Archive for 'Climbing' Category

Is mountain climbing a game?

Norman Geras has written a series of posts about what constitutes a game – arising from his reading of a book by Suits. His latest post mentions mountain climbing as an example of a game, that might not be standardly referred to as a game. One of the reasons is that a set of rules [...]

Sir Edmund Hillary

The passing of one of the first two men to climb Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, is marked by a obituary in The Guardian by a mountaineering writer I have long-admired Jim Perrin. His conclusion: Ed Hillary will certainly not be remembered as having been among the front rank of technical innovators in the sport of [...]

Jammin’

The above picture is of one of my friends, Andy Blowers, soloing a short rock climb of 6m called Dog-leg Crack. It is not graded as a particularly hard route, yet it would stop most novice climbers – reducing them to trembling piles of physically exhausted jelly. Dog-leg crack is the quintessential Peak District jamming [...]

Mountain

The BBC’s Mountain Programme is going to Snowdonian tonight at 9pm. I hear Griff Rhys Jones is going to do Crib Goch and some slate climbing. The last climb I did on slate, many years ago it has to be said, was Goose Creatures. It has tiny holds. At that point I could do two [...]

Rigid plans are not good

I once spent a frustratingly long time sat in a tent in Zermatt on a very limited budget, wishing that the weather would change so that conditions would be right to climb the Matterhorn. The only entertainment was reading a book about the Russian Revolution and drinking the occasionally exorbitantly priced can of Heineken Lager. [...]

Postcards from the edge

The most dangerous tourist route in the world. (via PG)

The pleasure of risk

The pleasure of risk is in the control needed to ride it with assurance so that what appears dangerous to the outsider is, to the participant, simply a matter of intelligence, skill, intuition, coordination – in a word, experience. Climbing, in particular, is a paradoxically intellectual pastime, but with this difference: you have to think [...]

I hope I’m old before I die

When I still used to rock-climb, as opposed to more sedate hill-walking, I did some higher graded climbs (about E1 to E3 – Here’s the UK grading system compared to foreign grading). However, my confident lead climbing was VS (Very Severe) to HVS (Hard Very Severe), which is about 5.7 in American money. The Bear’s [...]

Flickrlanche

The Scotland Avalanche Information Service run a Flickr account. They have some good advice.