A pictorial multi-pitch (mis)adventure

I think the highlight of my trip to Spain was our day of multi-pitching at Sierra de Toix. The routes were easy, but the whole situation of the climbs, the views we were afforded out across Costa Blanca and the Mediterranean, the abseil retreats and the inadvertent detour, made the whole experience pretty unforgettable. More than anything, it was damn good fun!

We started with Esplon Gris:

The Baron de las Bends at the first stance

Long legs ready to belay

Top of multi-pitch selfie.

Long Legs enjoying the second abseil retreat

Long Legs abseiling in an awesome location

After a walk(!) and our lunch we moved on to Chabito where I manned up and decided to lead the first pitch:

The Baron belays Long Legs as she leads her first sport multi-pitch pitch

Long Legs on the sharp end - the pitch was a bit run out but she was too busy singing to notice!

Long Legs feeling particularly pleased with her rope management skills!

The Enforcer waves from an adjacent single pitch

Sitting happily at my stance, the Baron seemed to have been gone for some time before there was any hint of him reaching a belay. Eventually following behind, it transpired that the 15m second pitch had somehow became nearer 50m...

View from the alternative top...

Still stunning despite the modern development

Long Legs watches as the Baron starts what was to become ab 1 of 3!

Reaching the top, we realised that we had had a bit of a misnavigation and set about deciding upon a plan of retreat - at the bottom of the second abseil, it was quite a relief when our bags, still some metres below, honed into view. Some time later, when finally reunited with my jumper(!), I felt like we had definitely got value for money on our day out - and of course, had most certainly had an adventure!

Climb it because you hate it

At the end of January, I was in such a low place about my climbing that I nearly cried in the middle of a session. My debilitating fear of falling had returned and I felt I wasn't getting anywhere, however dedicated I was to trying. Something had to change.

Although I am something of a climbing obsessive, I have come to realise that if I don't have goals and direction, I become very frustrated and unhappy that the hours I am willing to put in do not appear to be paying any dividends. I think though, sometimes (all the time!) my progress is actually hampered by my now famous 'can't do' attitude which stops me trying and when I do try, prepares me to fail.

And so it was, while stuck in the miserable climbing doldrums, that I became curious about the Enforcer's training plan, which as far as I could see, mainly involved warming up on what was pretty much my top grade! It transpired that the plan actually involved easy mileage and more difficult routes in decreasing frequency. I picked the place where it seemed wise to start and cracked on. 

Playing on the main wall at the end of a long, solid training session. Only counted as a 5 though!

Having now reached the end of month one, I think the biggest difference to my climbing has been mental. Because the training plan tells me I have to do a certain number of a certain grade of climb, then I do it. Because it tells me I have to do oodles of low grade routes, I am forced to climb the ones I don't even like, to the point that I now actively seek them out. It's like I am forcing myself to do things for the very reason that they make me uncomfortable. But more than anything, I think my perception of difficulty has changed, perhaps in part because I often climb with someone who is much, much better than me and I have come to realise that things that to me were once impossible, might actually be achievable, with a little effort.

The maximum grade of route I am willing to try has increased exponentially and strangely enough, when I try those routes, although they are most definitely absolutely nails, the whole thing is not the unmitigated disaster I would have previously assumed that it would be. But I am still scared of falling and probably still more scared of failing and I often second or top rope the harder stuff because I am wimp. I have a fear of missing the first clip and ground falling and, after the accident last year, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I trust enough to belay me on my hardest leads.

Training works, Main Wall Monday works and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone can reap huge rewards, but until I overcome my fear of failure, deal with the two serious accidents I have witnessed and push myself on lead to the point of falling repeatedly, I'll never be the climber that I could be. Or perhaps more accurately, I'll never be the climber that I want to be.

Zig-zags and pink skies

Standing on the upper slopes of Zig-Zags, I felt totally at home in my environment. The steep slope, the weather, the ground conditions - none of that bothered me, as I had expected it might, and instead I was filled with a warm sense of what I can only describe as belonging.  It felt as if we had 'mountaineered' to get there and that seemed special - using my climbing skills to go somewhere, to be able to take the more adventurous line up the hill, that's what it's all about for me. 

I was filled with pride as I watched the Simple Chick ascending, roped together with our instructor, Jamie. Her learning curve had been steep but she had risen to the challenge and there she was, approaching the top of her first graded winter route.

Jamie Bankhead leads the Simple Chick on the upper slopes of Zig-Zags

It had all started a few months ago when I turned to the Simple Chick during one of our tea drinking sessions at the wall and simply said, 'Winter mountaineering. Thoughts?'. Soon we had booked two days with my go to MIC, Jamie Bankhead of Glencoe Climbing, who was willing to have me back, despite my turning the air blue on Dorsal Arete last year! The Simple Chick needed an introduction to the wonders of winter with axes and crampons and I was keen to have a go at a little light leading.

Our two days were incredibly different, both in activity and weather conditions, but were both equally amazing. The pink sky seen from Buachaille Etive Beag could never truly be recreated in our photographs, while the whole experience of being there, in those conditions, felt like one of those days that you remember for the rest of your life. What a day for the Simple Chick to do her first winter Munro!

The view from Buachaille Etive Beag

Conditions and avalanche risk dictated our choice for day two, but I had my Main Wall Monday psyche on (well it was Monday!) and led two little easy pitches. The venue was so lovely and friendly, it was a perfect choice for learning in and I think only having two pitches to do meant that my appetite was whetted, not only for more winter climbing, but also for multi-pitch mountain routes on warm summer rock. 

Long Legs gets prepared

We returned via the route we had climbed, which meant the chance to abseil. I was in my absolute element, having been forced to learn to love abseiling in preparation for CWAA (JJ has a lot to answer for!) and was loving the addition of crampons and snow/ice to the mix. It was good to learn about the safeguarding of the party at the anchor and to see a stacked abseil in use and not just in the pictures in Libby Peter's book. The Simple Chick was less comfortable, but once again, she just got on with it, even though I knew she was finding it really stressful. She rocks!

The Simple Chick bosses the abseil

Both the Simple Chick and I came away having had a great two days and it is a credit to Jamie that he ensured that we both got what we wanted out of the experience. On the way home in the car, the Simple Chick asked me what crampons cost - I think we are going back next year!

Wonk the elephant

This is Wonk:

Wonk

Wonk was a present from my friend, and former lodger, Cat. She came in an envelope all the way from Orkney, it must a have been a long journey for such a tiny elephant... Mammoo, official tiny mammoth of Main Wall Monday, was quite taken aback when Wonk arrived - he had never seen such a lovely, colourful and sparkly Elephantidae as she, he was glad to have found a climbing partner his own size.

Mammoo gets a surprise...

Wonk, loves climbing, and Mammoo, even though he never says so, loves climbing with her. She's taken him up routes he never managed before and, under that dark, furry, brooding exterior, he's always really happy to see her achieve in the way he knows that she can. Sometimes he thinks her stuffing must be made from 'crush'. Wonk doesn't think she is very good climber, in much the same way she worries about her wonky trunk and slightly lopsided eyes, but when she climbs with Mammoo, she feels the confidence to try.

Wonk is my lucky charm. But I suppose the moral of the story is this: every climber deserves their own Wonk or Mammoo - a climbing partner who you trust implicitly, who fills you with confidence and always encourages you to try. And when you find them, get out there and get crushing. But don't be like Mammoo, if you've got a Wonk, don't forget to let them know that they're awesome!

Having a well earned tea break

Logbooks and leg warmers

I have often written about the difficulty I have in quantifying whether I climb better now that I used to, but the other day, the curse that is the Facebook memory showed me a picture of my climbing leg warmers and old climbing shoes, and I became curious as to exactly what I had been doing one year ago.

21st January 2015

My logbook tells a story of fear. Easy routes rested on, panic attacks and a strong desire to vomit. There were no overhangs, grades were low and sessions were short. There was clearly not enough tea.

Logbook entry for 21st January 2015

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also went climbing on the 21st January 2016. New routes had been set in the gully and my climbing partner and I, together with half the Leeds regulars, were on those routes like Winnie the Pooh round honey. Our session was long, there was lots of tea and I felt like I was climbing pretty well, but was there any demonstrable improvement?

I think I'll let you decide that for yourself.

Log from 21st January 2016

New beginnings

Leaving my life in Orkney behind in 2013 was more difficult than I think even I realised at the time. I went from being unable to shop in Tesco without meeting at least 3 people I knew, to knowing almost no one - my best friends all hundreds of miles away. There are no traffic lights in Orkney, no dual carriageways or motorways but suddenly, after 6 years on a wonderfully idiosyncratic island, I was thrust back into this alien urban environment. In my quest to adjust to a new home and a return to student life after 11 years as a commercial archaeologist, I didn't paddle, I didn't climb, I didn't run and I was miserable. It was as if I had lost myself.

By the end of 2014, things were improving but my boats were still in the garage and my box of climbing kit remained untouched beneath the coffee table. I felt sad and frustrated when I looked back at the photos from all the paddling and climbing I used to do. It felt like another lifetime. But then I met someone who made me see that despite this huge change in circumstances, I was still the same girl, with the same interests, the same dreams and passions. It was as if I was a broken boiler and my pilot light was suddenly reignited.

Perhaps things didn't take the course I expected, but through the shit, that pilot light stayed lit and I regained the drive to start making some changes. I found out a friend at uni did some climbing, I wrote a UKC post to find a regular partner and I started running again, with week 6 of Couch to 5K. And slowly but surely, I rebuilt a life. As a result of that post I met the wonderful Simple Chick and together we climbed, through good times and bad. I battled with a severe, vomit inducing fear of falling, wimping out of leading 4s and kept going until the grades kept increasing and the improvements were even noticed by others. At times my own health was far from good but through it all I kept climbing and I kept running until I could run 5K, then 10K and over 20K, ending up as a member of Queensbury Running Club. 

Witnessing a near fatal climbing accident was an obvious low, but paradoxically, it was climbing, and those that I climbed with, that helped me deal with that and everything else - it gave me a purpose and at times the only reason to get out of bed. Things got better, of course, and as they did, my climbing continued to improve. I found the climber that I had left behind in Orkney and then I overtook her.

On a local paddle, in another lifetime...

In my other life, sea kayaking was a huge component, I lived 5 minutes from the sea in two directions and at one point I seriously considered starting a summer kayak guiding business for visitors to the island. Although for various reasons that never happened, I did obtain my coaching qualifications and coached extensively for both local clubs. So as I climbed more, it made sense to me to also qualify as a climbing instructor. So I did. And of course, the more I shadowed, the more instructors I met and with that another part of life was rebuilt, as I made friends and climbed with these new people.

So, although it is a cliché to look back at the past year, 2015, for me was somewhat pivotal. I still miss my friends desperately, and the network of climbers and paddlers that I left behind, but at least things are now going in the right direction. I wish I had a 'go to' friend who would greet my mad cap ideas with even better suggestions for summer and winter mountaineering, camping, fell running, climbing and anything else in between; there are so many things I want to do that I can't, merely because they are the sorts of things that need two.

This year, I have to finish my PhD and I suppose I have to decide where my life is headed, but I like it here and I like the life I have started to build. What I do know is that in 2016 I will climb more mountains, strive hard to make my own adventures, continue to build a network of friends, jump at all opportunities to get outdoors that come my way and most importantly, I am going to run my bloody stove on petrol. Gas is expensive and I am now an adoptive Yorkshire woman...

New Years Day - starting 2016 in the right way...

Under the night sky

I arrived in what can only be described as a monsoon, I had expected it to be raining, but not like that! I stopped the car, and as I peered out through the window, Hogmanay Plan F disappeared rapidly out of sight. As the strengthening wind whistled through the trees and the road pooled with water, the decision was made, and feeling rather crestfallen, I turned the car round and headed for home.

I think I had been in the house for all of 20 minutes when I sat down at my desk, almost out of habit, and clicked on the forecast. It was now fantastic. Outside, the weather was so shit that it was hard to believe it could change, but I had borrowed a tent and I felt like it was only right that I should use it. I picked up my rucksack, ran down the path through the storm and got back into the car...

Peering out into the darkness a few hours later, I didn't know whether the gamble was going to pay off, but with the cloud thinning and the stars becoming visible, it seemed like a risk I had to take. I am fed up with being too scared to do the things I want to do because I think something bad might happen to me and of feeling that life is passing me by because I have no one to accompany me on the adventures that I long for. But as I walked up that path alone, with the world's brightest torch strapped to my head, I felt no fear at all. 

Several hours later, tent pitched and belly full, the wind had dropped considerably and it seemed a waste to spend the bells sat in my tent, so I set forth towards the hill, map in one pocket and hip flask in the other. Scrambling upwards, the rock was icy and a thickening layer of hail stones lay on the ground. Reaching the steepest cliff, I chickened out - it was 11.30 pm, it was very dark and not one person knew where I was. I sat down on a suitable rock. 

Stars and silhouettes

I tried in vain to capture what I saw from my high perch but nothing could do justice to the sheer beauty of witnessing those thousands of stars and planets shining out above the dark silhouettes of the hills. I heard the cheers ring out at midnight and enjoyed numerous firework displays stretching far into the distance below me. And as I sat on that rock, watching the landscape being illuminated by flashes of light from every direction, and as I stared up at Orion and at the plough, to me, it didn't matter where you were, or how you were celebrating, nothing in the world could possibly be better than being where I was, sitting alone, under that cloudless Lakeland sky.

Home

Work your weaknesses

The Simple Chick and I have made milling around at the wall, drinking tea and updating each other on life's ups and downs into such an art form that sometimes climbing becomes secondary to the experience. These very sociable sessions are great fun and often progress is made, but I sometimes find myself climbing the same old 10 vertical routes and shying away from anything that might be remotely challenging. I suppose I convince myself that I won't be able to do anything harder and on occasion, would rather drink more tea than actually try. Ultimately though, such an approach just leads to frustration and those horrible plateaux during which gains just seem never to be made and confidence begins to wane. 

The process of CWA consolidation did more than prepare me for assessment, those five months of hard work also, rather unexpectedly, resulted in many new friendships with people who climb far harder than perhaps I ever will. These people inspire me, but because they also happen to be climbing instructors, they have the innate ability to draw the very best out of me. The fact that Fantastyczna Cooka also feeds me healthy pizza, cake and ginger biscuits is a welcome added bonus! It was through these friends that I became inveigled into Main Wall Monday, a brilliantly simple idea which may very well result in my imminent death and judging by the full body pain as I hobbled about this Tuesday, I wouldn't be surprised if the Grim Reaper turned up and asked me for a belay next Monday night.

Views of the Main Wall

The Greater Main Wall (similar to Greater Manchester but with less hipster beards), is pretty much entirely overhanging, the premise of Main Wall Monday, to only climb the routes on it. I hate overhangs, I have no stamina and my technique is still pretty embryonic, for me, Main Wall Monday is like some kind of pump-filled torture, punctuated with cups of tea I can barely pick up. But, if it wasn't a challenge, it wouldn't be fun and although possibly still in the realms of Sir David Brailsford and his 'marginal gains', I think, some progress has been made, not least because after a full-on wrestle up the Main Wall, nothing else in the centre seems half as intimidating as it did before. 

Main Wall Monday, together with its younger siblings Training Tuesday, Weakness Wednesday and Features Friday, forces me to address a huge and gaping weakness in my climbing and try as I might, I simply can't do that while gossiping in the cafe - if only we could work out what to do on a Thursday...

Spot the Long Legs

The boots in the loo

In the late 50s my father, an analytical chemist, went to work at the BACO plant in Kinlochleven. I once asked him what he did there but he claims not to remember. I bet you though, that he could still outline in great detail the days that he and his mates spent in those mountains, even if it was 55 years ago. I imagine in the heyday of the works, he and his contemporaries never dreamed that one day the smelter would stop smelting and that ultimately their place of work would become The Ice Factor, in fact, the very concept of climbing indoors remains totally alien to him.

My dad - judging by my rucksack, sometime in the early 2000s

When I was young there was a pair of hobnail boots next to the 'end' loo. I presume these belonged to my father. Back in the day, so he once told me, your only option for mountaineering boots was to draw round your feet and send the templates to a man somewhere in London; at least by the time my mother was climbing in the early 1960s, Graham Tiso had opened his shop in Leith. One of her favourite stories involves sneaking a pair of boots in diabolical condition into the secondhand boot display and going past the shop every day to see if they had sold!

My parents have endless tales of mountain, climbing club and bothy antics and it transpires that they were acquainted with folk like Robin Smith and Dougie Haston, now firmly in the annals of Scottish mountaineering history. (Said of the former: "He used to down-climb things in his wellies that I could hardly climb up in my climbing shoes"). There was the guy known as 'Bogtrotter', who moved so fast that he failed to sink in the bogs that trapped the following group, and the tale of a Rag Week scaling of Castle Rock in Edinburgh, dressed as a baby, with ropes hidden from the police in a pram. 

But the more I hear about what they did and the more I am able to equate their experiences with my own, the more impressed I become. Earlier in the year I told my mother about a winter trip to the Highlands, she consulted the encyclopedia that is my father and reported back that they too had done those routes. In the 1960s. With crap clothing, no harnesses, long axes and probably a hemp rope... She then digressed into a range of winter tales: inadvertently descending some (Grade II) gully in the dark, the time my dad dropped a small cornice on her head and the piece de resistance, when a girl fell past my father on a winter climb and he pulled off her trousers trying to arrest her fall. 

State of the art gear found in the cupboard!

Mountains brought my parents together too. The male mountaineering house claimed to have an additional housemate who was always 'in Switzerland, in Italy, in the Alps, in Norway', the female mountaineering house, increasingly sceptical of his very existence, began to devise reasons to visit at odd times of day... On one such foray they found a dark haired, blue eyed, tanned stranger in the front room, just returned from the Italian Alps...

My father went to the Lofoten Islands long before there were causeways between every island and my mother's comedy stories extend to Norway, the Alps and the Pyrenees, her favourite involving my father firing up his petrol stove in an Alpine hut, while a cowering Frenchman exclaimed "Il sera un grand explosion!"

More than anything, when I hear these stories and look at their, often black and white, photographs, I am envious of my parents and the adventures they have had, experiences I long for but never seem to have the opportunity to partake in. Rock climbing, scrambling, hill walking, winter climbing or Alpinism, they seemed to have done it all, almost in another life time. And I like the fact that they did these things together; mountains have played a pivotal role in their relationship and I am envious too, that their deep rooted love of these places is something that they have always shared.

I suppose it comes as no surprise to anyone that I love mountains too.

Zen

It was the 11th route of the night but I knew, at that precise moment, that I was doing the best climbing I have ever done in my life. I had tried the route once before, months and months ago on a top rope and remembered thinking it was tricky. Now, on lead, everything felt so smooth and effortless, my head so uncharacteristically in the game that I reached a previously unknown state of zen, the moves just flowing as I floated over the lip and through the crux. As I stood up and shook out, I was so psyched that internally I was screaming an expletive ridden monologue of joy and it was hard to stop myself from bursting forth out loud. Clipping the chains, inside I was doing cartwheels and fist pumps, I may even have let off some fireworks. I was still buzzing as the Simple Chick lowered me to the ground, and, when a passing Campusman asked how our session had been, his eyes turned to saucers as he was hit by an unexpectedly excited, and enthusiastic, potttymouthed reply!

Having clearly reached the peak of climbing, I briefly went into retirement, however, this only lasted the weekend, before a good, solid session last night. On a new and ungraded orange, where there was huge gap to get over the lip, a similar, but lesser, zen state seemed to wash over me and I pulled some shapes and just went for it. There is no way I would have done that 6 months ago.

It is hard to explain what has happened to me or how I feel about climbing at the moment. I know I have worked really hard at it all through the year and I should be getting better, but I don't think this is really about technique, or power, or weight, I think it is about confidence. The people I climb with seem to have faith in me, they tell me things are 'comfortably within my grade', they encourage me to try that little bit harder. Last night my climbing partner, absent for 6 months, said it was as if I was a different climber now. 

Two years ago I gave up everything to move from an island in the North Sea to somewhere near Bradford. This year, climbing has helped me rebuild my life and to find the girl I felt I had left behind - it has made me happy. And because I am happy, my climbing is better and when I climb better I am happier still. Yes, I am a different climber now, but I think the change also goes deeper than that.

Good times on the island