Driving Northwards on Monday to try the Longhope route in a day with Ben Bransby. We are going in Convoy with the super youths Alex Mason and George Ullrich who are also going for a 1 day attempt on the Longhope via the Turnbull/Arran route. Gritstone extroardinaire Adam Long is also coming up for part of the trip keen for some sandstone action.

 


    
I’m looking forward to trying to climb the full height of St Johns Head with Ben. I’ve been involved with 2 trips with Bransby and Long both of which were very memorable. The first was 11 years ago when we put a free route up the Nose on Eigg in the Hebrides. Ben and Adam along with Robins had attempted it ground up on a previous visit
and got shut down with loose blocks and later a stomach bug. Adam had attempted to aid it and this also proved futile. We resorted to abseil and in the blankest looking bit one of the hexagonal columns came away leaving a jug exactly where it needed to be. I couldnt believe our luck. We had a look at it on a rope and tried it the day after. Ben had cruised up to the last move and was about to reach for the finishing jug when the pump set in and a monster fall onto the RPs in loose columns was tested. Adam Long got a picture about a second before the fall which was on the front cover of an OTE magazine. We both got back on it and led it. It was a fantastic feeling partly because it is a great knew route and partly climbing it with Ben. I wanted to call it Picking the Nose but the others were’nt into
it. It was 7 years later when with the same team we repeated the Vouie Petit on the Grand Capucin in the Alps, this
was one of the highlights of the last decade or so of climbing for me with a congratulatory email off Arnaud Petit who had set the climb being a cream topping to the trip.

 


    
Bransby is sounding super keen and watching him walk up an 8b the other
day and shakeout halfway through the slappy crux reminded me of how good Ben is,
as Pete Robins put it he’s quite often the‘best at the crag’. The person who
most obviously could climb 9th grade sport routes but hasn’t got round to it/been boring enough to put
in the days.  After winning the youth comps for years Ben came to the Lake Distict in 1999 and blew me away with
how well he was climbing.  After pathing many of the E6s and E7s of the Lakes he set off up Impact Day on Pavey
Ark totally onsight!  This route was given E9 6c at the time and he got within a whisker of it, with a hand on the scoop right at the top but with nothing left to hang it. An unbelievable effort to have the confidence to set off and he literally stunned everyone not least his belayer Pete Robins. Adam Hocking phoned to tell me what had occurred and I thought he was pulling my leg. Nobody has tried a climb graded E9 in the same manner since that I know of without knowing everything about the climb although the stuff that Honnold and Favresse are doing is probably near the mark! We are talking 14 years ago now so it was well ahead of its time.

 Ben missed out on the Yosemite trip last year due to his Labrynthitus, literally having to pull
out 2 days before so it will be great to get him up on what I believe to be one of the best trad routes in Britain, with pictures of Dave Macleod giving inspiration for a preliminary trip last year with Dan Varian and Adam Bailes. The plan is to drive up hopefully doing some routes like Dalriada and/or Romantic Reality (xtreme rock tick) on the way up. Get the ferries then brush and work the top pitch to make sure we’ve got a chance and on the 1st dry day set off from the sea level to the top. I think we’ll both be keen to lead the top pitch and if we go the same day
as George and Alex it should be a sociable affair. I intend to stash some nice beer on the summit to have something to look forward to and maybe help the energy levels for the crux top pitch as well as taking a good headtorch just in case we're going slow. Dan Vajzovic will be making a flying visit for an ascent of the Old Man of Hoy as a lead up to a potential big wall trip next year on the Naranja de Bulness. If the weather is good and all goes to plan maybe there will be time to try a knew route around Rora Head which is good quality sandstone and full of impressive lines. But if not we may enjoy travel scrabble and cards back at the hut. I’ll go with Dave Macleods philosophy of just going to give it the best effort we can. Climb more, tweet less.

  A good weekend in Pembroke left me wondering why I’d only been down once last
year.  Myself and Jim McCormac rushed down Friday night from Llanberis to make
it in time for drinks at St Govans Inn.  We started the Saturday on Pleasure Dome
 where I enjoyed belaying in both the sun and sea spray before heading into Stennis
 Ford to try Bubbly Bosun. It was a bit more serious
than I expected and placing a wire blind halfway up with it being the first
proper protection gave me flashbacks to doing some of the Pete Whillance climbs
in the Lakes as a teenager. I wondered what I was doing there for some minutes
before getting pumped clipping the 2 crap pegs beyond my wire and reversing the
dusty crux 3 or 4 times in the process, deciding wether to commit. Having
extended my wire to stop it flicking out I did eventually commit wishing I’d
worn my smeary boots rather than brand new ones but gaining a good hold, wire
and last tricky moves to the top. It’s amazing how pumped a 7a+/7b can get you
when climbing carefully and reversing some of the hardest moves because of anxiety 
about the unknown. The climb is marginally easier than Souls but with none of
its good protection, I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody less than 5.7 as the
gear would be very tricky to place, it has good climbing, shame it’s not got more gear.
    After doing a brilliant E3 corner in Huntsmans Leap called Strap Up we finished
the day on an E6 I’d been meaning to do for years called Fortune Cookie which
felt like a well protected E5 after the mornings route and gave great wall
climbing.

   
The same day a strong North Wales Team were in the middle of a great
holiday. Calum Muskett and Dan McManus were cruising up lots of hard climbs
doing three E6s on the Saturday having done similarly the day previous and doing 
 more hard climbs on the Sunday even managing to finish the holiday on Pat
Littlejohns stunning 2 pitch E6 on St Govans, Crimes of Passion. Worth keeping
an eye on what they get up to this summer. Alex Mason and Gemma Powell were also
on a mission with an ascent of Ghost Train and other tricky routes. The banter
in St Govans was great Saturday night even with Calum and Howard there. Calum
gave his best joke yet:


 “What did the egg say to the boiling water?”


“You’ll have to try your best to get me hard, I just got layed this morning”.

   On the Sunday we started in Stennis Ford on the Mysteries/Hysteria
combo before repeating a great route of Dave Pickfords called Nightflight which
accesses the Point Blank headwall from the left. About E4 to a great shakeout
jug and good cams before a techy crux on sidepulls with a runout it deserves to
become popular at the E7 grade being about 7b+ rather than the 8a of Point Blank
and considerably nicer than Bubbly Boson. We finished our Sunday with 2 quick
routes on Govans before the prerequisite tea and cream Scones at Ma Westons’ Old
World Café and the dreaded drive back leaving friends who were lucky enough to
be staying an extra day. 
    Thinking about Pembroke on the journey home I realised that I’ve done
more great routes there then on any other crag. With all the new guides coming
out I’ll be down there again soon. Big up to friends doing great deeds on
Wimberry and of course to Jordan who got the 3rd ascent of Rainshadow. Very envious.