Yosemite and the Diamond part 2

"There is no place comparable to the diamond. Its high, cold, steep, a long way from the parking lot, and most of all, intimidating." -Malcolm Daly

Sip sip, gulp glup (neil downs his 3rd beer), "Callum," "What!" "lets climb the Diamond", "alright". That's it, once either of us comes up with an idea and we both agree on it, neither of us ever has the balls to back out.

Now i don't exactly like the cold, the Diamond is 1,000 feet of vertical granite at 14,000 ft and in November it wasn't exactly going to be toasty up there. Also neither me or Neil have any idea how to ice/mixed climb, Neil had been up there two times before in summer but we didn't know what conditions would be like in November. i.e how much snow on broadway ledge and what the 4th class sections would be like.

I arrived in Colorado late October super psyched for a 7 mile walk in and a 3 days of suffering in the cold.............pause NOT!

After a week of mincing and some local craging.

We went up for a recon mission to test out the 10 dollar gloves and various other items that we acquired in the sports recycler.

We spent the night at around 11,500 ft and seemed to be warm enough. However upon venturing out from out sheltered bivi spot we got blasted by 50 + mph winds. It was grim, we went up to Chasm Lake which is a little under 13,000, the weather was terrible and we both agreed that we where definitely not nearly hard enough to climb in these conditions. So getting a good spell of weather would be vital for the real attempt.

(the recon mission......Brrrrrrrrr)

We retreated the 3 or so miles back to the trail head and began hitching back to Boulder. It was crazy how good the weather was at the trail head (9,500 ft) no wind at all, two thousand feet higher we couldn't see more than 10 meters and where almost blow off our feet.

The route we chose D-7 looked easy to aid at C1/+, it goes free at 11c (6c+ french) or around E4 6a, it was far to cold to free climb up there, all the ledges and parts of the cracks had snow in them. We figured that if we could get to the start of the route the actual climbing (if you can call it that) would be easy.

The route across Broadway to the bivi spot and then up D-7 (roughly)

Getting back to Boulder we began to wonder if maybe we had bitten off more than we could chew, for the first time in a while i felt nervous and slightly out of my depth. Aid climbing is a lot about strategy, how much food to bring, how much water, how many pitches are you going to climb every day. On El Cap i feel we have got it pretty wired, however climbing the Diamond was a whole new challenge. Just getting to the start of the route seemed to be the biggest hurdle.

Error 1: only bringing 1 walking axe, 4th class in snow = a butt load harder than without.

Error 2: Not knowing how to wield said walking axes.

Error 3: drinking a beer and watching the Real Rock Film Tour

(melting snow at the bivi spot on broardway)

The next week began with an excessive amount of mincing, a lot of time was spent deciphering and navigating the very complex area of weather forecasts. Our strategy chanced daily, Neil came up with retarded plans, i told him to go back to Darwin. The problem was it would be fuckin awesome to be on that wall chillin in the portaledge.....but that would mean taking the fucking thing up there, which would mean more water more food and hauling. Also it would add at least an extra day to the trip and that would increase the chance of the weather craping out. I for one did not fancy being up there in a major storm.

In the end we decided to sack off the ledge and go as light as possible.

BEEP BEEP, BEEP BEEP......i hate that noise, it means pain and suffering, it means the beginning of the unknown. The alarm shock me awake at 5am "urrrrrrr" 30min later after multiple presses of the snooze button we got up packed our sleeping bags into our already overflowing bags. 1 hour later after the usual amount of mincing and a massive coffee we stumbled outside and walked to the bus stop.

The bus dropped us off at the edge of Boulder. Thumbs out. We got to the trail head head at around 11am, there was a good 3inches on the ground which hadn't been there 2 weeks ago.
After a major 6 mile trudge gaining about 4,000 ft of elevation we found crap bivi spot. The wind as predicted began to pick up and blow spindrift straight into our bivi bags and faces............at that point i wondered what i was doing.

After a pretty poor nights sleep we dragged ourselves out of our warm bags at about 9am (yep i know, lazy......FUCK it was cold OK?)

There is 2 ways to get to the base of the Diamond.

1:To approach via Chasm Lake and up the North chimney (300 ft)
2: Ab in down Chasm view (right side of the diamond)

We chose to ab in as there no way we could climb the north chimney in winter with one walking axe. Neil went first as he had been down before in the summer. It took a while to find the first anchor as it was buried in a few feet of snow. Neil was unable to locate the 2nd anchor after searching for a good 30 min, it was well and truly buried. So he set one up that was......well shit basically. The rock on Broadway pictured above was not pretty terrible in terms of gear placement.

Anyway your probably getting bored of reading this by now so ill cut to the chase, we shat ourselves onto Broadway ledge, kicked out a platform and i lead across. The 4th class section ended up being OK, Neil basically swam up it, the snow was terrible and soft.

We got to the bivi cave and i fixed one pitch up some more 4th class to the start of the route. That pitch turned out to be a fuckin nightmare. No gear, rock coated in powder snow left the useless axe behind, OMG, it was like climbing E5 with crampons and gloves on, i fell i died, simple as. I sore, shouted, headbutted the rock and finally sucked it up and fixed the pitch.

That night was spent melting snow in the jet boil.

The next morning we where up early......ish.

After traversing the 4th class section to the beginning of the route Neil had first lead. He spent half the day leading the first pitch while i froze my average to small penis off. It was COOOOOLD the sun doesn't even touch a 1/4 of the whole wall in winter and it sure as shit didn't come anywhere near us. Big walling is a massive colossal nightmare, x10 and you have climbing the Diamond in winter. The one saving grace was we didn't have to haul.

(couple of pitches up)

There where no major epics in the hours that followed, the route follows a number of crack systems with a lot of really old pitons. Everything just took forever. When Neil got to the belays i would try and clean the pitch as quick as possible setting off jugging at light speed, only to collapse onto my daisy chains after 5 meters gasping for air.

At about 2pm the winded picked up and the temperature dropped even more.....if that where possible. I was wearing 2 base layers, my belay jacket, down jacket and my rain coat and was only just warm enough.

The wind brought in some cloud that swirled around in the valley below, it really was a magical place to be.

We got to the Table ledge (where a lot of routes finish) just after dark. There are five 150+ ft abseils back to broardway and the bivi bags, the belays on the route where natural with quite a bit of fixed tat, the ab stations where all double bolts. Although quite hard to find in the dark.


(At Chasm Lake, soooo much warmer down here)

The next morning we packed up and abed down the North chimney to the glacier below, then began trudge back to the trail head.

The next few day where spent eating donuts and drinking tea.

In conclusion:

• I found hard to believe was that we where the only people on the Diamond, which was mad as we had such a good spell of weather. If we had been in the UK it would have been packed up there.



• I still hate the cold

Yosemite and the Diamond Part 1

The month of September was spent in Yosemite. I arrived on about the 7th to find Neil psyched out of his mind having just soloed Lurking fear (EFFORT! considering he can't tie his shoelaces). I, too, was ultra, mega, outrageously psyched and we decided that we needed to be up on the wall a-sap. So after a day of gathering cheap minimal food and water bottles we hiked the worlds heaviest bags up to the Base of the Tangarine Trip and climbed the first 4 pitches to under the roof.

Due to a massive case of retarded-ness we failed to sort the portaledge out before getting on the wall, this resulted in an almightly tangle-fuck and 2 hours of massive faf.

The next morning Neil was so scared he had a shit...

Then climbed the classic 5th pitch

Our good friends Bill and Dom decided to do the route as well. Below Dom just finishing the first pitch.

The route was really good and we spent 2 more nights on the wall taking it easy and really enjoying being back up on El Cap.

The Trip is realllly steep from the start all the way to the 2nd to last pitch, this make the climb pretty wild. The Aid was straightforward and the main difficulties came from the strenuous nature of the placement . i.e high stepping on the overhanging wall.

As the guide says, the Trip has many classic pitches and many..not so classic, which was very true. There are a couple of really long rivet/bolt ladders and a couple of loose sections.

So without too much ado we topped out mid morning on the 4th day. Another wicked climb with a great friend.

So warm up complete.............Mescalito time.

I remember hearing about this route 2 years ago on our first trip to the Valley, two guys had to bail off of it because their ledge broke.

I looked it up in the guide book and was hooked upon reading the discription, "Mescalito is steep sustained and exceptional. It is hard to imagine a better route up a more incredible wall". Well, this route had to happen.

The base sorting out all of our crap.

STANDARD!



After fixing the first 4 pitches and spending a fortune on beer and cliff bars we drank some free coffee and got on the wall.

Neil is cooking bitch this morning!!

The pitches 4-8 include the seagull traverse and a series of pitches following a corner system slanting rightwards. The seagull pitch was mine as I have superior paper, scizzors, rock skills.

The corner pitches are quite difficult as they have a lot of crap flared pin scars into which cams and nuts don't really want to go. I ended up doing move after move on shit cam hooks that kept skidding and on a couple of occasions upon testing, ripped and hit me in the helmet.

You would weight the damn things only to see them held in by a small grain of granite which was starting to disintegrate. Cam hooks are amazing things and when they are in a good cracks are bomber, but, in a flared shit pin scars you begin to lose confidence.

If we had hammered it would have been easy and much safer, but it goes clean you just have to man up and stop being a whimp. As I was filling my pants on one pitch inparticluar believing that if this terd ham hook ripped I would pull everything below me and land on Neil's head (in reality I was probably just being a pussy) a helicopter appeared and began rescueing someone off the Nose.

This didn't exactly help with the concentration levels.......those things are noisy when a couple of hundred feet away.

The next few days involved some really fun pulling on gear.. the molar traverse, and some long thin pitches linked by bad rivets and dowles.

Neil starting the molar traverse.

Pitch above the Molar Traverse

For the first 3 days or so we were always looking forward to arriving at the Bismark Ledge, which after not seeing a ledge for days is like sex, Christmas and drinking Double Hop all at the same time.

Once we reached it we cracked open the beers and turned up the Ipod.....

After one beer we were absolutely wasted..........we drank three.

Moving up the Bismark pitch the next morning.

Neil gets excited about the prospect of placing this cam.......up his ass.

The pitches after the Bismark are a notch easier than the one's before it. However, they are still almost all C2 or C2+, but pyschologically you feel better as the top is now within reach, only 8 pitches away.

Neil entering his first vagina 3 pitches from the top, damn those C2 awkward pitches!!

The worst thing about Mescalito was the hauling. For some reason, Neil insisted that we bring all his personal shit like shampoo, conditioner, hair brush, dental floss, anal floss...the list goes on. All this stuff ended up weighing about 200kg, so we had to haul 2-1, which was a nightmare. The hauling would take an hour a pitch.

Then, after a massive mincing session lasting around 5 or 6 days, we arrived at the top, as usual, completely blagging our way up the wall, with no idea what we were doing, but somehow learning on the job and having a small amount of fun at the same time.

Then a few days later after a beer and getting psyched watching the Real Rock Film Tour, we decided that we should climb the Diamond in November so as to create the illusion of a winter acsent. Therefore, coming accross to the average girl as way more hard core and sexy......

Land Of the Free Calls Again

Im back of to the US on Wednesday, very excite!! First stop LA then off up to the Valley for some big wall suffering.
Tangerine Trip looks let to be first on the list a nice 16 pitch route on the right side of El cap. Then Mescolito if all goes to plan.

Weather as been below average in the lakes for the last 2 months so not a lot has been happening.

Ive also had a couple of injuries as well which hasn't helped matters. First was my finger...not sure what was wrong but that landed me a 10 day lay off. Then i got jumped by 3 Chav's which resulted in a bust shoulder and another 10 day lay off.
Last week tho i managed to take advantage of a 3 or 4 day minimal rain spell, and get up to Reecastle and do Breach of the Peace E7 6b (F7b+) i had flashed this on toprope a month or so ago. However with the bad weather and injuries it was left unfinished until now.

Its a quality little route on the far right of Reecastle, well protected and reasonably hard, altho Rob found a better hold than we originally used thus making it more like F7a+/7b probably.
Either way it was good to get it done just before i depart for the states.

Karma Kings

Raven Walthwaite isn't just a choss pile after all. Shit pictures to follow.
Quality little route even if it was covered in an inch of dirt. E7 6c??? ummm not sure, pritty much a solo but not that hard, saying that i did beat it into submission my toproping it first. Would be ok to flash or onsite if it was clean even better if it had chalk on it.....would also be scary...Sky hook at about 6 feet if your generous is the best piece of gear on the route
Had a git feel to it nice change of pace compared to the usual Lake's Trad.

Foster you would like this i recon. In a session no probs.
Not been much trad action of late apart from a jolly up at Bowfell on the weekend with Mike and Rob.
The route

Below: Rob chilling out at the top

Jolly nice day at Reecastle

Well its been amazing here in the Lakes of late, and the rest of the UK for that matter.

So after 4 days at work struggling to stave off suicide me and Mr Rob Lay decided a trip to reecastle was in order.
I put a line down Torture Board which i have tried a few times before once about 2 months ago but the top was soaking wet. Today was bone dry.
Managed to do it first go on top rope......dammm it we all know what that means.

So after Rob crushed finger flake finish, i figured out what the gear was on the bottom section, (small purple offset super light and #2 RP) and prepared to lead it.
Altho conditions really where not very good for pull on small holds i was really psyched for it.

Placing the gear is really strenuous so i climbed down after stuffing in the RP. (hold rope, pull down....bounce up and down....RP holds....jobs a gooden)
Then all that was left to do was blast it to the top clipping the peg on the way past, which is pritty hard as well.
Its a great route more like a long boulder problem and pritty damm hard. possible harder than Dawes?? but perhaps not as bold.

Sorry no Photos as it was only me and Rob there.

The whole of Reecastle is chalked at the moment and bit cooler in the morning and after noon due to its shade, super crag.

Dawes Ride a Shovel Head

A few days ago i managed to climb Dawes, ever since coming to the Lakes its been somthing i have always wanted to do. Every year for the past 2 or 3 i would look up at the main wall on Raven Crag wondering if this year i would be strong enough. Ever since climbing Trilogy the classic E5 to the left it has been a bit of a distant goal.

After a cheaky session of getting spanked (not litteraly) in Thrang Quarry me and Rob ragged it to Aside then back to Raven and quickly put an ab line down it, which turned out to be a major mission in itself.....just looking at it from the line got me excited the holds altho small looked positive, the pegs at the top look good the middle ones a little suspect. We left in the dark, a little rain still falling with high hopes of returning in the next day or two.

the next day we went back and got a top rope on it after working the out the moves i was able so do it clean on the first propper top rope go. Oh damm it no excusess now!

Two days later we where back with Mike and after one more go on top rope i lead it. The first few meters are on the pluto travers then you rock onto the headwall and pull on the first small holds. A few meters of easy climbing 5b maybe past a good peg lead to a good jug and a spike. A sling on the spike with a sneaky brass offset to hold it down and small cam provide some good portection for the next moves.

A few moves lead to a shocking peg that would shurrly rip, after you clip this you make some of the harder moves of the route, then clip two more goodish pegs from a small right hand. Two or three more moves bring you to below the roof, a good jug and two good pegs await you there. A final big pull (thats quite blind and scarry due to the fact that a fall there altho safe would mean climbing the whole route again) lands you at the top of the overhangs and more loveley jugs.

Great route really enjoyed it. Gear seemed to be ok, the middle 3 pegs where a bit suspect deff the bottom one was bad and i recon deffinatly would rip if you fell on it, which would be a bit exciting. Climbing was quite steady once you knew what you where doing. Would be wild to onsite it.

Grit Flick - Team Ambleside

Went to the Peak.....top roped End of the Affair (E8 6c).....was scared.... sun came out....great excuse not lead it......."ummmm its too sweaty up hear i tell George F" What a line tho!


Whatched Will take a whipper of some E4 round the corner, VERY EXCITE!!!!

We then hit up the Bath (matlock bath. i can say that cos i have been there) for some chips and a cheaky pint. yum yum

Then chauffeur Mr Rob Lay drove us up to Burbage South car park...which we found after driving past the bloody thing about 5 times.

Rob and Will slept in the car, i was truffed outside to enjoy a night on the Mondo, only to wake up at 2am to find my sleeping bad covered in a massive frost and then for it to slowly melt as the morning arrived...didn't really help the mould situation that my sleeping bag is already trying to cope with.
After a peanut butter sandwhich, and some shit coffee we headed up to the crag. To warm up i decided to do the knock (E4/5) which perhaps was a little keen as my hands became freezing straight away and apparently i missed a good hold at the the top. Anyway good route, slightly shocked to hear George F fell off at the top ..........must have hurt a bit...the mans a nutter.

After that Mr Lay was keen for a bit of Life Assurance action so i sent him on a beta recon mission and armed with that flashed it, Rob quickly followed.

last route of the day was Nosveratu E6 6b which came highly recomended by Foster, and rightly so. Amazing route one of the best route i have done in the peak (thats not saying much tho cos only done about 10) after jumping off the bottom a few times trying to work out the moves i did it to the top, pritty cool dyno at the top as well.

Good trip. here are few pics.

Luck.........a lack of

Ever had bad luck? is there such a thing? THERE Fing IS!

Right now im shit out of a thing called 'good luck'......however i feel a change comin along.......

"Keep the faith" thats what i said to a man as he held his dying friend....that didnt get him so far. so fuck the faith.

Crime pays......in years in prison, Maybe not then Eoin.

oh wait here it comes the luck...the luck train has entered the staion.