Some new, Some old

It has been a while since my last post. In this time I have been attempting to climb as much as I can to get some mileage in preparation for the summer. Over this time I have also been doing my final exams, which are a lot less stressful than people might make you think. With almost all of the work which goes towards my final degree already handed in the pressure has been kinda off really. Despite this I have spent much of my time in Edinburgh, making lots of trips to the citys local crags.
Most of my time has been spent at Agassiz Rock, a small but steep crag composed of Pyroxene Andesite in Blackford Glen. Agassiz rock is a pretty famous locality thanks to the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz who interpreted the striations on the rock surface as being created by ice. If you are interested you can read about it here. After a bit of time working out how to use the Scottishclimbs wiki grid topo of this crag I managed to climb lots of problems here. My best effort has been the Low Traverse, weighing in at font 7b. This is quite long and probably deserves something like a 7c sport grade too. My usual warm up here is the problem Last Gasp, which is a long pumpy font 7a, which also gets a 7c+ sport grade apparently! So maybe the training is paying off.

Craig at Agassiz

Further down the glen from Agassiz Rock is Corbies crag, the neck of an extinct volcano and of the same unit which Agassiz Rock is composed of. I had never climbed here despite often walking past it to climb at Agassiz. There are a few easy routes which make for a nice way back to the flat from the glen. I climbed a very nice Mod called Retromingent Ridge, which I can highly recommend, and a Diff which follows a gorse filled gully, called Sunny Scoop, which I can't recommend.
Other local Edinburgh adventures include a quick trip to Traprain Law, where I climbed a few routes I hadn't done before with Elaine, and a couple of trips to the Salisbury crags, where I also managed a few new things.

Elaine on Great Corner Direct, Traprain Law

Further afield I made a quick evening trip to Oxen Wood in Northumberland, which is only really worth an evening trip. There isn't anything very hard here, although there is a nice font 6c, called Oxen Wood Traverse, which is probably worth seeking out.

Oxen Wood

Oxen Wood Traverse

Again in Northumberland I made a very unsuccessful trip to Bowden where I managed to climb a grad total of nothing, and a wet afternoon at Heckley, near Alnwick, where I managed a few nice things. Heckley is a bit of a strange crag as there was a f5+ which I spent a while trying to do but to no avail, but then I managed to flash a few 6c's. I can only think that some holds must have broken. The dead rabbit at the base of it added to the atmosphere.

Greg on Staggered, Bowden

Andrew on Vienna, Bowden

Dark Times at Bowden

Heckley in the Rain

Further south in Yorkshire I had an afternoon soloing at Scot Crags in Scugdale, where I managed to climb 60 routes! Most of the routes I climbed were between HS and HVS, however I did also tick a few E numbers, including an E4 which you really wouldn't want to fall off!

The Prow, Scugdale

So yes that has been my life recently. Hopefully I will be able to make some bigger trips soon which merit their own post, so you don't have to trawl through an essay to see what I've been up to!
Also here is a song I like: Metric-Waves

My 2013 climbing year

So 2013 is now at an end an I think I can safely say that it is my most successful every year of climbing. I have managed to achieve personal best in all disciplines in climbing but also had some amazing days out and experiences.

Trying extra hard on Seal Song

According to my UKC profile I have ticked 459 climbs in 107 days out. The days out is definitely an underestimate as there have been a number of days when I have failed to climb anything at all!
2013 started off quite badly as I dislocated my elbow at the start of January and missed the Ice world cup! It could only really get better from here really.
Winter climbing is the way I usually start and end a year. This current winter season has been good for me so far. I have climbed personal bests with Cornucopia (VII 9) and Sioux Wall (VIII 8). My favorite winter day would have to be doing Orion Face and Tower Ridge on the same day back in April. I even managed a first ascent in Stob Coire nan Lochain with Alex McMillan in March, called Seattle Grooves.

Sioux Wall

Cornucopia

Ravens Edge

I have also done a lot of drytooling in 2013. Although I haven't improved my red point grade, despite being close, I have managed to flash/onsight a couple of M9's. I also managed to keep my hands on second place in the STS, loosing out to Peter Holder by one point!

Newtyle

I haven't really climbed too much trad this year but what I have done I have enjoyed. In May I managed to onsight my first E5, a route called The Quickening at Reiff in North West Scotland. In July I managed to climb another E5 at Dumbarton rock near Glasgow called Physical Graffiti. In June I made a trip to the Hebridean islands of Pabbay and Mingulay with some friends from university. I really enjoyed the trip and the highlight of it was climbing Voyage of Faith (E3) on Dun Mingulay on our last day. My favorite trad route of 2013 is quite close between Wuthering (Stanage), Empty on Endorphins (Reiff), Golden Fleece (Reiff) and Big Country Dreams (Cambusbarron).

The Quickening

Wuthering

I spent most of the summer driving around Northumberland bouldering, although I did manage a few trips further afield. The highlight of the summer has to have been climbing Sprung at Bowden Doors, my first font 7c! It is easy for the grade I know but you have to start somewhere don't you. I have done so much bouldering this summer so its hard to pick out my favorite problems. In June I managed to climb Spank the Monkey at Cambusbarron, which is one of the best boulder problems I have ever climbed, and its in a grotty hole in the ground which makes it even better. Similar in setting, but completely different in style, is Gloom at Rothely in Northumberland. I loved working this problem and was so chuffed to manage to climb it in July.

Gloom

I managed two problems this summer that I have tried a number of times before. These were Little Pixies (Back Bowden) and Si's Arete (Almscliff).

Si's Arete

Little Pixies

My last bouldering highlight comes from a crag just 15 minutes away from my flat. I finally managed to climb the Low Black Wall Traverse on Edinburgh Sailisbury Crags!
I have done a little bit of Sport climbing too, but this wasn't very impressive or interesting so its not really worth talking about. I even went to the Alps but its the same story there.
To finish of the year I have been selected to for the newly formed British Ice Climbing Team and will be competing at the 2014 Ice World Cup!

CAC Festival of Ice Final

I should also thank those who have supported me throughout the year. Firstly I should thank Outdoorkit.co.uk who have been supplying me with kit to test and review. I should also thanks Scarpa for some new footwear to see me through the coming winter season and Schmoolz for making me a pair of fatter indoor ice climbing tools. Red Goat and Rock City climbing walls, in York and Hull respectively, should also get a quick mention for supporting my climbing throughout the year. Also a massive thank you to everyone that I climbed with this year!
2013 has been my best year for climbing so far, and hopefully I can build on this for 2014.

Festival

I'm really enjoying my climbing at the moment. I don't really care if I'm climbing inside or out, using the beast maker or just watching a climbing film. I like everything about it.
I do still prefer to climb outside, its just a bit nicer really isn't it, but I have managed to tick off a few cool problems at indoor walls. OK so indoor climbing isn't cool and no one really wants to hear about it but I'm still proud of my achievements.

Rheumatology

Now to outdoors. On Friday I made a trip to Hepburn in Northumberland. Despite a quite frustrating start to the day when I fell off nearly everything I did end up climbing some pretty cool problems, and finding others that I really want to go back and try. I managed to climb Rheumatology (7a) and 3 6b's which I had been unable to finish off on a previous visit. These were Roof Problem LH, Roof Problem RH and Fine Arete. They all went down reasonably easy as well, which makes it all the sweeter. Whilst walking around the woods near A Northern Soul I found a cool looking line which wasn't in the guide but had some chalked up holds. I spent quite a while attempting it, but not really getting anywhere. I guessed it would probably be 7c (it just looked like one). A quick check on UKC and a google shows that it is called Trivial Pursuit and gets either 7b+ or 7c.

Trivial Pursuit

Today I made a trip up to the crags after doing some work in the library. I spent a while working the L-R variation on the Low Black Wall Traverse (7b). I managed all the moves on it which is pretty cool. I almost go it linked too but the final move is a very low percentage dynamic foot placement sort of monster so I fell off. Hopefully I will get this linked soon!

Low Black Wall Traverse

In other news my dissertation seems to be going well but I haven't really tried to manipulate the data yet so it could all still fall to pieces!

The Black Wall

The weather was nice this afternoon so once I finished uni I headed up to the crags for a boulder. It was threatening to rain all the way there, and did at times, although the weather held out and I had a nice afternoon working some problems.
My main aim was the Black Wall Traverse (font 6c+). I have tried it before but always came off the crux. I had a couple of attempts to get through the lay back moves, which didn't feel too bad today. I was finding transfering my weight onto the large foot hold past the side pulls hard and came unstuck from here a number of times. I kept on persevering and in the end I managed to tick Edinburghs classic bouldering test piece.
There was a little sunlight left so I played around on a few problems round the corner including reccess traverse (font 6a) and overhang problem (font 6a).

Holyrood again

Today I headed out to holyrood park for a climb on Haggis Knowe. I was still pretty tired from yesterday so I took my time waking up meaning that I didn't set off till quite late. I found a reasonably steep short wall over looking the road so I set off to boulder around on this.

The steep wall

I did a few traversy things and one short route which went up a vertical wall into a nice scoop with a small overhang above it. It was probably no harder than severe but pretty good fun.
There were lots of little vesicles, frozen air bubbles, around which had been infilled with either quartz or calcite. I presume its calcite but I didn't have any metal objects on me to actually check, calcite scratches but quartz doesn't.
I left the crag as soon the sun was starting to set and went for a walk around the park. On my way I had a look at the sill just below the long row. Its formed from micro gabbro and has some interesting features on its top surface. There are lots of parallel lines which to the untrained eye may be assumed to be glacial strai, thats what I thought they were to begin with, but are infact ripples at the hot magma was injected bettween layers in the rock.The photo below shows them, although they are hard to see.

Injection Ripples

On my way back I had a look at some sandstone at the end of the crags. I was going to take a picture of the sandstone-dolerite contact but instead I got distracted by some interesting features in the sandstone. Initially I saw some cross laminations but they weren't as obvious as another feature. Im not too sure exaclty what this feature is, although I have narrowed it down to either load casts of convolute laminations. What I am sure of is that they are examples of soft sediment deformation, so before the sediment has been fully lithified. I am also pretty positive that the sandstone I was looking at is of a sub-aqueos origin.
The sandstone as you can see in the picture is red and the grains were reasonably coarse.

Mystery sedimentary structures

Overlying this was a very light brown sandstone with smaller grains, possibly showing a change from a sub-aquean to a sub-aeolian environment. I will have to go back earlier in the day, with my hand lens, so I can see any structures, to make sure of this though.
On my way home I went into the CSE were Gerry was setting some boulder problems so I helped out. He set two routes using a total of five holds. One made the most of the features on the featured wall and the other was a bridging route up the chimney.

Holyrood basalt

Today for a change I went for an explore around Holyrood park. Tom had told me about some small boulders next to the innocent railway which runs underneath Edinburgh Universitys Pollock Halls of residence. They were quite small although there are a couple of steep faces with poor slopey crimps which will probably give some interesting eliminates. These boulders are made of columular basalt, which is formed as a lava flow cooled quickly, but not too quickly, above the surface. They probably came from the samsons ribs, which makes up the best rock in the park but it is directly above the road so you can't climb on it, which are also columular basalt.

Columular jointing on the biggest boulder

After this I went to the gutted haddie, a steep wall at the end of, and perpendicular to, the crags. Id been told about this a while ago but id never got round to finding it. I thought it would be made from volcanic neck agglomerate but on closer inspection it was far too well lithified and looked abit basalty, so I figure its basalt. I had a quick climb here, but it was abit too windy and my things were getting blown away so I moved on to Haggis Knowe. I think I could get some pretty hard problems worked out on this. All the holds are either pretty thin crimps or side pulls.

The gutted haddie

Haggis Knowe is part of the long row basalt, which was an ancient lava flow. It is offset from the long row basalt by a fault which runs through the well next to St. Antonys Chapel. The guide book says that theres some quite good bouldering on Haggis Knowe and there does look to be some small steep sections and some nice thin slabs. I was going to climb here but it was getting dark and I saw a wire running up the crag so I went to investigate. I didn't find the end of the wire but I did see the preperations for the race around Holyrood tomorrow, lots of blue plastic tape blowing in the wind.
I headed off to the wall again tonight and saw Emma there who belayed me on a few more things with my Schmoolz. They had got round to setting some more route too including a really awkward 6b+ and a few boulder problems, which reminds me I need to work on pinching.

Salisbury crags

Today I headed up to the Salisbury crags for abit of a boulder around. Andy Moles has put some nice topos of problems on the crags on UKC so I printed some out and headed up with my shoes. Some bits were wet so I did problems on the slab under neath rotten overhang and black slab, which were dry. By the time I had done those the sun was out of the quarry and it was starting to get cold so I went back home. The Salsibury crags are a dolerite sill and not sandstone like the new Bouldering Britain guide claims, although there is sandstone above and below the sill which can be seen in the Hutton section on the crags and in the small quarry above hunters bog. The sill intruded between beds in the sandstone back when scotland was nice and warm and near the equator.
After the crags I headed down to the CSE. They claimed that they were going to have a day of setting routes, as they took down and washed all the blue holds yesterday. Being the CSE this didn't happen but there was a new 6b of Toms which I did. The main aim of going down was to train with my schmoolz for when the weather decides to play ball. I was working on some things with Sianan yesterday and managed to get one of them, the green 6a on the overhang, which includes a dyno for a large flat hold. The other, a 6b+ on the stepped wall, is still proving to be abit of a problem with a large crux move bettween a good hold, although not deep enough to pull off, and 2 directional holds. I managed the move after abit of work with a big lock off and abit of a wild flail in the right direction. I managed it yesterday too, but with an intermediate hold, and a cut loose so I did it in a much better style today. I will add a review of the Schmoolz when I get round to writing one, its taken me over a year so far! Sorry Schmoolz.

Contemplating the crux