A busy weekend

This saturday saw the first round of the 2014 British Tooling Series at Beacon Climbing Center in North Wales. The British Tooling Series has evolved from the popular Scottish Tooling Series, which has been running north of the border for a few years already.
The Beacon put on a great show, with additional excitement thanks to it also being their 20th birthday weekend. Happy Birthday Beacon! The day saw, in addition to the tooling comp, a fun boulder comp, a talk my Tim Emmett and Will Gadd and an Indian meal.
The dry tooling competition took place on 8 qualification routes. These were a combination of routes using Alpkit figfours and normal axes and had something for all abilities.

Qualifying

There was a good turn out on the day with some old STS faces as well people new to tooling and others that are just starting out in competitions.
After all the competitors had tested themselves on the qualifying routes it was time for the finals. There were two finals routes, one for the female finalists and one for the males. Both of these looked thin and sketchy and generally pretty hard, but what else would you expect being set by the master of sketchy climbing himself, Nick Bullock.
The female finalists were Anna Wells, Katy Forrester and Megan Beaumont, while the male finalists were Tim Mueller, Will Woodhead, Matt Pigden, Dave Bowes, Scott G and myself. I was second to last out so I didn't watch any of the female finals, however the competition was won by dry tooling guru Anna Wells. I didn't see much of the mens finals for the same reason either, so we join it at my attempt.
Walking out of isolation I didn't know how everyone had done, so I just had to do as well as I could. There was no time limit for the final, it was just who got furthest, which suited my slow style of climbing. I made very slow progress up to the last hold on the route, which I ended up ripping off while getting into a position to clip the lower off. Scott was last up and climbed the route with ease, but got the rope caught around a hanging pipe, causing terrible rope drag. This eventually caused made him to fall off. If it wasn't for this I'm sure he'd have won, but it in the end my attempt was just good enough to win it. DMM very generously donated a rope for each of the winners.
The British dry tooling scene is a really cool thing to be involved in at the moment with loads of psyched climbers. Its shaping up to be a really good series and started in fine style at Beacon Climbing Centre. Get involved!
Despite being really tired from the comp on saturday I was not done with competing for the weekend. Sunday was the British Fell Relays, held on Middleton Fell, just north of Kirby Lonsdale. I was running as part of York Knavesmire Harriers A team. The other team members were Neil Stabbs, Chris Roberts, Giles Hawking, Tom Ratcliffe and Simon Collins.

Mass start for leg 1

The race was in 4 legs. 2 short legs, run first and last, a long leg run second and a navigation leg run third. I was on the final short 10k leg.
The race started at 10am, and about 3 hours later it was finally my turn to run. The rest of the team had put me in a good position, although we were never in contention to win we could achieve a respectable position.

Knavesmire (yellow and black) at the end of leg 2

The weather wasn't great for my run with strong winds, low cloud and rain on the tops of the hills. Despite this I tried my best and brought Knavesmire home in a respectable 57th place, running my leg as the 50th fastest.
It was all together a good weekend, although I was very tired on monday morning!
There are a distinct lack of photos for the amount of text, but I was busy doing things.

My wall

This summer I have been busy. Mostly I have been working but I have also had chance to do a bit of climbing. My major achievement of the summer has been building my own wall in a spare shed at home. Well when I say spare a few bits had to be moved around but there's space for it now.
The wall consists of a 40 degree board up against another board with is just slightly less than 40 degrees.
The steeper wall is made to the same specification as a moon board and I have been using this for rock climbing, while the slightly less steep board is covered in sheets of old ply, which I have been using for drytooling.

Moon Board

I have used the old ply as a cover to allow me to use my crampons without needlessly damaging the wall.

Tooling Board

The wall has made getting climbing much easier, as I don't live particularly close to any commercial walls, and it saves me a lot of fuel money not having to drive through to York every day.
This past weekend I competed in the Buxton Thunderdome drytooling competition and came third, which was much better than I expected given the strength of the field. It looks like the wall is having the desired effect on my ability. Hopefully I can continue improving and do a bit better at the 2015 UIAA Ice World Cups.

Buxton Thunderdome

I have had a lot of help with this wall, mostly from my dad who helped me build it, or rather I helped him as he probably did most of the work. MKM Driffield were a big help giving me a discount on wood, as have been Red Goat Climbing Wall, in York, who have generously supplied me with loads of old holds for tooling on, t-nuts and bolts!

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!

Northern Tooling Series

Joanna and I decided to miss winter climbing for the weekend and head down to Sunderland for the Northern Tooling Series, organised by Roxcool and Schmoolz. On friday night we drove back down to my house in East Yorkshire, the car recorded -14 degrees, which is 259.15 kelvin, just outside of Driffield. It was still -12 degrees when we set off on Saturday morning to drive back north to Sunderland. I had never been to Sunderland wall and wasn't quite sure what to expect. It is in a big warehouse on an Industrial estate and I was abit confused as the only way in seemed to be through a small metal door, which looked more like it was a fire escape. The wall itself is quite good, with a large barrel shaped lead wall and a small bouldering section, of varying steepness.
When we arrived the schmoolz competition was still running, climbing using simulation ice axes, so we warmed up abit on the boulder wall then played cards.

Climber enjoying the days dry tooling

Our competition started after the schmoolz final had finished. There were 10 routes which had a maximum of 10 points on the short routes or 16 points on the long routes, although there were marked holds on the routes which gave you points, if you fell off before the end.
I felt that I started quite well, managing to top out my first 5 routes. Then I moved onto the chain route. This didn't look too hard as its a chain, so all the axe holds are good and you could fig four. I turned out to be wrong and I only managed to get 6 points on that route, out of a maximum 16. After this I decided I had to relax a bit more and probably thanks to this I managed to top out the remaining routes, giving me a grand total of 114 points out of 124.
The finalists were announced and I was glad to hear that both Joanna and I had made it to the finals, Joanna qualifying in first place and myself in joint first place with 2 others.
The final route took a series of logs, chains, tyres and bolt on holds up the long, steep barrel wall. Joanna was last to go attempt the route in her category, adult female. I tried to give her encouragment by shouting "go on Joanna" from around the wall blocking the finalists insolation from the people climbing the route.

Straddling the starting log

I was second out in my category, adult male. I could tell the guy before me, Pete Holder, had done quite well as he had taken a long time and there was a large cheer at the end. I started well getting up the log and onto the tyre with minimal fuss. I however rushed it from here and instead of sitting in the tyre like everyone else went straight for the chain. This meant that I now had to catch a swinging tyre with my feet and try and stand up. It proved difficult and I tried and tried again but to no avail. My fingers were starting to uncurl from my axes and I fell off. I wasn't best please with my perdormance at the time. It turned out it wasn't too bad as I managed to pick up second place. Joanna on the other had finished in first!

Reaching my high point

Thanks to Schmoolz and Roxcool for organising a great event and I hope there will be another one next year.

Schmoolz Review

Ive had a pair of schmoolz for just over a year now and I like to think they that have allowed me to improve my winter climbing and dry tooling ability. Schmoolz are indoor ice axes allowing you to simulate winter climbing or dry tooling on indoor plastic holds without damaging the holds, or yourself, with all the sharp bits.Since using Schmoolz I have managed to finish in an overall second place in the Scottish Tooling Series and pushed my winter grade to VIII 8, all be it not on lead.
Schmoolz look abit like nomics, or pretty much any other technical tool on the market. They have a big lower finger rest, which is abit too narrow when you first use them, and a smaller upper grip rest. The narrow grip rest does mean your little finger can go numb, but after a while this stops happening.
Schmoolz allow you to work the same muscles as you would using real axes, so are a good way of training endurance and strength. You can also train movement techniques, swapping axes and practice just holding the axes. Holding axes sounds simple but you don't want to be over gripping and getting pumped when on your real axe you will have a nice friendly grip rest to use now do you.

Schmoolzing

Some may say that having a rubber loop over a big jug is going to be more stable than using an axe placement. That may be true but if you branch out from jugs onto slopers things get abit more interesting. In my experience a bad sloper with one of these feels atleast as bad as a bad axe placement. A quick tip: If you want your Schmool to stick on that horrible sloper just stare at it and it won't dare move.

Stay!

There are some things you can't practice for with schmoolz such as stein pulls and torques. It says on the info that comes with them that your only suposed to hold the wooden handle and not stick it into jugs, so you can't get around it that way.
Id like to see Schmoolz make some sort of indoor crampon, as im really not great with crampons on rock. With a pair of schmoolz crampons and axes your winter training would be pretty much as good as the real thing, if not better as there won't be any spin drift.   
So like the other 7 out of 10 cats I would completely recomend schmoolz to anyone wanting to practice for using axes for real or just finding a new way to climb any of the old problems at your local wall. Best of all they're just really good fun.