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Glen Nevis podcast episode 4: Steall

Episode 4 of the Glen Nevis Walks Podcast is up now on Friends of Nevis here and on iTunes here. This episode takes us through to Steall and the most dramatic bit of the glen. As usual there are stacks of good interviews but you climbers might be particularly interested in Kevin Howett’s rather worrying description of taking 60 foot falls onto an RP1 and breaking his ribs during the first ascent of Chairoscuro E7 6b in the gorge. I made the second ascent of Chairoscuro, onsight, in 2010, 23 years after Kev’s ascent. So listening to him describe the lonely upper arete brought back some strong memories for me too!

We’ve also made a couple of videos of the interviews contained in our Glen Nevis Walks podcast series. They’ll give you a taster of some of the interviews in the episodes. The first is geologist and climber Noel Williams describing the fascinating and unusual geology of Ben Nevis and it’s volcanic caldera.

Meeting the Queen

On Fat Boy Slim VI, 6, Ben Nevis the other day

How do I winter climb again?

After doing Anubis a couple of years ago I took a bit of a break from winter climbing. That route was a really nice piece of climbing and was very satisfying to climb. It was hard to find something good enough to follow it. I was also really missing bouldering and felt I hard to get some strength base together for climbing the Longhope. Last season I tried a couple of new routes that were maybe too hard, and then winter was over for me with imminent arrival of my daughter Freida. It’ll be interesting to see if I can find some good routes this season. I was worried that I would feel very out of touch with winter climbing. So I thought I better start with some basics at VI or VII. It certainly felt strange to be holding tools again and a circuit around my board tonight on them felt desperate. It’s always difficult finding the real stand out new routes in any discipline, but never more so than in winter climbing. I’m really into finding steeper lines but it’s a frustrating business when every climb on the mountain is in condition except yours sometimes. But I do know about two or three lines that might have the makings of great winter routes that I’d like to go at if they come into condition this year. I think a Birnam cave session or two could be in order first though!

Blink and you’ll miss it. MacLeod in a suit for the first time, for one night only.

It must have been some occasion, you must be thinking, to see me in a suit of an evening. Indeed! I was asked to go to London to meet the Queen, along with many other adventurers from up and down the land and beyond. We gathered at Buckingham Palace, for a glass of champagne and a royal hand shake to mark the centenary of the Scott expedition. I met many accomplished climbers I knew, some I didn’t know and spotted various royals and folks I’d seen a lot on the telly. Messner gave me some good beta about future projects too. It was a nice evening, and the trip was a nice way to spend a couple of rest days after a monster session at the TCA in Glasgow.

Speaking of the TCA, it was my first visit and I was headless chickening as most folk apparently do on their first visit. It’s the best climbing wall I’ve ever been to, worldwide. I’m really chuffed to see climbing walls go to another level. I walked around all after noon repeating inwardly “I wish this was here when I started climbing”. I’m super looking forward to Christmas hols in Glasgow to get a proper feel for the place. It’s just too big to scratch the surface on your first visit. If you haven’t been yet, sort it out!

As I write I have the satisfied feeling of every upper body muscle aching from a good solid session on my board - hard problems, mileage, circuits and tooling circuits and then my rehabs. With work trips finally over for the year it’s so nice just to get down to the business of uninterrupted training.

Nice short film about Ben Nevis

Ben from Kate Owen on Vimeo.

Nice video by Kate Owen about Ben Nevis. The climbing by me is on the Heather Hat boulder and Kev’s section is on Scimitar Ridge. I particularly liked the hill running part.

First winter route of the season

Fine high pressure weather on Ben Nevis this week

Snow bunting enjoying the views and climbers sandwiches on the summit

Lovely morning in Observatory Gully

Ines leads off up an excellent thin ice slab on Triple X VIII, 8

With physio exercises commenced on my hernia I felt OK to try a day out winter climbing. So I teamed up with Ines Papert and Charly who are visiting Scotland and headed up the Ben. After a brief wander about with me pointing out various new route possibilites, we settled on a look at a new icy mixed line based on the summer route Rolling Stones.

Charly set off, getting past a slightly sketchy thin crux bulge and embarked on a long traverse above our heads. It looked tricky. It was kind of bold to second as well as lead after I (being last on the rope) took out the backrope runner at the start of the traverse.

Next up it was Ines’ turn and she headed off across a very thinly iced slab which looked great fun. Ines was looking very at home on the ice and we enjoyed following a lot more than the previous pitch.

Last up it was my turn and I joined Ian Small and Ian Parnell’s new route from last year, Faith Healer VIII,7 at the start of it’s crux pitch. The steep chimney was great fun and nice to be reacquainted with the absorption of winter leading again after ten months or so since I last wielded my ice tools on a mixed route.

Triple X, VIII,8 gave us three nice pitches and satisfied an urge to open a new line on this nice little face that I’d spied while wandering about near Echo Wall in the past.

The line of Triple X

Next day it was back in action on the bouldering front. I managed to do the crux move on my highball project in Glen Nevis again which is getting me excited. I feel like I have a good sequence for most of it now and all I’m needing is a few more kgs worth of raw crimping strength. Next week’s forecast looks good for concentrating on the crimping strength, rather than braving the storms...

Couple of videos: Pinnacle Trailer and the cave

Here is the trailer for The Pinnacle DVD, ice climbing on Ben Nevis following in the footsteps of Smith and Marshall. Brilliant for the winter psyche!The DVD is in the shop here.

This is an extended clip of Michael making a determined second ascent of my own problem Bone Broke (Font 7c) in the Arisaig Cave last week. The wee fire was great, shame the wind was blowing it into the cave for the full winter cave dwelling experience!

The Pinnacle wins at Kendal

I’m just home from the Kendal Mountain festival where I had a great couple of nights speaking about The Pinnacle film and The Great Climb. The Pinnacle won the People’s Choice prize for the best film at the festival - thanks for voting for it!

It’s great that people liked it so much. It was a great vibe at the premiere and watching the film for the first time I just felt so glad that we were able to make it. I think Jimmy Marshall and Robin Smith’s story is as inspiring as ever and the film shows off Ben Nevis at it’s absolute best.

Diff gave me a pile of Pinnacle DVDs to take home and Claire has just dispatched all the pre-orders today. I had a watch of the extras this morning, which include our live show with myself and Andy Turner talking with Jimmy at last year’s Fort William Mountain Festival, Diff’s full uncut interview with Jimmy for the film, and also Heatherhat’s film about my first ascent of Don’t Die of Ignorance (XI,11) with Joe French on the Ben. All the info about the DVD is in the shop here.

The Pinnacle DVD is here

Hot Aches Productions DVD about our re-enactment of the Smith-Marshall week on Ben Nevis is ready. Tomorrow (Friday) I’m at the premiere of the film in Kendal and will be picking up our DVD stock from Diff there and dispatching orders when we come home on Monday. It’s up in the shop to order if you want a copy, right here.

In case you missed my previous posts about our week, this is what all the fuss is about: In 1960 Jimmy Marshall and Robin Smith, probably the best ice climbers anywhere at the time completed a week of back to back first ascents of cutting edge ice routes on Ben Nevis. The first one-day ascent of Point Five Gully, first ascents of Pigott’s Route, Smith’s Route, The Great Chimney, Minus 3 Gully, Orion Face Direct and a traverse of the Grey Corries as their ‘rest day’. It was a massive step forward and took the generation behind them a good decade and the development of modern ice tools to catch up. Step cutting these routes day after day was a fantastic feat of skill and endurance. It became a bit of a legend in Scottish climbing, to say the least.

Hence, 50 years later, to the day, myself and Andy Turner felt it would be great to go and repeat the week of climbs and make a film about it with Hot Aches Productions. We had a great night after our week with Jimmy Marshall himself, talking about the week at the Fort William Mountain Festival (which you’ll find as an extra on the DVD along with an extensive interview with Jimmy who is now 82). Since then, Paul Diffley has been preparing the edit of the film itself.

It recounts the story of Jimmy and Robin’s adventure and achievement, shows off the routes and the Ben itself rather beautifully I think. It did help that we had a stunning week of weather on our re-enactment.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.

About to top out on Point Five Gully during our re-enactment of the Smith-Marshall week on Ben Nevis.

Lectures in Harris, Lewis and Kendal

I’ve just arranged two lectures in the Western Isles pretty soon - I’m speaking on Harris at the Harris Hotel, Tarbert at 8pm on October 4th. On Oct 5th I’m at the Cala Inn in Stornoway. I’ll talk about how climbing transformed my life, thoughts on climbing Sron Uladail on live telly with an overdose of painkillers and why climbing is load safer than it looks…

Well, most of the time anyway.

I’m also speaking at this year’s Kendal Mountain Festival in November. On the Friday night I’m speaking alongside Andy Turner at the Premiere of The Pinnacle (The Smith/Marshall ‘week’ on the Ben). On the Saturday it’s ‘Great Climb’ night and I’m co-hosting an evening of talking and film about the making of the BBC live broadcast alongside Richard Else, Brian Hall and Cameron McNeish. Should be fun!

See y’all there.

Anubis FWA

The Comb showing the line of Anubis, on the day of the ascent

Quite unexpectedly, I managed to complete my long term ambition to make the first winter ascent of my own summer E8, Anubis on Ben Nevis. The number of hours to finish the lead might just be countable on one hand, and completely exhausted me for the following three days. In other words, I completely went for it.

Starting up the initial overhang Photo: Christina Bell

It seems to contradict reason, but it seems clear to from my experience that there are many different states of mind which seem to work well for bringing out the best (or should it be worst?) in climbers for hard leads. ‘confident and solid’ is most consistent, but suffers often from nerves and fear of failure. ‘Invincible’ can produce moments of sickening boldness/recklessness, but always makes for a short career in climbing. ‘Angry’ is only really good for pull-ups. Climbing is too delicate for it’s unchannelled release of energy. ‘F**k it, what have I got to lose?’ was where I was at on the crux of Anubis. Life is too short for caution when you are on the right route, at the right time. So I dispensed with caution.

A small gear ripping fall on the initial wall leading to the main roof helped a lot to relax the body. I had been needing that for about two or three seasons. I started again. This time climbing like I wanted to get higher.

Crossing the crux roof Photo: Christina Bell

Several hours later, with nothing left in my arms, my feet slipped off again on the final headwall, well out from the last gear. I had the eyeball bulge of a leader with three seconds to find a solution or fall. A footless speed-downclimb of about 8 moves and kung foo kick back onto the footledge under the roof saved one more chance to get to the belay. Christina burst out laughing at the sight of it. I laughed as well, after a minute or two.

Next time up was my last strength, so I got there. I pulled through my 70 metre ropes, tied them together and kept going up the comb in a 140 metre pitch, before untying and continuing up the ice grooves, and eventually standing in the quiet of the summit by myself for a few minutes.

Grade in winter? No idea. I’ll have a think about it. I haven’t ever tried or done anything harder in winter. I guess there are worse chores than grading your hardest route. The route started as an idea to see if it was possible today to maintain the Victorian mountaineering tradition of opening a new climb in summer conditions, and progressing to an ascent in winter. Great that it’s still every bit as possible as it was a century ago.

The highpoint of my 2nd attempt, the other week Photo: Andy Turner

Anubis in summer E8 mode Photo: Cubby Images

Postscript: Just before I posted this up I read a timely post on Ian Parnell’s blog with a full list of all the routes of grade IX and above. I can’t say it really helped that much for making a wild and disclaimer-ridden stab at a grade for Anubis. But what did stand out was the consistency of routes which are often reasonably protected HVSs working out at IX in winter. There are of course some E2s and up to about E4s that have been done as winter mixed routes, generally where the cruxes involve cracks. Anubis, although dramatically harder at E8 does have a useful short crack at the crux, but then a section of E5 6a face climbing on small crimps. Bla bla… the long and short of it is I do think it’s a significant step up from any of the routes I’ve done. The crux is not much harder than Don’t Die, but then the rest is like stringing three of the IXs on Ian’s list together. So maybe it’s XII if my other two routes are really XI. Or if The Hurting and Don’t Die are really grade X then Anubis might make it into XI. I’ll keep thinking about it...

Marshall Smith challenge success!

Today, Diff and I are stationed in my house drinking vast quantities of tea, piling through an entire box of shortbread and generally recovering from the Smith Marshall week. We managed to do it, film it, photograph it and enjoy every minute of it.

Yesterday we left the CIC hut at 8ish and made a morning ascent of Orion Face Direct in glorious conditions to finish off, and top of the seven Ben Nevis routes. That left the sting in the tail - the Grey Corries traverse. It’s a big walk but not a big deal on it’s own. It was Smith and Marshall’s rest day from the climbs. However, after topping out on Orion Face and starting it for the afternoon itinerary, it started to feel a bit more uphill by the time we were floundering in deep snow up to Aonach Beag.

Several peaks later, glycogen ran out and autopilot and mars bars kept us plodding along the snow arete in the dark to Stob Coire Claurigh and the final jog down it’s long open plateau towards the lights of Spean Bridge. Our water supply had run out way back at Aonach Beag so I was hallucinating about a huge glass of orange and lemonade in the Commando Bar in Spean. It took two pints of the stuff before I could face a sip of celebratory beer.

Anyhow, I need to go back to preparing video and pictures of the week for our show at the Fort William Mountain Festival on Sunday night. Hopefully see you there for a good night of ice climbing inspiration.

Pristine ice grooves on Orion Face Direct

Moving out on a thin Smith’s Route

Donald - a man who can take a cameraman where few have gone before

Climbing into a deep blue sky - Point 5 Gully on Wednesday

Andy learning to cut steps

Glad to be standing on the last summit of the Grey Corries after traversing them after Orion Face

Marshall-Smith week starts tomorrow

This is a quick post as I’m getting up in 5 hours to carry an uber load up the Ben to start the Smith Marshall week re-enactment. We just came from a team meeting and the list of improbable things to be done in the next seven days is quite staggering. Donald and Paul will be starting the days by going to the plateau and rigging/abseiling the faces to get in position. No support team, just them carrying the all the ropes and camera equipment.

Tomorrow we are headed for The Great Chimney. The forecast is getting better all the time for the week, but heavy rain tonight and an unfortunate wind direction will be loading the faces with several of the routes and they could be a bit too dangerous to approach for a while? We’ll have to see how things go. Hey, noone said it would be easy.

If you want to follow how we get on I’ll be tweeting from wherever I can get a signal on the mountain. My twitter feed is here. I’ll also try and get some blogs out and let you know when the first youtube clips come scooting down from the editing suite in the CIC hut.

But of course the best place to catch up with the week of climbs will be next Sunday night at the festival with Jimmy Marshall, myself and Andy and the footage we get. See you there, an please excuse us if we seem a little fatigued.

Marshall-Smith week

Jimmy Marshall

Those of you know know anything at all about winter climbing in Scotland will know instantly what I’m talking about just from the title. In 1960 Jimmy Marshall and Robin Smith climbed 6 routes on Ben Nevis in one week that were all cutting edge at the time. Some of them were first ascents such as the famous Smith’s Route (V, 5) but the others like Point Five Gully were done very much faster than previous ascents. The week has been a bit legendary ever since as pretty much the finest achievement in ice climbing using the step cutting technique and a formidable display of mountaineering skill and fitness that was not surpassed for man years or even decades.

Anyway, It’s 50 years since the famous week next month, and myself and Andy Turner will be trying to repeat the week as away of marking it personally and on film. It’s something that a few of us in Lochaber had been talking about doing for a while, but Mike Pescod from the Fort William Mountain Festival really galvanised us into action over the past few weeks, roping in Diff from Hot Aches to film us during the week and arranging for us to talk at the festival after the week about our thoughts on it and it’s importance as a great story and achievement in Scottish winter climbing.

There is more on it on the FWMF’s page on it here. But our plan is to climb the 6 routes on Feb 6th-12th, repeat the Grey Corries traverse as Smith and Marshall did for their ‘rest day’ on the 13th and talk about it on Marshall night at the festival on the Sunday night (14th) where Jimmy himself will be making an appearance. I’m not so sure if we’ll repeat the theft of the Fort William pub’s set of Draughts and ensuring arrest by the polis, but we’ll see ; ) All very exciting.

I’ll talk more about it next week. And I’ll be tweeting, blogging etc during the week of climbs itself. Right now I’m off to train on the board and get ready for travelling to Dublin for my coaching and lecture there…

Andy Kirkpatrick is on at the FWMF on the Friday night (12th) and Diff’s lecture on Sat 13th is called ‘Climbers I’ve shot and some I’d like to shoot’ which I’m hearing is a good laugh. See y’all there.

Going for a look

First light in Surgeon’s Gully

Yesterday early doors myself and Donald took a wander across the river Nevis to see how frozen Surgeon’s Gully on Ben Nevis was. Sadly, despite just about everything else in Scotland being frozen solid, in the depths of this impressive ravine there was still water moving earthward. It actually seemed to have an amazing micro-climate in there - warm and sheltered. Not good for ice gullies.

So after climbing some pitches and coming down, we deferred to messing about. First, we did some nice ice bouldering with no crampons. And then danced across some thin ice on the river Nevis (don’t worry, it was only deep enough for wet feet underneath). Wee youtube below:

Nevis soloing in winter with Cunningham

Nice video of John Cunningham soloing on the Ben in the mid 1970's. Thanks to Paul Cunningham for sharing that. I'd seen this before at the Ice Men gathering I hosted a few years ago at the Fort William Mountain festival with Yvon Chouinard (who shot the film), Jimmy Marshall and Hamish McInnes. It was nice to see it again and watching it made me think how little has changed today in highland climbing. Maybe not on the Ben which is a tad busier on weekends, but highland climbing is still a relaxed, exploratory, wild and sometimes lonely affair, 40 odd years later. Here's to that. I'm more likely to end the day with tea than a dram though, and then get training!

Another false start to the winter

Early morning light hits the hills above Loch Linnhe

Yesterday I was able to climb a difficult pitch of unclimbedness on the north face of Ben Nevis. It was a nice wake up call to winter climbing – starting waay too early in the morning, feeling pretty chilly, feeling like I’m about to take a fall I’d really rather not, and fighting hard for two solid hours to get up a pitch. But it wasn’t possible for us to start the next pitch, so I had to abseil off. The route will have to wait till next time.

Echo Wall falling rocks clip

Here is another wee clip of soloing about on some right choss to get back to the top of Echo Wall and dislodging a couple of hefty rocks. Ouch!

Jimmy Marshall interview

As part of our film about Echo Wall we really hoped to get an interview with the ice climbing legend Jimmy Marshall, who was perhaps the finest ice climber ever in the step cutting generation which ended during the late 1960's when people started using two ice axes and frontpoint crampons to climb ice.

Jimmy is famously reluctant to give interviews so we were extremely lucky that he agreed to give us an hour of his time to share stories and thoughts on climbing on Ben Nevis. Some of these are in our Echo Wall film as well as an extended edit of the interview in the DVD extras. Here is a short teaser from that, where Jimmy describes a massive factor 2 fall while attempting a new winter route on the Ben in the 60's. Brilliant!

Winter is on the way

If you are into winter climbing, the sight of the first autumn snows on the mountains has strange effect on you. Partners, rock climbers, and other groups of sane people find it quite unfathomable why the sight of a few bits of white gets us so excited, but it just does.

Fresh snow in five finger gully, Ben Nevis

It’s a feeling that reminds you of when you first started climbing – everything is a possibility, who knows what the coming season will bring. But either way you know you are going to enjoy it. It was bitter in the glen right through the day and frosty again tonight.

Bring it on.

Echo Wall trailer

Here is a trailer for the Echo Wall film. We are expecting the DVD in late October (I hesitate to say an exact date!!) but if you would like to get your copy in, you can pre-order it from the shop now.

Plans for winter

Although my time recently has been so hectic with our work on the Echo Wall film, things have been more relaxed in my climbing, which makes a nice change really. Relaxed in some senses, but not in others you understand. I have been ruthlessly attacking Kimber’s campus board every night and mixing this with loads of bouldering and endurance training ready for the winter season of valley level rock climbing. I’ve not had enough time for any flexibility work which has been irritating me, but I will have soon.

Since doing Echo Wall I’ve gradually come to enjoy the feeling of not having any particular looming focus of a big project right now. It’s something I obviously had a lot in past years, but have been really focused on big hard redpointing routes over the past couple of years. This winter I’ll be bouldering a lot and onsighting much more too, mainly on mixed. People sometime ask me why I don’t do more onsighting, but I think they forget that I do all year long, just that it’s on winter mixed. I have three big winter lines at the top of my hitlist. One is just so laughable it’s ridiculous, but in a funny sort of way, I could see myself doing it. So the ice axes will be featuring in my training during December too.

My goal here is to do something of the order of Echo Wall, but in the discipline of winter climbing. I have the projects, I have the psyche and some availability of partners (the Shields is particularly psyched this season). So all that’s left is to get amongst it. Looks like some early dustings of winteriness are hitting the highlands over the next few days too. There is nothing like that anticipation if you are into winter climbing!

Kev Shields soloing Sweet Little Mystery E4 6a, Glen Nevis last week (the film of this is in the Echo Wall extras).

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