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Climbing Romancing The Stone E5 6a today at Wave Buttress, Glen Nevis. Photo: Steve Holmes May is often a month of sore feet for me. After a winter of climbing short and very steep things, when I start trad climbing my weak and unfit feet get kind of sore. I remember having this problem particularly badly a few years ago on my first visit to Cloggy one june after a month of climbing upside down in the Anvil. Kev Shields making good progress on his project. So today I joined Kev, Steve, Joe, Dot and Ewan at Wave Buttress for some slabby wall climbing and toe endurance training. Kev has been working away on a project up there which will be a nice E7 6c. He toproped it with apparent ease today and was looking strong on it. I had some laps on it too and enjoyed myself in the May sunshine. It has a very thin thumb press move with just enough gear to entice you on, followed by a sustained E6 6a to the top.   Joe and his shadow leading Edgehog E3 6a.  Afterwards I went round and did ...

Natalie Berry enjoying The Prozac Link, E4, Screaming Geo, Lewis. Natalie Berry has been a very successful youth competition and sport climber for several years. Now in her early twenties, with podium places and 8b  red points  under her belt, she is motivated to move into adventure climbing and has just started trad climbing. We had a few days booked in to head north and get some routes in, taking the Hot Aches Productions crew with us. Although I’ve known Natalie for many years from our days living in Glasgow, we’ve never climbed outdoors together until last year. These days we are colleagues on the Scarpa and Mountain Equipment teams too! The poor forecast told us to get the ferry to the Western Isles for the best possible chance of dry rock. With a wealth of mountain and sea cliffs of all different shapes and sizes, and plenty of new routes still to explore, Lewis and Harris are always still high on my list of places to hit when the warm weather arrives, despite the fact...

Some holds going on the climbing wall at last! After a month straight of 16 hour days on average, my climbing wall is finished. Well, apart from getting all the holds on. I must admit that after completing the build and various other jobs that needed doing at my place, I was a bit too broken to even climb on it. I just wanted to sleep! But now there are some holds going on it I’m getting more and more excited as it turns from a building project into what I had originally envisioned - a brilliant place to train. However, rather than jump straight on it, I opted to take advantage of the dry weather and head to the Outer Hebrides for a couple of days new routing and prospecting with Calum Muskett. We did a handful of new lines from E3 to E5 and I worked on this immaculate 40m wall of perfect Gneiss that has been on my projects to look at list for a few years. It was just as good as I hoped, if maybe a little hard. There were a couple of different ways you could go. The best, and hardest l...

We’ve just added four great new books and DVDs to the shop . The first three books are all major contributions to the literature on improving at climbing and I’d recommend getting hold of all three. Well done to the authors of all of them who have made a great contribution here and no doubt these books will be the first step to many hard ascents and goals realised in the future. Gimme Kraft: The Cafe Kraft gym (Kraft = strength btw) in Nurnberg, Germany has gained a great reputation for coaching a string of fantastic climbing talents over the past few years, most notably, Alex Megos who became the first climber to onsight 9a. Their coaches have put together a new book and DVD detailing the principles and exercises they have used to help their talented young climbers become super strong and fit beasts. So the book is very focused on physical strength and endurance training, both on and off the climbing wall. It provides a great and easy to follow manual for sharpening up weak areas in ...

I was hoping to keep posting some daily, or at least frequent climbing wall progress updates. But the chain 16+ hour days working on it kept me rather busy. It has come on a lot over the past week. All the ply is now on and tidied up with a mission of long hours and going for it with Scott Muir from Dream Climbing Walls . Now the structure is built, it’s up to me to get it all finished. Last night was a bit ridiculous, still washing sanding dust off it at 4am. But today the first coat of paint has been going on and it’s looking great. I took a couple of days off after Scott left and went to Glasgow. I managed to get my hands on some of Malcolm Smith’s new resin holds which are launching in a couple of weeks under the brand Stonesmith . They are pretty cool and I’ll post up some pics as soon as the paint dries on the wall and I can get them on. I’ve also been making some of my own holds from hardwood. I’ve never had the tools for working with wood before, but have accumulated some bette...

By day 2 of building my climbing wall, we’d moved the horizontal trusses up, giving four metres of height. Then it was time to start cutting and drilling the timber frame. By the end of day three, we’d build most of the frame and I could start to see what the wall space will be like for the first time. It looks soooo good! Scott from Dream Climbing Walls would be back on Monday, so I had the weekend off. I was feeling a bit fatigued after the building mission. But I was too excited and carried on over the weekend, doing more building and making holds out of hardwood. With any luck, within a week or a bit more, I'll be training on it and getting fit for the rock season. A nice break came in the form of taking Freida camping since the Lochaber monsoon has finally broken at last. We had a great wee adventure. I woke to the sound of heavy breathing outside the tent in the wee small hours. I peeked outside to see around 15 highland cows surrounding the tent. I’m very much looking forwar...

Day 1 of building my wall! Moving trusses, sawing, grinding, drilling and generally trying to keep up with Scott Muir from Dream Climbing Walls. So excited.