and came across this old video of me climbing from back in 05. I thought it would be cool to put it up here. It’s a video of me soloing a route called Nijinski at Auchinstarry Quarry, Scotland. The route is graded E5 6a, which for those of you who don’t know translates to about 6c+ climbing or 11c X, which was pretty much my limit at the time. The E grade takes into account the difficulty and seriousness of the climbing, 6c+ climbing is at the low end of difficulty for an E5 climb, but it is very hard to protect, so it’s a very dangerous climb. It is possible to get some marginal pieces of gear in, my friend George did it a year later and managed to fiddle in some weighed down RP’s and a skyhook, but these are more for psychological aid since they probably wouldn’t hold a fall. I decided to solo it because I didn’t think the gear would hold, and more importantly I didn’t want to hang around up there and get scared trying to fiddle in some gear. In this sense it was probably safer for me just to go for the solo.

I had first toproped this climb much earlier, before I was capable of climbing it cleanly, but it had stuck in my mind as something I always wanted to go back to and lead/solo. Once I had managed to toprope it cleanly, I knew it was only a matter of managing the mental aspect of the climb. I did this in May 2005 at a time when I was really trying to push my trad grades. In the space of just a few months I had gone from being an E1 (5.10a) trad climber to onsighting E3 (5.10+) and redpointing E4 (5.11+), so the next logical step was to go for an E5. On the day of the climb I had toproped the climb a couple of times before to make sure I was absolutely solid on it, the crux of the route is at about ¾ height where it is very precarious balancy climbing. A fall from that height would be very serious. The footage is not amazing, but I think you can still feel the tension of the day.

Watching the video even now makes my hands sweat. This was definitely the peak of my dangerous climbing phase, I went on to climb other hard routes up to E5, but they were a lot safer. I think I realized when I topped out that I couldn’t do something like this again. I felt some of best and worst feelings I had ever experienced climbing this route, I’ve never felt so involved in a route as I did with this one. I don’t regret climbing this route, but this type of climbing is definitely in my past now, I won’t be trying anything as dangerous as this again.

Scotland

I returned to Scotland for a 2 week visit after a year and a half away living in the US. It was great to see the family especially my brother who had come over from Florida, his first time back since he left 14 years ago! My copy of the new bouldering book 'Stone Play' was waiting for me when I got home. Its a great book, but the fact that there is a pic of me (page 119) may bias my judgement. While I was home the weather barely let up from rain, sleet, and snow but it did let up a couple times to let me go out. I got out to Portlethen on a sunny Sunday morning. Portlethen was an old haunt of mine when I started climbing in Aberdeen, and I had a some of unfinished business I had to see to here. I went out with my friend Anthony who I started climbing with back in 2001. He couldn't climb cause of tendon injuries, but was keen to see if I'd really improved as much as I said I had. We got down to the boulders to find the sport wall soaking wet, which was a bit annoying as i was keen to get back on 7a+ I was close on before i left. But the Broccoli Garden boulder was in the sun, so we did some stuff on that. After a quick warm-up I managed Slap and Tickle a classic 6b+ (V4) after figuring out a good sequence. I had played around on this problem before, but never really attempted it properly. Its given 4 stars (out of 4) which I think says more about the quality of problems at Portlethen than the quality of this problem. I really wanted to try The Pit, the classic of the crag which I had worked on a couple of years ago but i never really got close on. My first go I pulled on and got to the underclings then my foot popped. My second go on I pulled through to the crimp and latched the lip, I had sent it! I was very pleased to have sent it so easily, it was a long term project of mine a couple of years ago for me so it was nice to have done it so easily. I tried The Buzz (7a+) next to it briefly and made some good progress, but i didn't have much time to work on it, and had to get back home.

Sending The Pit (Font 7a) at Portlethen

A couple of days later I headed down to Stirling to hang out with some friends from uni. I was really keen to climb at Dumbarton and get back on some of my old projects there. Despite the gale force winds and heavy rain I headed down with George and Dave, hoping that the weather might let up. We'd barely gotten out of Stirling when Dave's courtesy car broke down, not a good sign. We eventually made it down there about 4 hours after we first set off. When we got to Dumby it didn't look good, it was freezing cold with sideways rain. Despite the terrible conditions I managed to find a dry problem on the side of the Eagle boulder, Zig Zag. I made a feeble attempt at the sit start which goes at British 6b (about V5), but settled for just doing the stand at V1. I nearly got blown off the top of the boulder, getting off the boulder in those conditions was a bit of a nightmare. So we decided to just go to the sanctuary of the Glasgow wall where we met up with Paddy. I was a little dissapointed not to climb more at Dumbarton, but you can't say I didn't try.

A wet Dumbarton

I'm back in the US now and I'm looking forward to hopefully another great year of climbing. I improved my climbing level in 2007 more than any other year. And i'm going into 2008 injury free and in good form. My blog readers can look forward to reports from more exotic locations this year and maybe just maybe i'll climb my first 8a!