Sunday, 13 May 2012

Mega Pitches and Classics at Fair Head

Wow it has been quite a while since I have blogged, not that I have been sitting about doing nothing but work has been very busy.  My week in Spain with Mountaineering Ireland and the kids went very well, a quick week to Lanzarote for Noddy's wedding (www.noddygowans.com) and flights booked to San Fran for 3 weeks scaring myself on the big stone - it has been fairly busy over the last while.  Ian has also been flat out and his TCL in June is full - happy days!
Salango in a ONER!

The fear! Abbing in for the first time this season!
With Yosemite only 4 months away training has started properly this week.  I managed 2 runs this week to stiffen the legs up and a cracking day at Fair Head yesterday.  The technique of double ropes is very popular in the UK but not so much in North America, they quite often use a single rope for most routes.  Now both have advantages and disadvantages and I will not go into them in detail.  Our tick list for the states consists of routes that are mostly climbed on a single rope so yesterday at the head we opted for a 70 m single.






My personal opinion is why would you climb with double at Fair Head?  No need for a 60 abseil and most people have 100m to ab in with, 90% of the routes follow cracks and 99% of the gear is bomber!  10 years ago at University it seemed trendy to climb everything on double ropes but at the head there really isn't a lot of need.  A single rope gets rid of FAFFING and no twists at belays!  Personal opinion only of course - each to their own!




For our training we also decided to get our early season trad heads on and do everything in one pitch.  This was great fun and in a few hours we had managed to tick Titanic (E2), Salango (E3), Ocean Bulovard (E3) and Mizen Star (E2).








Thanks Marshall for a brilliant day just climbing and revisiting the old classics from years ago!

I also came across this blog last night, sonnietrotter.com/roadlife/.  The 'what's his secret' section is worth a read.  It is sort of cool to read that some of the top climbers don't just live for the next route and get so self obsessed with training - they just climb because they enjoy it!
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1 comment:

  1. Neal16 May 2012 at 11:12

    just read now :) nice going after chatting also!

    only part about Trotter is that he also has trained himself extensively - this video is a classic demo: http://youtu.be/h07kaQKtgDY

    Still though, Graham has always been my benchmark. Watched him climb in Ceuse about 10 years ago and his fluidness is astonishing. Granted he's lucky enough that since about age 15 he's been able to get out to an outdoor crag ever evening every single day (and Graham does climb every single day) so it's easy to avoid not having to climb/train indoors. No right answer here I guess!

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