Daddy jump!

Freida like to tire me out at the swings.

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Disco 2000

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Disco 2000, 8a+ Blåmman from Dave MacLeod on Vimeo . The video above takes in some of the great climbing on Disco 2000. The pitches went at 7b, 8a+, 7a, 8a+, 7c, 7c, 7b+, 7a, 7a, 6a, 6c, 6b+, 5+. It was while freeing Bongo Bar on the north face of Blåmman, 4 years ago that I got the spark of curiosity to try to free Disco 2000. Looking across at the maze of roofs to my right, I saw a bolt belay looking lonely in the middle of nowhere on a blank looking granite wall. Huge roofs above and below. I could picture Marten Blixt hand drilling them by headtorch in some blizzard during their winter aid ascent in 2000. After 4 days of sitting in the rain in our tent below the wall, Jacob and myself were desperate to make more progress in aiding up to that belay and finding out if the line was even possible to free. We continued aiding through the ‘night’ (the midnight sun period had just passed) and made it up to bolts. There were definitely enough holds on the crux pitch. However, the next r...
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The Ben Nevis North Face survey

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Ben Nevis - The Hidden Side (TEASER!) from Nevis Landscape Partnership on Vimeo . In August, we shot a film about a survey. It was the most fascinating fortnight I’ve had in a long time. The newly emerging Nevis Landscape Partnership has numerous impressive projects lined up for the Ben Nevis area, and this was one of them. A large team of climbers, botanists and geologists teamed up to explore the length and breadth of the north face over two weeks and try to get a better understanding of how the mountain was formed and which rare plants were hiding in the depths of the gullies as yet unrecorded. We were asked to film the project. I’m editing the story that emerged at the moment and it certainly wasn’t what I expected. Generally speaking, I find most aspects of science interesting. But I have never spent any time learning about botany before and have only limited knowledge of geology. One overarching theme I wanted to explore while filming was what made these scientists tick. Clim...
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Calum, Ben, Ally and myself have just arrived in El Chalten, Patagonia. We are here with the plan to climb on Cerro Torre, if we can. Any of you who have been to Patagonia already know that any firm plans here are, shall we say, subject to some adjustment. We want to climb rock, so we will have to wait until the liberal coating of snow and ice currently covering Cerro Torre melts back a bit.  I’ve never been here before. Back in 2001 I was considering it when my friend Alan Mullin was going there. He pretty much put me off it with tales of two consecutive two-month trips which consisted of sitting in the hut waiting for a weather window that never came. But then, one might be lucky, and Patagonia is somewhere you really ought to visit at some point. So since Calum and I both had eyed up the same projects here, I thought now was as good a time as any. I was fully braced for a month of editing my book and getting fat, and on arrival in El Chalten, the forecast duly delivered. No weat...
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