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While the rain falls

My house was still standing after Hurricane Bawbag and all is well as we settle into a long awaited full week at home and not on the road. Despite a million flattened trees in the glen around our house, everything except our TV signal (dodgy aerial down at the loch shore) survived. Our internet connection survived and that has been keeping us busy with Christmas orders from the webshop (thanks for those!!). We are dispatching every day as always by first class post.

While the gales and sleet rage outside, I have been getting seriously into training. My finger joints are complaining about this mildly, but good sleep and food are keeping them keen for leaping between crimps on the board.

Tonight I even managed a tweaked version of my model of Seven of Nine, a good notch harder than the original, which I completed once shortly before I did the real thing back in April. From my bouldering apprenticeship in Dumbarton I’ve been left with reasonably good openhanded strength on small positive edges and I’m good at getting weight on my feet when the climbing surface is fairly undulating and angled. My ever growing weakness was flat panel 45 degree angles and big pinches.

I’ve kind of neglected the pinch strength aspect since few of my rock projects rely on this, something I’ve now come to regret. However, It’s never too late to get strong and I’m attacking it now with some fine pinch problems. I reckon I’m still at least 2 full grades weaker on pinches than edges as recent indoor sessions around Scotland have reminded me. Let’s see what we can do about that.

The training part is easy though - It’s like eating pudding, I could just keep going and going. The hard bit is maintaining the discipline to rest properly and do all the supportive stuff to keep the body going (rehab exercises, basic strength work, flexibility and eating well). With Freida crawling about the house now tracking down anything dangerous she can get her little teeth into, it gets too tempting sometimes to take the opportunity to do some work while she sleeps. Resist! Rest up and train another day.

Following my session tonight I’ve just spent a couple of hours immersing myself in some fine training inspiration such as this:

Long Hope DVD available for pre-order

The Long Hope DVD is now up in the shop for pre-order.

The master disc is off to the DVD manufacturers and DVD stock usually takes a couple of weeks or so to be manufactured. If you did manage to get tickets to the premiere in Kendal before it sold out, we are hoping to have a handful of advance copies there but if you don’t make it to that, pre-ordering it now will mean you’ll get it the fastest way possible. We’ll dispatch orders for it as soon as we get hold of the stock.

A lot of folk ask for their DVD signed, which is no problem of course! Just ask in the ‘special instructions’ field of the checkout form.

The running time of the film is 60 minutes and there are lots of extra films on the DVD: My ascent of Indian Face, Mucklehouse Wall on Hoy and naturally, The Old Man of Hoy.

It’s in the shop here.

Tip Juice in the shop

I’ve just added the new Tip Juice balm to the webshop. Most keen climbers these days doing a lot of sport climbing or bouldering are using a skin balm to help speed the recovery of fingertip skin for the next session. In the damp climate of western Scotland I don’t find I need to use it every session to keep my finger creases from cracking. But on a trip to somewhere with a dry climate such as sport climbing in Spain I’ll use it every day. It goes without saying that if you have a split tip or a cut from a sharp hold on your fingers you’ll need to use a balm like this daily to help it heal in the quickest possible time and prevent it going to a deep crack that will bother you for ages.

Tip Juice is a new balm developed by an Aberdeen team of boulderers. They took a long time to perfect it and I think they’ve done a nice job. You can find it in the shop here together with the ingredients list.

Five new things in our shop

While I was away last week Claire uploaded five new products to the webshop which we think you’ll like. Here’s a quick run through:

Alpinist issue 35 - We have the latest issue of Alpinist, as ever a beautiful publication. Articles in this issue include Sonnie Trotter showing us around Squamish, perspectives on soloing with Alex Honnold and other nice mountaineering feature by Barry Blanchard, Kyle Dempster and others. It’s here.

The Munros in Winter - Martin Moran’s book telling his story of the first traverse of the Munros in winter in a single season in 1985 was one of the first books I read about climbing when I’d just discovered the Scottish mountains at 15. It inspired me and intrigued me about the locations and awakened a desire to go and do some exploring of my own. It’s been out of print for some time and has just been republished. Whether you go into the mountains to walk, climb fish or whatever, this book will strike a chord with anyone into mountains and mountaineering challenges. It’s here.

The Mountain Marathon Book - speaking of mountain challenges, mountain marathons are more popular than ever and the growth of organised races around the UK and the world has meant that the general standard of hill runners appears to have raised my some measure. To get anywhere, it’s pretty essential to get all of the basic tactics and techniques right, and to know a fair bit about how to plan your training. As always there is tons of information online, but you have to be already fairly expert to be able to spot the wheat from the chaff. This is the first comprehensive instructional book for hill runners covering all aspects of preparation for events - events, tactics, equipment, training, nutrition strategy and more. It’s here.

The Scene DVD - Chuck Fryberger’s latest climbing flick from the hottest climbing destinations around the world. Hard trad, 9b sport from Sharma, hardcore bouldering with Nalle Hukkataival and even more hardcore climbing comp action. New psyche for your own training! I wrote a full review here and it’s in the shop here.

Northern Beats DVD - A new school film by Bernd Zangerl combining artistically shot bouldering on a tour around Norway with good music. Full review on the way, meanwhile, it’s in the shop here.

Review: The Scene DVD

Chuck Fryberger has been on a mission to inject some style into climbing and climbing films. I enjoyed some of the mega footage from his last film Core and was eager to see his latest climbing flick ‘The Scene’. Chuck has based himself in various modern centres where the world’s best climbers seem to be gathering right now such as Innsbruck, Catalunya, Boulder and various other areas around the USA. There are some quite nice interviews with the best climbers of the moment talking about what fires them up and why they have chosen their particular path within climbing and settled in their chosen area.

The climbing: We kick off with some nice trad crack climbing around Moab with Steph Davis among others. This was my least favourite part of the film although friends I watched it with thought it was great. A blaze of excellent bouldering sequences around the US follow - very inspiring. Nalle Hukkataival reminds us just how strong the human body can be with a few muscly genes and a life of travelling about between world class boulders. It was also great to see more of Dave Graham, still clearly a powerhouse of enthusiasm. Before we leave the US, there is a nice chapter on trad headpointing and a really nice 8b trad ascent by MAtt Wilder which I enjoyed watching a lot.

Then we go to Innsbruck and get a glimpse into the Red Bull fulled and funded life of Kilian Fischuber and friends on the boulder comp scene. Lots of flashing lights, cool people, cool music and impressive displays of plastic crushing strength. A branch of climbing that is clearly becoming further and further removed from it’s old-school roots. The leading competition section is led by a profile of the machine that is Ramonet. The climbing sequences make it fairly obvious why he’s exerting his dominance over everyone, even Ondra in the comp world right now. He looks like he’d be a world class athlete in whatever sport he chose.

Finally we are back in the ever thriving scene of the Catalunya sport crags with Dani Andrada, Daila Ojeda smoothly dispatching an excellent 8c and Chris Sharma, just as impressive as ever trying and completing a monster 9b pitch at Oliana.

A subtle education of the current direction of climbing, and a great pre-training session flick of psyche. Already watched it three times since my stock of DVDs arrived last week. It’s avaible in the webshop right here.

Longhope fine art prints

Along with Lukasz Warzecha we are producing a limited edition of 100 fine art prints of his great image above showing the first ascent of The Longhope route, E10/11, Orkney. We thought it really grabs you as an inspiring climbing image of a special route, so it would be nice to make a print available. I have signed and numbered each print. The prints are A3, unframed with a white border and are printed on Ilford Pearl paper and are £75 (shipping worldwide as always). The actual print is not watermarked with the LWimages text. The prints are available in the webshop right here.

If you’re into your climbing photography Lukasz is running a weekend photography workshop in North Wales Sept 30th-Oct 2nd. I’m going along to do be in front of the camera (hopefully doing some good climbs!). There a few spaces left. Details on Lukasz’ site.

Three new books and DVDs in the shop today

Three new products just added to the shop which provided me with some excellent climbing entertainment of very different types! I hope you like them too:

Climbing philosophy for everyone: A book that has been needing to be written for some time. Stephen Schmid has brought together a series of philosophers who are also involved in climbing to take a head on look at the philosophy of various aspects of climbing. It’s quite a big task, and this book definitely errs on the accessible side. In highly readable and easy going style, it examines in turn aspects of the climbing experience such as freedom, risk/reward, the enjoyment of climbing several aspects of climbing ethics, styles of climbing and climbing culture.

Far from being a hardcore academic style book, it’s a fine door opener to the world of attempting to understand climbing on a slightly deeper level. Your next heated post climb debate or forum rant will be less without it under your belt, but in places it is certainly a source of climbing controversy itself! Entertaining stuff. The book is right here.

Reach DVD: The latest in the genre of skate/MTB inspired bouldering flicks coming out of the US. If you enjoyed the likes of Core from last year, you’ll love this one too. A host of talent is squeezed in, cranking out V13 plus boulders with good music and a feel good style. The beasts Dave Graham and Daniel Woods are of course the highlight. Inspiring as usual with their jaw dropping feats of strength. One to make the boulders tremble. Right here.

The Fanatic Search 2… A girl thing DVD: Yes that’s right, Laurent Triay’s latest film creation is all about the girls. And well impressive they are too! Charlotte Durif (8c onsight), Daila Ojeda, Lynn Hill, Robyn Erbesfield (plus 9 year old 7c+ climbing daughter), Martina Cufar, Berta Martin and others in full flow on the best crags of Spain France. Inspiration aside, it’s an education to watch - whether you are a male or female climber. I was particularly interested to watch Charlotte Durif and see her style on the rock. She is one of the best performing onsight sport climbers in the world but there is very little footage of her around. It was just as interesting as I hoped! Right here.

They are all in the shop here.

Mountain Equipment Pro-Team T-shirts back in stock

I know, I know, we only got a short batch last time and ran out pretty much as soon as we got them. As promised, a big box of them dropped into the MacLeod house this morning. The reassuring ‘thunk’ nearly woke Freida! They’ve only been live on the site a few hours and already the box is getting lighter. So get them in…

They are right here.

Review: Racing Weight quick start guide

Matt Fitzgerald’s first text on weight optimisation for endurance athletes is a first in it’s field and understandably a best seller- it’s a rather essential book to have if you are a runner, cyclist or triathlete. Because there is so little well written and scientifically based information on weight management in sport generally, it’s also pretty essential reading for climbers too.

There was only one snag - climbing is not an aerobic endurance sport. Some of the information in Racing Weight was directly applicable to climbers, but the bulk of it still needs some interpretation to shoehorn the principles onto a completely different activity.

On first glance I thought that Fitzgerald’s sequel - the Racing Weight Quick Start Guide might be not much more than a commercially led follow up with recipes and plans that follow directly from the ideas in the first book. Actually I think it could be better titled, as it’s not just that at all. ‘Quick Start’ actually refers to his ideas for weight loss at the start of a training cycle for endurance athletes. The whole premise of Racing Weight was that endurance athletes who dieted hard to get to their fighting weight would end up offsetting gains by the consequent loss of training intensity. However, even endurance athletes have time in the foundation phase of the new macrocycle where they can afford to absorb this, and they can adopt a more rapid weight loss program. This means a very different strategy.

Conveniently, this fits in a lot better with the types of schedules climbers tend to do. This book answered many (still not all!) of the lingering questions I had on weight management for resistance/anaerobic athletes like ourselves. Taking advantage of some key research findings in the past couple of years, together with his clear and very well constructed writing, Matt has produced another essential piece of digest for everyone whom this subject concerns.

Most of the really ‘juicy’ scientific information that it’s in the first book fits into about 30 or 40 pages. But It’s well worth it for that understanding in my opinion. The extensive section on foods and choosing them for different situations is really excellent too, and I’m fairly sure the same information cannot be found anywhere else in such complete form and so well tailored to the intended audience.

I got some copies ordered for the shop straight away! It's right here.

Review: The Players DVD

Been meaning to post this for a while...

The Players is as you might have guessed a classic American sport/bouldering flick - hard climbers, lovely places and lovely climbs. And that’s it. Cool - so what’s it like? Well there aren’t any groundbreaking first ascents on a world scale, but obviously a LOT of impressive climbing from Sharma, Graham, and Woods and Rands. The real highlight is that we get to see a few more characters that we in the UK don’t see much of in climbing DVDs.

Alex Puccio and Emily Harrington are two very contrasting but inspirational female climbers. It was great to see them included as there is still not so much footage of the living end of the female climbing elite. It was interesting to see footage of Joe Kinder on his repeats of the Tommy Caldwell 9a testpieces at the Fortress of Solitude. I was always intrigued by these routes as we haven't heard much about them outside the US, except that they sound hard. They looked hard too! Chris Linder deep water soloing in Vietnam and the machine that is Ethan Pringle walking up 5.14 trad headpoints are both entertaining.

The shooting is not quite as grand as the Big Up blockbusters it will inevitably be compared to, but I felt I got to know the characters a little better without the larger than life sheen. I enjoyed watching a few times as I stretched out tight muscles before sessions on the board!

If you're keen for a copy, it's in the shop here.

Asgard Jamming review

While on a rest day on a trip recently I watched the Asgard Jamming DVD and liked it so much I’ve been meaning ever since to get some copies in from the Favresse bros for the webshop. I got round to it!

I think even if you have no intention of ever climbing a big wall never mind walking 600km in a single trip just to get to Mount Asgard, you’ll find this film very entertaining. It’s certainly the best piece of big wall filming I’ve seen. It follows Nico and Oliver Favresse, together with Sean Villanueva, Stephane Hanssens and Silvia Vidal on a brilliant adventure to Baffin Island and after their epic approach, 11 days of fine looking climbing on the wall.

It totally reminds you why you go climbing, how much fun it can be and how exciting things can get when you really go for it. Nico’s looong whipper that you see the first half of in the trailer is great viewing. When not entertaining us with hardcore granite pitches, the mandolin toting Belgians are showing us how to have a party on a big wall in style and generally make a massive big wall look like 11 days cragging, except with a drop of justice underneath. Great stuff!

It’s in the shop here.

Mountain Equipment Ts are here

Our fresh stock of Mountain Equipment Pro-Team T-shirts arrived just before Christmas. It’s a short run from ME and we are due to get more sometime in the spring. But just to say the current lot are selling fast, so if you want one get it now. ~~There are 3 male mediums left at the moment!~~

Claire has added chest sizes for them on their page in the shop so you can be sure which size is right. We have been impressed with the quality of the new run of T-shirts, great quality organic cotton and a little ‘heavier’ cotton and crisper print than the previous batches. In the shop here.

[UPDATE] The mediums are now sold out for now. Small is a chest size 28 and large is 42.

Christmas orders

More and more of you are asking each day about our last posting dates for Christmas from our shop. Claire is dispatching every day as usual, via Royal Mail. If you’re ordering within the UK then you ought to get your order in by last thing Monday night (20th) to make sure it’s there before Christmas. Please be aware things are sometimes taking a little longer as Royal Mail still seem to be delayed in a few places by the snowy weather.

We’re expecting new stock of the Mountain Equipment Pro-team T-shirts later today and will put all the sizes up in the shop as soon as they arrive. We've been out of men's sizes in these for ages and I know lots of you asked when they were coming back.

As always, if you want anything signed, just ask, in the special instructions field of the PayPal checkout. Thanks to everyone who’s ordered from us recently. Claire’s been doing a great job in the office getting everything out in double quick time every morning.

Great Climb & Triple 5 DVD’s have arrived

The DVDs of our live BBC Great Climb and also the Triple 5 (5 Climbs, 5 Islands) programmes are ready and Cameron McNeish is dropping them in to me later this morning. I’ve put them up in the shop just now.

The Great Climb DVD comes as a 3xDVD set with the full 6 hour programme of the first ascent of The Usual Suspects E9 7a, including an option to listen with or without the television commentary, extra footage from the climb such as the roof section on Pitch 4 of our route and extras about the background and making of the programme. It’s in the shop here.

The Triple 5 DVD comes as a 2xDVD set of a longer cut of the film with extra climbing, interview and background footage. The ‘5 Climbs, 5 Islands’ programmes that went out on the BBC was 2 hour cut. The DVD is a 3.5 hour cut so could go into more depth about the climbs we did during the challenge and our approaches to climbing in general. It’s in the shop here.

I noticed at Kendal that a lot of folk wanted their DVD signed. If you would like that when ordering from the shop, just ask! Write in the ‘Special instructions to merchant’ field of the checkout page.

Hope you enjoy them.

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.

Mountain Equipment’s Chill slackline sets are now in stock in the shop - the 15 metre ‘entry level’ set. A little wider at 40mm…

Also back in stock is the To Hell and Back DVD which some of you have been asking for.

Hot Aches DVDs offers

We are running a couple of offers in the shop for a while on the Hot Aches DVDs collection:

The ‘boxless’ set of all the Hot Aches DVD back catalogue for £50. 5 DVDs, 7 hours of great climbing films and the collection pretty much reads like a history of top end British trad climbing as well as ice, mixed, bouldering and sport and multipitch from all over the world. Contains E11, Committed I and II, Monkey See Monkey Do, All Mixed Up. PAL format only. It’s in the shop now here.

Committed I & II bundle for £20 which they would normally cost each. Committed I has 200 E points of hardcore trad action including Divided Years E8, Blind Vision E10, Trauma E8 and stacks of others. Committed 2 has The Walk of Life E9, The Groove E10, Dynamics of Change E9, If Six Was Nine E9, A’ Muerte 9a, The Hurting XI and on and on. In the shop now, here.

ME Slackline sets are here too

I’ve just uploaded the new Slackline sets from Mountain Equipment to our shop right here. They have been super popular for ME and so they’ve updated them again this year. There are three sets, the Pro, Passion and Chill. We are getting the Chill in shortly when the new stock arrives at ME.

Both the Pro and Passion sets have a 25mm wide slackline with 3m padded anchor slings and heavy duty ratchets for racking them up. The Passion is 18 metres long and the Pro is 25m. Enjoy!

New colours in the ME beanies

We just got in a lot of new colours in our Mountain Equipment beanies ready for the coming winter. They are in the shop now right here.

In the books section I’ve added Eric Horst’s new book on mental skills for climbers - Maximum Climbing which is just out. It’s a very up to date and comprehensive guide to theory and practice in the psychology of performance in climbing. Horst has drawn on the developments in behavioral and cognitive psychology which has come on a lot in the past few years. Interesting reading (review on the way on OCC soon).

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