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Here is the Project Fear film about my new route on Cima Ovest last September. Truth be told, I was incredibly lucky that myself and Alan Cassidy were able to get the route climbed given the very poor weather in the Dolomites last season. Of course, to a certain extent we made our own luck as you see in the film, my cleaning and preparing the route through the poor weather rather than just sitting waiting. However, the two sunny days we had were a crucial ingredient and I was desperate to make them count. I’m sure you’ll understand that my favourite part of the film are the parts playing with Freida at home in Glen Nevis. But this it is also a great memory of the adventures on that massive roof.  It gets me psyched for summer's big wall expedition will be rather bigger in scale. A special thanks to Mountain Equipment for supporting our trip and the film idea, Karl for exploring the roof with me and dodging the blocks I knocked off, Alan for coming with me on the route and the Cold...

Zeki Basan from Nevis Landscape Partnership on Vimeo . Here is a short film we made about Zeki Basan, a great young character from over in the Gorms. Zeki won the Scottish youth award for mountain culture at this year’s Fort William Mountain Festival. He is the inaugural winner of the youth award and joins a formidable list of winners of the 'adult' award; Hamish McInnes, Jimmy Marshall, Richard Else, Myrtle Simpson, Ian 'Spike' Sykes, Andy Nisbet and Robin Campbell. We also made the film about Robin Campbell for his award this year and I'll post that up as soon as it's live. I’m certainly used to meeting enthusiastic and smart young folk involved in all manner of mountain sports, but it was great to learn more about Zeki’s passion for bushcraft when we travelled over to speak to him for this film.

Post surgery day 2. Anaesthetic drip disconnected, time for the training to start again. I’ve been getting really motivated for training lately. Which is just as well, because I’m about to have a 6 week solid block of it during the spring. The reason? Ankle surgery.  Yes, more ankle surgery. Readers of this blog will know that I’ve had surgery on both ankles in the past two years. In both cases this was for damage to the edge of the cartilage surface of my ankle joints. By far the worst injury was happened in this accident when I was lowered off the end of a rope. The microfracture surgery I had did work to an extent, but the nature of doing tons of walking on mountains has meant the lesion, although small, has not remained stable and has got a little worse. Knowing what I know now, I also suspect that some of the advice I was given for the post operative period was, well, sub standard and could well have contributed to it not working as well as it could have. So I’ve tried to put ...

On Pink Panther VI,6 Ben Nevis. Photo: Paul Diffley/Hot Aches The day after doing Tripod I was heading back up the Allt a Mhuillin with Natalie Berry, intent on making the most of the fine ice conditions. We knew most folk would head for the Indicator Wall area, so instead we headed to the much quieter but almost as high up area above Raeburn’s Easy Route, just right of the Great Tower. We could see that the steep ice pillar of Pink Panther was looking fat and slogged up the neve to a spacious belay spot in the cave behind the icicle. Meanwhile, Paul Diffley abseiled in from the top to film us. The weather was beautiful and it was quite social chatting to Paul as I led up the crux pitch, which was actually quite easy in the current conditions. Natalie led through up the easy snow to the top and we were rewarded with lovely sunshine and views on top. This was Ben Nevis at its most friendly and it was a nice relaxing day in contrast to the challenging new routing the day before.  Tha...

Leading the steep crack at the start of Tripod VII,7 on Ben Nevis. Photo Helen Rennard. The walls on the left side of Tower Ridge is a part of Ben Nevis I’ve visited quite a lot over the years and really like. Obviously, my interest in this area started with Echo Wall some years ago. Since then I’ve done a couple of winter routes around here too. In winter it can provide good shelter from a westerly storm and also remains in condition for mixed quite late in the season. The other week Helen and myself climbed Red Dragon on the wall right of Echo Wall. On Saturday we needed to go higher to find good conditions and walked up to the wall up and left of Echo Wall, near Tower Scoop. The other year we did a good new VII,8 here which I called Angry Chair. The name came from a huge detached block which I sat and belayed on, looking for a way to finish the route with overhanging blankness above. It reminded me of the song Angry Chair by a band I grew up listening to called Alice in Chains. The ...

Never tire of this outlook back towards the Glenfinnan hills Today I had a great day in the Arisaig Cave which was completely bone dry despite the 20cm of rain which has doused Lochaber over the past three days. What a great venue it is. Last year I didn’t do much bouldering really, I spent most of the time on Dolomitic big walls and lately I’ve been getting back into mixed climbing a bit. Today was a nice reminder just how great it is - so relaxing to head off late morning and feel warm March sunshine in your face as you stroll across a deserted beach to the cave to work on a nice project. I haven’t been to the cave for not far off two years. Last time I was there I managed, just, to do all the moves on the last remaining big straight up project. It might be as hard as 8B and a great piece of technical and burly climbing up a big diagonal flange. Today I re-worked it and did the moves again. Crucially, I got a good sequence dialled for the upper half of the problem and linked the last...

Starting up pitch 3 of High Pressure Crack VIII,9 Ben Nevis. Photo: Masa Sakano Returning from a trip to Manchester to speak and coach climbers at the climbing centre, it seemed there were not many breaks in the constant snow storms. But a ridge of high pressure was forecast for Wednesday and Masa Sakano agreed to venture onto the Ben with me. The avalanche forecast was ‘high’ and we’d heard of avalanche incidents the day before. So I thought of an unclimbed overhanging wall on the Douglas Boulder, which can be accessed safely in avalanche conditions so long as you make the descent by abseil. Last year myself, Helen Rennard and Harry Holmes repeated Nick Bullock and Matt Heliker’s VII,8 ‘Rutless’ here. The crux pitch climbs the first few metres of a soaring overhanging crack and headwall, but quickly scuttles left along ledges and escapes via a corner. Something going right up that wall would be mega! Approaching the hardest climbing on pitch 3, and starting to feel the pump. Photo: M...

Approaching the crux on the first ascent of Red Dragon VIII,9, Ben Nevis. Photo: Helen Rennard Helen Rennard and myself were getting a bit fed up with waiting for a break in the stormy weather on the mountains, so we went up Ben Nevis on a blustery morning. There had been a very brief overnight thaw which we hoped would firm up the dangerous approach slopes. But as it got light it appeared to have stripped our possible new route objective. I also fell through a snowbridge on the path and went up to my knees in water. So we sat in the CIC hut for a while drying my boots and figuring out where to go.   We opted for the steep walls right of Echo Wall which have few routes and we thought it might be relatively sheltered from the heavy snow shower rattling in from the west. On the way up Observatory Gully we passed a string of goggled-up climbers descending from their route objectives in the blizzard. They optimistically wished us luck as we hid in our hoods and pressed on. Helen and my...