Rant alert. (please log pile this Simon/Toby if it ends up turning into a shit-show). I wanted to reply publicly to some comments made about me on ukc to try and nail some of the utter bullshit flying around.
Jack Geldard – your news report is a bit misleading, compare these two news reports
http://news.v12outdoor.com/ and
http://dmmclimbing.com/newsArchive.asp?id=6&ngroup=2With yours:
http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=59615Si Panton and Ray managed easily enough to produce reports which just state the facts and included photos of the actual route. On the other you've written your report in a style which implies a lot, includes comments which leave things open to the readers interpretation, contains what seems to be attempts to stir up controversy about dry-tooling and even, for reasons best known only to yourself, makes a news item out of the fact that I disagreed, along with 98% of the rest of the climbing community, with dry-tooling on Millstone.
This route, as is the way of many new routes, is close enough to the bone as it is and it doesn’t need that sort of treatment... and I really can’t see how you or ukc would have treated Dave Macleod, Andy Turner, or any of the other well-known, sponsored winter climbers in the same way. What is your motivation for taking something which I’ve worked really hard for and have waited three years to come into condition and turning it into a sensationalist piece of journalism?
At the very least I’d like you to use a proper picture of the actual route you’re reporting, in its winter condition.
As for other stuff...
Some jokers (fawksey) on that crock of shit forum suggested I must climb hard winter routes to '
gain publicity' and '
satisfy a need to make news for a sponsor'.
In short fawksey, whoever you are, I can stretch to offering you 4 words. Kiss my fucking arse.
The long version:
I’m not sponsored. Me and Simon had a blast climbing this pitch and then we went home. I didn’t climb it because I wanted my name to appear on some crock-of-shit news website designed to sell advertising, nor did I climb it because I wanted to do a grade xyz. I’m not sponsored by anyone and I don’t have any pretensions of ever being sponsored by anyone unless Petzl feel like charitably replacing one of my Nomics which is completely fucked from bashing in too much turf gear and pegs (and because Dane still hasn’t delivered his promised hammer to me yet!). I didn’t get in touch with anybody about my ascent except Si Panton and I only got in touch with him because he’s a mate and he’s the only person who I’d normally send any news to because he’s helped me out massively with my NW Limestone guidebook project. Si’s news website is done by someone who loves the scene and reports grass-roots VDiffs as well as top end climbers in N.Wales and isn’t too overtly commercial though it’s obviously got its business links (just like the winter wiki which I’ve also put a massive amount of my own time into to try to make it a good resource, or kind of not too bad at least). Ray (dmm) phoned me up and was pretty insistent that I should let him write-up something on the dmm website because he said ‘it was significant’ – I told him that I haven’t got any connection with dmm and that I don’t see why there should be anything about me on their website, but Ray’s a friend and so I ended up agreeing to let him write it up and put it on his site. Baggy (who runs the winter blog) also contacted me to ask me for details and I told him I’d prefer to stick to the quiet approach so he didn’t put anything on his website. I almost wish now that I hadn’t agreed to let Ray write anything up... But at least Ray’s dmm report and Si’s V12 report demonstrate how these things should be written – in an unbiased style and just reporting the facts, without attempts to stir up controversy with links to Millstone dry-tooling and pictures of bolted M-climbing.
Note I didn’t send anything about our route to UKC and I never had any intention of sending anything to UKC because I generally find them to be an odious bunch of commercially-motivated wankers who don’t add anything to my own experience of the climbing life apart from hosting a rather brilliant logbook service. If it was down to me I’d have stuck with putting my route up on the winter wiki and Si Panton putting up a brief report on the V12 site. But it didn’t work out that way and thus I end up reading, with gritted teeth, posts by assholes and morons like fawksey about what my underlying motivation for climbing hard routes is.
The route - lets get this straight, the route is what it is, and that is a hard bit of technical pumpy climbing up a very compelling line, on a dirty and damp piece of overhanging rock in an unpopular part of the Llanberis Pass. It's about 20 metres of hard climbing and easier up the slabby top (it's longer than just the summer line of Mammoths because it carries on up the wet bit where Mammoths leaves the cliff) I could have called it 30 odd metres because it actually is to the belay but that would be misleading. It’s relatively worthless except to the wildlife that lives there and to obsessive’s like me who are prepared to spend months getting fit enough to be able to climb up said scruffy little cliff. I don’t recall myself claiming it’s the Orion Face or Anubis/Don’t Die of Ignorance/The Hurting or fucking Cerro Torre. I don’t recall Dave Macleod’s grade X 11 route, Cathedral, getting slagged off for only being 30 metres long so what’s the problem people?
The cliff sits at about 320 metres. Compare with Craig Ddu (Terminator 2nd ascent done the day previous to my route) which sits at 200 metres, Clogwyn y Grochan – which had mega-looking icefalls on it last week at 250 metres, and Craig Rhaeadr (Cascade, Central Icefall Direct etc) at 450metres. But using height in arguments of what constitutes a winter route is a red-herring, a bit like using strict calendar dates in an argument about what constitutes a winter ascent. I don’t think anyone would argue that this constitutes a winter line -
http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.html?id=162268 even though it’s at sea level.
In terms of the make-up of the route it reminds me a bit of this -
http://davemacleod.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-02-26T13%3A48%3A00Z&max-results=10 - another great-looking compelling piece of climbing.
To some of the ukc posters - Please don’t denigrate something you haven’t experienced but which others have worked hard to achieve, for the ill-informed reasoning that anyone who climbs a hard route must do it because they want to be well-known for sponsors, or because news of the ascent appears on some shithole of a news page and gets your fire up because the grade is too high for your liking. Some of the more idiotic amongst you seem to think I’m claiming to be the next Ueli Steck, I’m not and I’m a pretty shit climber if that makes any of you punters feel better about yourselves - F8a, E6, V9 and IX being my previous best efforts, so completely shit in the grand scheme, but I try hard and I enjoy the whole amateurishness of this sport I love.
Raphael Slawinski -
http://raphaelslawinski.blogspot.com/, a climber we’d all do well to try to emulate in style and outlook, hit it on the head when he wrote: ‘
I figure climbing is a pointless activity, so why do it if not for fun?’
Thanks a lot ukc for taking some of the fun out of my climbing. Chapeau. (And yeah I know
)
Rant over.
fawksey I apologise I'm sure you're a fine bloke in real life.
