Monday 29 August 2011

Have eight legs, party all night, weigh a gram

Moving effortlessly up my wall, the spider shows the way, no hesitation, the only holds it needs are in it's mind. On the topout, a bird swoops and eats it.


Bored with the inverness wall, which consists of textured panels at a vertical angle, and problems which are mostly easy or desperate, I decided to make a change. A days work and I have a board. Been adding more and more holds to make it easy for me to get to the top, it's ace rolling out of bed, out to the garden, on the board.


At a 35 degree angle currently, it is adjustable down to about 55 or so, but 35 is enough to make me fall off alot.

We made most of the holds ourselves, apart from the small footholds, pretty easy to make 50 holds an hour when you get the method dialed.



It is brilliant, next for some soft big numbers trad games or a fashionable finger injury...


Sunday 14 August 2011

Beinn Eighe

Me, chizzy and sam rolled up to the poolewe palace for a few days. Adventures were had, during which chizzy broke his arm, once back at the palace, I made an excellent splint out of a wooden spoon, we whisked him to raigmore, picked up mckinns and headed out west again.

We then mourned the death of chizzys arm with eating.


Scone and tunes, when we do it we do it big.

We headed up to the hills around beinn eighe for a look.


I especially liked the look of this gently angled corner, one to come back for for sure. The steep wall above might also be good.



Sunday 7 August 2011

Morocco

good eating, good climbing, sun and every prickly thing you can imagine pretty much sums it up.



We got on an excellent route up a gully, featuring an interesting section with an overhanging flared offwidth, actually pretty easy as the footholds were there. However, the exit slopes were softening so we bailed, descended, got a little unaware of where we were, then ended up doing 3k ascent that day, by the end of it we were suffering. The next day, we went for a hike, deciding to have a nap in the sunshine at the top of a pass, it was amazing.






Steep stuff was everywhere, caves, long, short, generally good holds, it was ace, inspiration to convert to the cult of bouldering. The rock quality was amazing, plenty of worrying breaks to poke a hand into and hope that nothing bites. We did an easy footless traverse across this cave while eating lunch and enjoying the shade.





The choss enthuasiast would not be disappointed either.

Lots of inspiring things to go at dans l'hiver, decent gully line right to the summit. This ridge line looked ace but we didn't get on it.
Lightening was present as usual, though mostly just the pleasant late afternoon/dinner bell stuff.

We got to the top of toubkal (biggest mountain in north africa at about 4000m but not technical) one day to hear a rumble, within 10 minutes we were enveloped in it, hailstorm, dodging a few rocks dislodged by it, it felt just like being back in the alps, wouldn't have fancied abbing off a route in it. We stopped under the shelter of a rock and watched it, chilling with a few oranges, ace.

Great trip, keen for a winter visit.