So recently ive not been doing alot other than climbing, reading and going to the gym. A few soloing sessions in the Peak, first problem on the blue circuit, (7a-7c+), at the Climbing Works and my first E4! First though last week I read Alex Honnold's Alone on the Wall cover to cover in 5 days, which is alot of reading for me, below are some of my thoughts.

​Alone On The Wall, Alex Honnold with David Roberts
Alex has been one of my favourite climbers and role models ever since I saw his free solo of El Sendero Luminoso a few years ago, he takes risks, yes, but always manages them, saying that he intends to grow old and be around a long time. His book helps you see into the mind of Alex, and what drives him to do what he loves day to day. Covering stuff such as his free solo ascents, big wall speed link ups and alpine experiences. 
Alone On The Wall also covers stuff outside of climbing such as the Honnold Foundation, which helps by supporting projects around the world focusing on bringing power to remote areas and hoping to improve peoples lives in doing so. Alex's nomadic lifestyle allows him to donate alot of  the money that he makes to his foundation.
From the Free Solo that made him Famous, (Moonlight Butress), through to insight into his childhood and epic alpine adventures such as the Fitzroy traverse, Alone on the Wall is a most read, deffiently recommend it! May he have many more adventures and inspire more people.

What I've Been Up To...
Secret Stanage Severe Circuit
​I've been building some endurance up for a project that i've got planned for next year, and what better way to do this than have a afternoon out soloing on grit, and mix in doing all the Severes at Secret Stanage in one go too! There's about 15 severes in the area, most arent in the best condition as the whole area is usually just walked past, this is probaly because most of the routes are a bit long for boulder problems, but too short for a good lead, most with non existant gear. Some are quite nice though, such as Shuffle. I started from one end and worked back towards High Nebb. After finishing the circuit, i sat looking at an arete that looked really nice. Checked in the book to find it was Blockhead Direct E1 5b. Awesome little problem, would be made soo much better if it was another 20metres longer!

The Roaches
Harrison a friend from 'down south' had come up to see me for the day and get out on some grit, so i met him at the Roaches, an hour and a bit drive away for me. With harrison having not trad climbed in a while we started off easily on a Vdiff, then a S. Before I decided that I liked the look of an E2 called Ruby Tuesday, a two pitch route. The start is a blankish face with the first piece of reasonable gear under a ledge, which involved a high rock over to pass. Interesting with a full trad rack and shoes attached to your harness!

The second pitch was alot easier than the first, finishing up an airy buttress.
Next Harrison wanted to show me his project, Wings of Unreason E4 6a. Admittedly we set a top rope up on it, with me stood at the bottom saying its impossible. Although when i was on it soon figured out the sequence and awkward final move. With one peice of gear at half height was more like a boulder problem than a route.
After id cruised up it Harrison had a go, bailing on the final move, which required a bit more of a dynamic move than me due to hieght differneces! You'll Get it next time!
​Video to Follow!.....

Bit of a change from the usual rural, unspoilt landscape that usually features in this blog. Fairy cave is an old quarry in Somerset, with walls of Limestone, mostly slabs. It's been on my list of places that I've wanted to visit for a while, and with one of my mates now at University in Bristol and with my time living down South coming to an end we went last week.
Took me and Joe an hour and a half to get from Dorset to Fairy cave and we met up with some of my friends, Matt, Dom and Dom's flat mate, James there. Arriving at about 10:30, it was colder than I had expected. With how the quarry is positioned the walls are mostly always in the shade. Still psyched to climb I racked up for the first route of the day, which happened to be an awesome slab E2 up some solid, if slightly dirty limestone called Lumbar Puncture, (may have got a bit too excited and run it out quite a bit....).

Whats Happening At The Mo.....
Just moved back up to Rotherham, so super psyched for grit and the coming winter season!
Had a brilliant summer working for Land & Wave in Dorset, now bring on the future.

Monday
Weather pretty good and set off at 5am for the 6.5hr drive up to Snowdonia. Arrived just after noon, and not wanting to waste the day, parked up in the car park behind Joe Brown’s in Capel Curig and started walking. Headed up onto the ridge walking towards the Glyders and Tryfan. The top of the ridge is quite flat in sections and was a bit spongey to say all the dry weather we’ve had recently. Would not want to go up there after a recent rainfall! Kept walking gaining height up to Gallt yr Ogof. With the day wearing on, did not wait around there long and headed up towards Y Foel Goch. From here you get a nice view of the South East face of Tryfan and can see Snowdon in the distance. Carried on walking up to Gyder Fach, then a quick walk down to Heather Terrace and onto the footpath in the valley below following the Afon Llugwy back towards Capel Curig and the Car.

Wednesday
On Tuesday I organised to get out with one of my old teachers to go do some climbing, we decided on Kinder South as neither of us had been there. We where hoping for a cooling breeze and sharp dry grit, we where not disappointed with this moorland crag, with the routes being brutal, lots of thrutching and painful hand jams. We started on the Classic Upper Tor Wall HS 4b, me leading. Nice, and at times exposed climbing all the way to the top. Next I followed on Ivory Tower HVS 5b, which was also really nice climbing!
We both agreed that for moorland this seemed too nice, and agreed that whatever we climbed for the rest of the day the 40mins uphill approach was worth it just to climb these too. Next I picked something that looked straight forward following some pockets up a slightly overhanging slab using the crack systems on either side. The route was The Punter E1 5b. There was a lot of hand jamming involved and a lot of skin was lost, not realising it was overhanging till on the route, feeling very relieved when I topped out regretting my decision not to borrow the crack climbing gloves! The following few routes where all pretty much the same sort of stuff, lots of thrutching, hand jamming and nothing seeming easy, even when you dropped a few grades! Well worth the walk though, and will defiantly be returning.

Following day we headed over to Millstone, favouring and thanking the short walk in and quarried grit after loosing skin the previous day. With lots of cracks at millstone, and me being out of practice after having climbed on limestone for quite a few months, it was suggested that I try Embankment 4 and forget the grade, (which is E1 5b). A really nice climb, and glad of the jamming gloves on the first half, surprising myself that I could still jam quite well. I then followed up Embankment 3. With the sun now getting higher the rock started to get slippery and quite humid. Moving along the crag we did scoop crack and Lyon’s House corner, which goes up an airy arete, coming back for me to lead The Mall which it was still just in the shade. Followed by seconding up a very greasy Great Portland Street, glad I wasn’t the one leading it. Ending the day there we headed home.
Rained the rest of the week, but managed to get some bouldering in at The Works, but mostly just spent the rest of my time with my family.
​

I went climbing with a friend to Subluminal the other day and a guy came up to us with a drone. He wanted to know if he could film a bit of us climbing for some footage he was putting together for his company, (Outback Air). We both agreed and I have attached some of his footage below that he took of me, that I stitched together into a video.
Outback Air is a relatively new local business in Dorset that specialise in taking drone footage of action sports with their Inspire 1 Pro in 4K.
The guys where really friendly and the footage is awesome.
Go check them out:
archdrone.co.uk
​Or their Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/outbackairdrones/
​You Tube:
​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYIWGjbx6bZgXQq2ZT_tNqg

Everyone will do it at some point in their life, get to the crag and realise that they forgot to pick up their harness when they were packing their climbing stuff in the morning. Most people would just give up at this point, go home to fetch it or change their plans for the day, but if you have 1, (ideally 2), 120cm slings to hand why not make a sling harness!

1 Sling Harness
Simple and easy to make, however can slip down if theres not a continuous pull upwards making it ineffective. If you have a small waist like mine a 120cm will work perfectly. To make pass the sling around your back and bring both ends to the front. While holding these reach between your legs and grab the lower loop, bring this between your legs and clip everything together with a screwgate 'biner.
If you have a slightly wider waist use a bigger sling, but when you pull the loop through your legs tie an isolating knot, (overhand will do), to make it tight and shove the excess away down the side of the waist loops. Because this has to be weighted upwards to work it only really works for abseiling or seconding.

2 Sling Harness
This one works much better than the other one and a friend has actually used this one when he's forgot his harness. To make take one 120 sling and find the centre, to do this double up and shuffle the two ends until the sown part is in the middle. Tie a overhand each side of the sown part and try on your legs. I find that tying another overhand on each side makes it fit my legs perfectly.
Next take the other 120 sling and pass it around your back above your hip bones, as you would with a normal harness. Tie both ends together with half a reef knot, passing one end through to other to finish it off. This allows you to pull it tighter and still easy to remove. Then tie another overhand to make a loop. Pass a 'biner through this loop and the leg loop and there you go a harness. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world and you wouldn't really want to fall on it!

Tie in to the screwgate for both these harness.
Both of these would be more comfortable with thicker slings, I just used what I had to hand. I would not suggest falling off wearing one of these but if you had nothing else to hand they'll work.
You'll never have to abandon a day's climbing again!

Getting a few days off work, I've spent the last 3 days climbing in North Wales and had my birthday, so the blog has suffered! I thought i'd share what I got up to over the last few days to make up for the shortage in posts. Was supposed to be walking to get some QMD's, (quality mountain days), in but weather was just too good.
After setting off from Swanage at 5:30 in the morning on bank holiday Monday to get there for lunch timeish. The journey was pretty good, only hitting traffic heading into Snowdonia National Park. Met up with my climbing partner for the next few days and headed off to the moelwyns.

Not arriving at the crag till 2, we walked back down at about 7, taking the longer route through the disused quarry. Even managed to get a picture of this spruce in the quarried rock.

Getting to the belay below the 7th pitch at the same time as the group ahead which had followed the proper route. Causing some tangling at the belay. Was really windy on the top too, making the last 2 pitches and sitting on the top of tryfan interesting! (Pic at top of post)

The final day before coming home was just as nice as the other two and seem as my friend, Joe, had not been to Idwal before we went to do Tennis Shoe. Lovely climbing on the slabs, even if some of the route was very polished!
Had an awesome few days in Wales. Brilliant company and nice climbing. Weather defiantly made up for the miserable weather that I had last time I was there.

Prusik Uses - 
* To Ascend a fixed rope
* As a backup while abseiling
* In rescue scenarios (not covered here)
* Help when dealing with heavy loads (not covered here)

To abseil with a standard belay plate and Prusik I thread the rope you're going to ab with into the belay plate as if you where going to belay with it. Then do a French prusik underneath, put a screw gate karabiner on the end of the loop and clip it to the inside of your leg loop. Weight and make sure prusik does not touch the belay plate as if it does it will not engage. If it does extend your belay plate from your harness using a short (60cm) sling, larks footed to your abseil/belay loop at one end, belay plate at the other.

To ascend clip one kleimheist or ordinary prusik directly to your abseil/belay loop on your harness using a screwgate, then put another kleimheist above with another screwgate attached, but this time put a 120cm sling or 240cm halved into the screwgate. Use the sling to stand up on the top prusik to release the weight off the one connected directly to you, slide it up, re-weight and slide the foot one up. Repeat process until you get where you need to be!
As a backup if your ascending a long distance put knots in the rope below the prusik so that if the knot does not engage you won't slip all the way to the bottom.

Hopefully I have covered most things, feel free to comment below! :)

​Last Month I visited South Wales with a friend from work to do some climbing. It was the second time I have been to South Wales and the climbing surprised me yet again! On my first visit we went to the usual tourist spot of Three Cliffs Bay and Fall bay on another day. On both days we enjoyed routed on mostly unpolished, rough limestone, perfect!
This time we started by visiting Little Tor, just around the corner from Three Cliffs and as with three cliffs can only be accessed so many hours either side of low tide as the whole lower few metres of the crag is underwater at high tide. The routes again where brilliant, not at all chossy as you would expect from limestone! Most of Little tor was made up of a surface of flakes, (as you can see in the picture), with some pretty killer cracks in between.
With the day starting miserable I Lead first picking Scout Crack, a vertical crack about fist wide. As it was a bit drizzly I elected to keep on my approach shoes. Brilliant climb and you can see why it has 2 stars, perfect fist jams and foot jams all the way, improved by missing the ledge on the left and only using the crack.
The weather soon improved and we moved on to some of the harder stuff at the crag. There was a really nice looking line going up the middle of the face that included a few jams, big moves and small pockets. When looking in the guide book found it was called 'Super Direct', given E1 5c. Nice line and glad I had my Alien’s with me!
The following day we only had a few hours before we had to start the long drive back for work, so we had to choose a non tidal venue, picking Boiler slab. Took longer than it should have on the walk in due to getting slightly lost! Again we started on the easier stuff, my friend leading ‘Classic’, a really easy route, but supposed to be one of the oldest routes in the Gower so a must climb and it was okay.
I preferred the harder stuff which had a nice amount of exposure, which when you added a quite strong breeze made the climbing rather interesting! Again the gear was bomber and the rock mostly solid.
Over the two days the routes where nice and the scenery postcard perfect. I will defiantly be returning to do more climbing in South Wales in the future, hopefully I’ve psyched you to give south wales a chance too.