Carrock Crush.

In reality another Misanthrope Mission, but technically not as I actually invited a couple of homies down but they couldn't make it. I'm just as happy pootling around on my own, it allows me to get more focused too.

I've had a love/hate relationship with Carrock Fell. It's a great venue with plentiful inspiring problems, but I've had a couple of visits where I've seen a cool, breezy forecast, and been fully syked for the rough gabbro circuits, but it's turned out surprisingly muggy (the background of my blog title is taken from a hazy Carrock day) and I've got my arse kicked by the finger-shredding crimpy walls. I've never felt I've got to grips with the boulders, until the other day...

THIS time the conditions would have to be in my favour: Arriving at midday, it's glorious sun slowly slinking off the hillside, -1°C, and a steady South Easterly breeze. Perfect. I stomped up the hillside to the Mile High Wall. Rockfax says to avoid the bracken and "stick to the rocks" which I did. Pretty soon I skidded off icey rock and down into a jagged pit, only being stopped by being wedged between my mats and my shin on a rough boulder. Once at Mile High Wall however, the vibes were spot on. And then things pretty much proceeded as in the video above - I did some great problems although I didn't flash as many as I wanted (more on this later). I also tried a few other things (finger-shredding crimpy walls) and recced some cool problems for another time.

Just a classic bouldering day out :D.

Southside DAWG, keeping it REAL.

Whatever. I've heard American gangsta-speak used in bouldering winds up po-faced miserable Brits, so that's as good a reason as any. Anyway...

~¤§¤~

New problems on Glen Nevis Southside:

(NB Blogspot might do that shit-awful slideshow thing - to see fullsize map, right click and open in new window).

Described from NE to SW, from the Weir Crossing. New problems in bold, established problems in not-bold.

Tim's Arete
(aka Evening Boulder aka Finch Boulder)
Squirrel Groove V2 5c *** (FA Hazel Robson Nov 2011)
SS tiny corner to crimps, gain slim groove on left and pull onto slab via ripples.
Black Orc V6 6b *** (FA Fiend Feb 2012)
SS tiny corner to crimps, gain bulging nose, palm to apex and barbaric topout.
Bear Island V3 5c
Bear Rib - V3 5c * (FA Fiend Feb 2012)
SS just right of Bear Island, pull up to arete pinch and hidden crimp, gain top on left and rock rightwards.
Finch Arete - V1 5b * (FA Fiend Feb 2012)
Obvious arete L of Finch Attack from a standing start.
Finch Attack V4 6a
Punch And Judy Man V8 6c
Tim's Arete V5 6b
Wee Wall V1 5c (FA Fiend Feb 2012)
On right of high face, link good shelf to good shelf via a crimp, escape R.
unnamed 3b
unnamed 3c
unnamed 3a

The Rocking Stone
Unnamed 5a
Unnamed SS V2 5c (FA Hazel Robson Nov 2011)
SS as below but gain groove instead.
Thousand Year Egg V4 6b ** (FA Fiend Nov 2011)
SS on big sidepull, pull up to distant ripple then to higher seam on faint nose, rock onto ripple (no crimp in groove).
Rocking Stone Slab V2 5c
Squirrel Rib RHS V3 6a (FA Fiend Nov 2011)
SS RHS of arete with RH sidepull, slap up arete and stand delicately up using micro-ripple on slab.
Squirrel Rib LHS V2 6a * (FA Hazel Robson Nov 2011)
LHS of arete using good sidepull for left and slopey arete for right to good finishing holds.

Mole stones:
First Stone
unnamed 4c
The Art Of Shredding V2 6a * (FA Fiend Feb 2012)
SS down and left using arete and crimp, grind up blunt rib.
unnamed 5a
unnamed 5a

Flying Roof / Boothill Roof
(huge roof hidden behind Slug)
Flying Fiend V4 6a ** (FA Fiend Nov 2011)
Left side of roof. SS at obvious flat holds, pull up and use roof crimps to gain lip, swing rightwards to rockover finish.
Flying Roof V5 6c
Sheep Skull V2 5c

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A few things to note:

• The weir crossing (wellies needed) makes it a 5 minute walk. If it is too high then the alternative is 20 mins up from Whale Rock parking.


• Most landings are flat and very good! A few are boggy but only a couple are rocky.


• There are LOADS of very easy / trivial problems, all described in Glen Nevis bouldering.


• The rock is great and super-rough in places. Much more like gabbro than the flakey horrors of Dunkeld.


• I'm not sure how quick it dries - it doesn't get any sun in winter, but it's quite open and there isn't any drainage.

Misanthrope Mission #6

There's a brief period of amazing winter conditions in Scotland at the moment. It's due to end this weekend, but luckily I managed to get up to Glen Nevis this week. Cold and crisp and sunny the whole way up - even some routes in Glen Coe looked climbable, if cold! Perfect for the rough rock and sinuous slopers of Glen Nevis South Side, perfect for getting back on my new project, and rattling some other things off.

The videos above sum it up I think. Black Orc was the main mission objective, it was a relief to get it done as it's been nagging at me since I first saw it - obvious, natural, good climbing to a barbaric top-out. It felt hard enough to me! The funny thing about this area is that even easy-looking lines mysteriously turn out to be a lot harder when you actually attempt them. One of my easy warm-ups required a few goes working it, another easy warm-up turned into another long-term project. Perhaps it is because the rock is nicely slopey and frictional, so feels good in good conditions, but also quite bulging and rounded, so a surprising amount of power can be needed... Either way it is very good winter bouldering! And as a bonus the weir was curiously low for this time of year - although crossing it at dusk was exciting as the riverside rocks were coated in sheet ice from the spray. Needless to say I survived, but my fingertips and elbows are still recovering from the session.

As for the newness of these problems - it is quite simple, they have not been listed anywhere I can find and show no evidence of being climbed. The Glen Nevis definitive bouldering guide lists hundreds of problems including several around these boulders, but the developers seemed to have no concept of sit-starts nor aretes/prows ;). And Dave Mac....checking his blog and Youtube videos, he is rightly concerned with bigger and harder things. Most of these new lines required cleaning: Squirrel Groove & Black Orc had clumped moss at the start and I snapped off a flake where the RH crimp now is. Bear Rib and Finch Arete had thick moss on crucial holds, compared to Finch Attack and Bear Island (the latter only listed in GNB, but a very nice problem) which had old brushed holds. Flying Fiend had no chalk under the roof (it now has my wee dabs from November despite the storms) compared to Flying Roof to the right. Etc etc. I'll post full details of these soon as there really is a great circuit there now.

Training and mileage.

^^^ This track is included solely because it is awesome and sometimes the path to awesomeness has to be paved with training.

The gayflu abated enough for me to go back down to TCA. I was hoping to finish off a couple of comp wall problems before they get reset this weekend. But after warming up (always so tedious in a cold wall!) and giving it a go I was just feeling weak and tired. Hmmmm. But didn't I just have a good week's mileage and then a nice rest weekend?? Oh, no, wait, was it fuck a rest weekend. An ill weekend and a recovering weekend. So I sacked it off and did almost all the new reds before they tweak them to make an easier circuit. I haven't actually had a hard training session for a few weeks, I definitely want to get back on that style of training, but I have to easy myself back into it via mileage.

One good thing though: I have had a lot of bollox training sessions because of how screwy my body (and sometimes mind!) is, and it's often been fairly demoralising with only brief glimpses of progression. But this last trip did reassure me that despite all the bollox and demoralisation, the training does seem to be doing something - slowly clawing my way back towards a previous physical level, or at the very least halting the decline! And at the end of the day, that's what matters - the training is for SOMETHING, awesome experiences on the rock, so if I feel I'm touching on that then I'm inclined to battle through.

On a related subject of fitness and progress and the ups and downs of the physical side of climbing, I was chatting to Alan C down at TCA after reading about his struggles in the last year, and in terms of fitness he highlighted the difference between training days / bouldering days, and full days out on rock and on routes. This is something I've noticed - full days out with lots of routes, even if they are not very hard, is simply better EXERCISE than training sessions or bouldering. So far, so obvious. But in terms of bouldering days - a sensible choice in winter - I have been avoiding mileage in favour of projects. Projects are rewarding and train some areas of climbing, but skin and muscle tends to give way before energy and fitness does. Thus not good exercise! So I think it will be a good idea to mix it up and be flexible in my bouldering trips - if a project isn't going well that day, just getting plenty of mileage in will do me good overall. The same with the wall too...

Gibbage summary.

Still got the gayflu. It's normal OMG-I'm-going-to-die-this-is-so-epicly-gay manflu. So if I survive it should be over soon. I wanted to go training today but it's enforced rest time so a good time to reflect on the purpose of training i.e. cool little (or preferably a lot bigger!) trips away like the recent one.

Okay, San Bartolo. Not a major destination but what it lacks in sport climbing spectacularness, it makes up for in nice sandstone rock and good varied routes especially in the lower & middle grades - it lived up to people describing it suchlike, and worked nicely for us. Well worth a look for a long weekend or short week. Fly into Malaga, stop off at Mijas, stay in Tarifa or Algeciras, get the guide from the wee shop in Tarifa, errr that's it really. Ask if you want more info.


My climbing....went better than expected this trip! Quite a nice surprise, given how the odds have been stacked against me, and my bare minimum of training was two sessions at Ratho - although since the sandstone is more technical / powerful than sustained, I guess the TCA sessions have helped. I hoped, as always, for a good trip tackling some good challenges, but also prepared myself for inescapable punterism and was happily resigned to lots of nice mileage climbs as easing towards the routes season, if it had to come to that. But it didn't really. I got some nice mileage, but also tackled some good challenges, and most of the puntering was a cautious necessity to let skin and muscles recover to avoid spoiling those challenges.


Things that went well or I did well:
+ Good tactics with warming up / climbing / resting / skin care.
+ Strength seems fine.
+ Technique and route reading okay, probably from T'County trips.
+ Stamina better than expected, shows potential.
+ Fairly confident committing to moves with bolt near.
+ Aches and niggles (fingers and elbows) felt a lot better after more climbing in the sun!

Things that sucked or I need to improve:
- Still fat, will be a hard fucking battle to improve.
- Legs still fucked, will be a hard/impossible fucking battle to improve.
- Big coward above bolts, need to work on falling practise soon.
- Not enough foot power through small footholds, need to focus on that.
- A bit casual with a couple of harder climbs, need to be more focused.

Overall I think I am the right track and have potential to climb at least decently this year....I just have to keep climbing, keep active, and keep training.

Gibbage 6.

The final day in a tidying up loose ends and finishing stuff off sort of way. The forecast was for cloud, it was glorious again, despite storm clouds over the hills providing a scenic backdrop. I still felt like utter shit with my gayflu. Bored of that. But there was plenty to get on with. We "warmed up" sliding off heinous micro-slabs: F6c and F7b that were more like that in British tech grades. The rock was cool but the sun was warm and needless to say our toll in skin and rubber was not repaid.

Thence it was on to the shady side, requiring a retreat and re-stomp to the opposite sector of the hillside. I'm noticing that after several days doing short uphill walk-ins and plenty of other exercise, my legs are still completely and utterly fucked and as usual I feel no progress in fitness at all. Cocktwats. Anyway the shady sector was shady although kinda sweaty. Managed a couple of routes including a pretty challenging one. Finally it was over to a different sandstone crag, El Bujeo, for a breezy and scenic evening, and a few more good and varied routes and a slightly frustrating "slip-off-the-first" move attempt of a stiffer proposition. A pretty good day despite feeling rougher than an East End Glaswegian's face.

This brings things to 34 routes I think. Not bad for a short week :). Plenty of fun on the sandstone, a few good challenges tackled (better than I thought!) and a few near misses to learn from. Tomorrow we fly back to dismal Scotland where I plan to hibernate for a while...


Africa in the morning.

Horses in the afternoon.

Gibraltar in the evening.

Gibbage 5.

Aka the day that was forecast for cloud and was glorious sunshine instead. But first, what the fuck is up with me: I come away to get some good climbing action and escape the endless sodden damp of Glasgow and the persist rundownness I've been feeling this winter. So I'm out here - plenty of activity, plenty of rest, loads of fresh air each day (sea air no less), loads of sleep each night, lots of mandarins and pears (when I can stop Tris feeding them to horses). And what do I get?? A mouthful of ulcers, glands like a second bawbag, and now a proper sodding cold!! What the fucking fuck?? IT MAKE NO SENSE!!

Anyway I can't complain too much because today rocked: We headed back to mmmMosaico to enjoy plenty of cooling shade from the forecast clouds, of which there was none. So it was climbing in the (minor) heat before lunch on some rather good routes, and climbing in the dusk after a somewhat snotty siesta on some just as good routes, and then climbing in the dark on some cool wee slabs that rounded things off nicely. The highlight of the day was my hardest route of the trip when I sent Senda Del Tiempo on the main Mosaico wall. This took all the tactics and waning stamina I had, and was satisfying partly due to the challenge and getting in the zone where I really had to deal with it, but mostly because it was an objectively great route: sustained, consistent, well-balanced, some respite that the most improbable points, and a delicate finish. Which was nice ;).

A slight misnomer today - for a change!
I tried to clean this bossly beetle, but he just squeaked furiously at me.
Guess who is having their rump firmly scratched...