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Once again I find myself struggling to find balance... You might remember a few months ago I had a bit of a burnout. I’d been training for 6 months solid and although things had been going really well, I came to a bit of a point where I noticed my energy levels were low, motivation dwindled and I started […]

In my last blog I spoke about one of the biggest failures in a climber’s performance, the ability to “try hard”. Ironically, yesterday I found myself unable to push myself to the peak of my abilities, and having only just been writing about it a day earlier; I had to ask myself, why? It was a very common scenario I found […]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about climbing… that shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you! But more specifically, I’ve been thinking about what the differences between climbers who tend to have higher success rates (or reach their potential more) versus climbers who tend to struggle to make successful ascents (sending/clipchains/topout/etc…) We all know that climbing is more […]

“What type of climbing are you into” asked Franco I was at Sandy Crag in Northumberland; it was my first time there. I was with my girlfriend Marie and the local Franco Cookson who having recently moved to Newcastle has been making the most of it by putting to bed many of Northumberland’s last great lines. […]

As you all know, I'm a bit of a gear freak! So you can imagine how I got when planning our attempt at the 5 Towers (LINK HERE to the blog). I wanted to give us the best chance of success, which would mean making sure we had our skills down as well as having the right gear […]

It’s impossible not to be stopped dead in your tracks by the pure awesomeness of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. When I first gazed upon them, I can remember feeling the sick uneasiness of their immense size – the idea that I would be trying to climb up one of them seemed a crazy impossibility. […]

The Alpine trilogy are three of the European Alps’ hardest multipitches; each of them put up by a legend of the era. “Silbergeier” (8b/+, 7c+, 8a+, 7a+, 8b+, 7c+) – Beat Kammerlander “End of Silence” (7a+, 6c+, 6a+, 6a, 7b+, 7c+, 7b, 8b, 8b+, 7c+, 7a+) – Thomas Huber “Des Kaiser Neue Kleider” (6c, 7c+, 8a+, 7b+, 8b+, […]

Climbing began in the mountains; but over the years as climbers strived to better themselves, improve and explore new styles, climbing itself evolved, changed and became an all encompassing term for so many things. Today, climbing is not just on mountains; it’s at crags and on boulders. It’s on rock, ice and plastic. It’s even […]

Gear Geekery… Whether you’re boulderers arguing about whether you like your Friction Labs chalk chunky or dusty; Trad climbers battling over whether Totems are superior to the new BD Camalot Lights; or Big Wallers painstakingly weighing the entirety of their haul bag to lose every excess gram possible; we’re all SUPER GEEKS when it comes to […]

I’ve not written a blog in quite some time… Why? Emmmmm… because I’ll admit; it’s hard balancing training, work and travel; then writing about it all at the end of the day (which is again… more work). Writing has always been something that has come fairly natural to me. I’m not really sure if I’m conventionally “good” […]