The grit was made famous worldwide after the movie “Hard Grit” was released in the late 90’s. Whenever I travel abroad, the moment it becomes obvious that I’m British (which is generally instant), I am queried about grit… Almost as if this island we live on is just one massive gritstone blob bobbing in and out of the sea :P Well I have a confession to make folks, I’ve not really spent much time on the grit… In fact my time on the grit can be narrowed down to half a day at Stanage bouldering and another spent top roping... Continue reading

  A lot of people have been confronting me recently on my apparent change of focus to trad climbing. For those of you who don’t know, I would probably be regarded as a “sport climber” if you were to file me into a category… and I definitely wouldn’t disagree here as sport climbing is what I have primarily done up until recently. The real answer to the question, “why the sudden change?” is actually not that difficult to comprehend. In fact the route to this question stems from the reasons why I started climbing in the first place… Challenge! Me climbing... Continue reading

After all the excitement of having climbed “Bellavista”, Logan and I gave ourselves a little bit of a rest from the alpine environment and headed instead for some apparently, more relaxing sport climbing adventures in Zillertal, Austria. The reason I say “apparently” is because relaxing was not the best way to put our time in Zillertal… It was always raining when we were there, the camping situation wasn’t the best and Logan was having a bit of a hard time on the tough granite (Schist) style. We just felt dirty the whole time, something I have gotten quite used to on... Continue reading

Bellavista   Well… Long story short… Logan and I were successful in our attempt to free one of Europes toughest multi-pitch challenges and indeed one of the world’s most famous, hard, alpine style rock climbs. But the short story long is a far better tale to tell, so that is what I will tell now… View from our tent ;)We travelled back to the Dolomites after a break in the bad weather would allow us to have a bit more time working the crux pitch. We had only had 2 days on the route so far and it had already seemed... Continue reading

So I’ve been in mainland Europe for a week now… I am out here climbing with a good friend of mine, Logan Barber (Australia). I first met Logan on a climbing trip to Ceuse back in 07 and since then we have been on many a good climbing trip together and share a lot of similar goals. At Christmas time I spoke to Logan about a trip to the Dolomites, and thus the seed was planted… Logan was keen for it immediately and we spoke more about the plan when I was in Australia. Before I knew it I was flying... Continue reading