Pondering

So I have had a few weeks off, now what? Well its 10 weeks till holiday time so I had better do something about trying to get better at climbing rocks.

First step to anything is motivation, where is that going to come from? In my questioning of psyche I came across the theory of Manipulation drive. This is the theory that animals including lower species indulge in certain actions mearly for the reward of manipulating a complex and novel object. I quite like that its simple and straightforward, I like playing on rocks, cos i like playing with rocks. Although it sounds like an amazing cop out, we don't know why, so it must be cos you like the feeling! So how does it make you feel?

At best boulders are the perfect something, giving life to memories and good times. Local boulders will always be special for this reason, spots like Fachwen are so tied in with that first summer of this new life. At worst, they chew me up, bring out my bad sides, bitchy, competitive and insecure, a dark stormy come down from the previous high. The feeling that things will never be so good again. Beating away at the unachievable, no more fast gains, same places, same problems, the same moves again and again just for a two week trip to put yourself in an emotional blender of your own expectation and ambition.

So why? After many days of searching I have no answer, fortunately I suffer from something easily defined as natural enthusiasm, so my quest for motivation is relatively straight forward. My reasons are vast and varied, for years I have been a regular scribbler about days spent climbing, and things I would like to climb. Some of these make me feel horrible when I am down, a list from 8 years ago covered in problems most of them undone, a lot I don't even remember wanting to try! How can that be worthwhile? However in these times, I can also remember a dark bar in Austria, meeting a fucked up, mind blown guy calling himself the Nose. Describing to a complete stranger the beauty of the pinch and toe hook rippling the right hand side of my body, swap stories of why we are there, tell him you did a good link today, (he doesn't care or understand but he is very good at pretending) then meet an arms dealer and a guy who plays scrap metal for a living. After being escorted to the late bar 2 miles out of town, feed vast quantities of warm rum and brown sugar, the bar has a whip round for the pissed Welsh guy with no coat to get a taxi. I guess the point is climbing gives you a lot more than just doing the moves.

A selection of interesting people out there, look at the trousers on the guy.

After re-reading that I think I should go climbing, this free time fucks with your head...

Time out

After recent success of developing new areas and trying projects, I have been drinking and sweating on dance floors. Until a couple of years ago I climbed pretty much every day and spent most of my time wondering why improvement was so slow. Now I have learnt that backing off is good, my desire to climb is nearly always there, what changes though is the desire to succeed. To actually do what is required in order to complete a challenge. So in brief its raining, been to the wall a bit, but mainly I am indulging in mental training.

Doing the move...

Had a minor breakthrough on one of my projects this week. After changing the angle of my foot and learning to pinch with my left hand I did one of the two crux moves. I started looking at the line about 3 years ago, and this was my tenth session. I had only done the move twice before but both times seemed more by fluke than anything else. Now I feel I have learnt a position on the move so hopefully it will become linkable. Given that once I caught the hold, I couldn't begin to move either foot, and once I do that I need to do another similarly hard move, that I have only done once, it could take a while!

This week...

This week I mainly went bouldering, shock horror! On Monday I sat out the rain in V12 drinking coffee and reading mags. Eventually went up the pass, been a while since I embraced the post work Cromlech sessions, so I had forgotten what a social centre these blocks were. Did a little climbing and made up some eliminates on the roadside face. Went down to Jerry's to play a bit on things there. Had a reasonable go at doing it blindfold, I have climbed the roof bit blind before but never the top out. Doing the whole thing from the proper start may become my summer fun challenge.

On Tuesday decided to head over to the Orme to climb in the cave, after playing around on this and that decided I was stronger but with much less fitness. My swinging match on Louie Armstrong still isn't working so obviously need to get stronger still. All the big links were out of the question, as I was tired on Lou Ferrino. In the end went up to Normans Wisdom and did the traverse and stuff, after a while it became clear psyche was low, so we headed to the pub.

Wednesday dawned a grey day, I wanted to go and check out a groove I remembered seeing at the entry to the copper mines in the pass. I remembered this as a steep blankish wall with some pinches, estimated the grade as V10 upwards. On my return it had morphed into a just off vertical V4, strange, it wasn't even much of a groove, still it was very good. I set up a rope and started to clean it. After sorting it out and moving some rocks at the bottom, I decided to give it a blast, slipping off the second move. I ran away to come back with a spot and mat. Jack came up from V12 and it went first go. Its quite high but totally safe with a spot and two mats due to a big flat rock for the spotter to stand on. Although I am sure it will probably never be climbed again for years, I named it Traitors Gate, and told anyone who would stand still long enough it was a modern classic. We then went down to the Cromlech, and had a social session with a couple of ciders, although I did land on my ass show boating on Sleep deprivation. Caff and Baby Dave both did Mr Fantastic as their first 8a+. Its great seeing other people happy when they climb hard stuff and even better when its on your problems.

Thursday, was mincing day, after heading over to see a mate in Bethesda, had a spare hour so decided to stop off and do the traverse in the river by the bridge. Maybe its just me, but I have been convinced this is worth doing for years. Its a bit small and you have to be careful not to land in the river, but it has a lovely sequence of moves on slopes. Well its good if your in the area with half an hour to kill!

Staggering

Went up to Staffordshire for a mates stag on the weekend, stopped off at Gibb tor on the way to try Maurice Gibb. Thought this was remarkably cunning as its a jug to jug jump and it was hot. On arrival at the crag I realised the only fluid I had was 24 cans of Strongbow and 18 bottles of Stella, all warm. Fortunately after a bit of rooting round the boot I found some nice cider that had been kept cooler in the boot beneath some mats and stuff.


I started leaping around and quickly got bored of being a steady 6 inches short, so I canned the cider and started soloing round. First up was a nice looking slab into a groove, after moving up the slab on jugs I was reaching up towards a break looking for the next big hold, I got scared and retreated down. After a couple more attempts cursing my cowardice, I looked in the guide and realised there were no more good holds as it was an E5 6c. So I went through and found some more reasonable grades. This was great, scuttling round on jams being trad. I had a proper good time although I did gibb (see what I did there?) one route I would like to do, can't remember the name but the description was a Gogarth route! It involved a mantel onto a big green grassy shelf, a crawl then a dusty green crack to top out, after a couple of slimy attempts I got scared of being broken at the crag alone and ran away to party.

Moel Y Gest

I love cleaning boulders, its stupid but there you go, for the last few weeks virtually every day off I had has been spent at Moel Y Gest scrubbing lichen and peeling off moss. In the same time period my house hasn't been cleaned at all, well couldn't really as all the brushes were stashed under blocs 20 miles away.

About 2 months ago I first heard rumor of this venue, first from Andy, but he wasn't saying where. Then Simon Panton, who was thinking about giving away knowledge in order to gain positive karma to finally heal his finger. Eventually as it appeared to be becoming the worst kept secret in Wales, Si cracked and spilt the beans.

The following day saw me head down to check it out, after reading the crag description in the Tremadog guide I was fairly blase about the directions after all its at the bottom of a 200ft quarry, how hard could it be? An hour or so later sweating, stumbling and swearing, I finally located the boulders. They looked good, psyche was high so I started cleaning and climbing some of the lines till I ran out of tobacco, chalk and water.

I went back to V12 to collect Jack and some brushes, and we drove down to do some more. It rained, so we took shelter and he cleaned but failed to climb Room For Glue, it was very wet grim and greasy to be fair though. I started trying the groove to the right which became Beatitude's Kiss. This is probably my favorite problem in Wales now, it felt like a 8a+ when I did it but I know it was bad conditions, so I have decided to give it 8a and see what happens in the winter.

Beatitudes kiss.

Anyway there are new problems dotted around the hillsides, here is a link if I can make it work to Ground Up topo:


http://www.northwalesbouldering.com/upload/members/Moel%20y%20Gest%20topoV4.pdf



and some photos by Ray Wood off the DMM site:


http://dmmclimbing.com/news.asp?nid=213&ngroup=2

45s revisited

This week I have mainly been developing some boulders but there is still something I want to do up there before too many people find it. So I will tell you about my training session this week.

Went to the mill and made up some new moves followed by a beastmaker session. Main goal was to hang the 45 degree slopers for 30 seconds, after 4 attempts 25, 27, 23, I sat down and rested before 32 seconds. All very dull but it means I am getting stronger or fitter, this was my 4th day on a few weeks ago I needed to be fresh to get anywhere near this.