Climbing

Non running entry!

Apparently our gym membership this month gives us free access to Ratho, so perhaps this weekend we'll pop along. Since this would be the first time in about a year I've been to a climbing wall (not been climbing on rock either), I was surprised to learn that also this weekend there is something worth watching on TV. BBC Scotland have a live climbing programme, The Great Climb; four pairs of climbers doing routes in the Cairngorms. Dave Macleod will be climbing a new route, whether obscenely hard or merely ridiculously hard, and the other pairs will no doubt be fun to watch too.

Apparently they're pioneering new techniques to film this in HD, I wonder if it will make as much of an impact as the televised climbing on the Old Man of Hoy some years ago. Hopefully the weather holds up for them.... 13:00-19:00 in Scotland, a shorter programme at 17:30 south of the border.

Rather damp out right now, so I shall think back and tell you about my weekend. For it was not at all damp. The weather was warm and sunny, like a last burst of Summer as we slide into Autumn.

This was rather fortunate for my plans. Firstly I went with dearg up to meet my mother and visit my grandmother in her new home. We had lunch and a walk about, and then my mum dropped dearg and I off at a little climbing venue not terribly far from Auchterarder. Benny Beg is a small bolted crag with low-grade climbing, which nevertheless as I have little experience was hard enough. I led three or four routes, and toproped one, and generally got the hang of things. Friendly folk and sunny climbing in the evening, will certainly return.

After enjoying mum's cooking on Saturday night, I eventually coaxed myself out for a run on Sunday morning, from Blackford up (up up) into the Ochils, around the Glendevon reservoirs and down into Glen Eagles. A nice long run, which convinced me of the need to purchase a hydration system—I now have a CamelBak waist pack thingy.

Okay, so more than a week. Making a commitment is scary. Doing so here means I'm serious about it; I don't want to change my mind or break my word. I shall be specific, as that is more useful, easier to motivate and stick to.

I shall run three times per week. At a minimum two of these will be 4km (as I often do on the way to the gym), and one shall be ~6km; ideally the shorter two would be about that, and longer run of over 10km.

Now the excuses. Doing something active at the weekend is not a get-out. A day's hillwalking should not interfere, but two or more days or a mammoth outing can. In that case a couple of runs (even on a treadmill) should suffice. On the other hand, I don't want to injure myself... sore or tired muscles can just suffer, but knees, ankles and shins cannot.

I've kept it up for the last few weeks, so we'll see how it goes. I ran 11k rather quicker than I expected last week, so it will be interesting to see how I go with longer distances once I'm used to running regularly. I have a disturbing ambition to run a marathon one day... It's probably not that crazy an idea (other than the inherent craziness)—if I run regularly and do some shorter events, and trained for it, that is. Okay, crazy.

Okay, some other commitments and crazy goals lest I forget other things I enjoy.

• A proper hillwalk at least once a month this year. A couple of the big hill days I have in mind (Bridge of Orchy hills, the Mamores, some 2-day insanity around Ben Starav, to name but three).
• Get to the climbing wall regularly.
• Actually get out climbing locally, be solidly leading easy stuff by the end of the summer
• Get out on the bike, to the Pentlands and so forth. Go somewhere on the train at some point.
• Finish PhD!

Incidentally, Spring is here. Pleasently sunny, t-shirt weather again today.

This year I have joined the Edinburgh University Mountaineering Club. A couple of weeks ago folks trooped off to Aberdour quarry for some climbing, and I went along. It's a... quaint place; the routes are named after the graffiti they are nearest, and apparently one of the main dangers are the local youth throwing stones down at you. Anyway, a few topropes were set up, and I climbed my first actual rock route (a VS and a couple of Severes, these were only like 10m or so).

Last weekend there was a trip to the Lake District, and on Friday night I headed off down on the bus (to Borrowdale) to go on a rock climbing course. We arrived some time nearing midnight, and set up tents under torchlight (in fact surprisingly easy after having set up that tent in a gale in the rain). Unfortunately it then proceeded to rain throughout the night, and indeed into the morning.

It is hard to persuade oneself to get up out of a nice warm dry tent into the rain, so at the last possible moment I got up, and we met the climbing instructors. Since it was raining, we took the bus down to Keswick climbing wall, and did some basic stuff in there. I did pick up one or two things I didn't know... the weather brightened into the afternoon, and we went off to a crag to do a bit of gear placement and anchor construction (setting up equalised anchors to belay from). Unfortunately I am still crap at finding useful gear placements, so some practise here is definately required.

After walking down a dark road in the rain for longer than we expected to find a pub of which we were marginally aware of the existence, a couple of us caught up with the group for a few nice pints. A significantly colder and more restless night ensued, after which we walked down the valley to Sheperd's crag for the second day.

And my first lead! Well, okay, it sort of takes the sting out of leading when there is an instructor soloing around, keeping an eye out and critiquing gear placements and anchors, but it was a lot of fun. There were quite a few of us leading at once (so sitting around chatting on the belay ledge), but it all seemed to work out. While the other couple of pairs were leading there was a top rope set up on a more interesting route, a VS going up a crack by a fairly blank greasy slab (and it was raining at this point), which was good also.

After a brief instruction in abseiling, we sat at the excellent little farm cafe to wait for the bus home. Tea and scones (and we had been there the previous day too, nice toasties). Very soon (again via Lockerbie for food) I was back home wondering when I can go climb next. And start to build my rack of gear...

It's snowing! In Edinburgh. Pretty.

(Apologies for length.)

So, snow. Wind the clock back a few weeks, and I was sitting here wondering if there'd be a decent amount of snow for my Winter Mountaineering course, since there wasn't much around, even in the Cairngorms. Turns out that wasn't a problem. It went cold the week before I went, followed by a windy weekend with big snow dumps, road closures on the Sunday, and so on.

So, I arrived in Aviemore on Friday night, and checked into my accommodation, the Carn Mhor, a B&B which is to be recommended. Saturday, a huge fried breakfast (which fortunately was a constant throughout the week, keep the energy up), then picked up and off to the hill. The Car park for the Cairngorm ski area provides handy access for the hill, so we were off there, got our stuff together (ice axe and crampons, which I purchased), and off up the hill. The rest of the day was mainly taken up by ice axe arrests, sliding down a slope in various positions and then stopping yourself with your axe. And finding out how difficult it is to put crampons on with numb fingers; the weather was quite cold and windy, even off the top.

Sunday the road up to the high car park was closed, although it was perfectly possible to drive up it seems they shut it for the saftey of all the midterm-weekenders. So after a bit of a walk we went off to dig snow shelters. Which was interesting. After this, we went up the hill a bit more, partly for some step-cutting practice. Also went over a small ridge and found a very interesting snow formation (see this page, which has a photo of this as well as our group on various days). And found out how tricky it is to climb up through a cornice of unconsolidated snow—it just sort of falls away, an inch upwards and two foot forwards. And here's another tip—sometimes it's easier and quicker to crawl on deep fresh snow than to wade through it.

Okay, Saturday and Sunday were with some other people who were just there for the weekend. Although a few people did come out to dinner during the week as well, which was nice. Never had to eat alone. Anyway, Monday was basically ropework practice, practically in Ron's (the instructor's) back garden, including digging snow belays.

On Tuesday we were off to the hill again, this time to Coire an t'Sneachda. This was a stunning day, the weather was absolutely beautiful. The walk in was pleasent with a relatively small amount of clothing in the blazing sunshine, could have been in the alps. And the views, with ice and snow-plastered rocks, and distant hills...

Some valuable practice holding falls, good for confidence, and then up a short gully, with Ron taking us up on the rope. Really enjoyed this, particularly the harder rocky step. Then unroped and went down an easier slope, to walk off with the last light of the day.

Wednesday was "put it all together day". Unfortunately one person didn't feel up to the climb, but two of us went up Jacob's Ladder, an easy grade I gully. Was good fun; we were basically doing this on our own steam, belaying each other up, with the instructor climbing up alongside telling us how to set up anchors and so on. Slightly more realistic weather, the wind really does funnel into a gully, suddenly blasting your face with icy pellets and then dying down to nothing.

All in all a great week, and I'm sure I've forgotton lots. Glad I did it. On thursday I went off on my own to do Ben MacDui rather than getting an earlier train home, which given the conditions was a test of navigational skills (I passed). Completely alien landscape when all you can see, up or down, is white. Also tricky to walk in a straight line.

Anyway, good week, learnt lots, and will be out in the snow as soon as I can. Have a look at the winternet page for some pictures, my camera gave up the ghost in the cold.

Well, going away on Friday. Not much happening.

Not been for a walk recently, but getting a decent amount of exercise. Improving at climbing wall, now doing (some) 6a+. Not that it means anything whatsoever.

May have to aquire some music in the not too distant future, seem to be more in the mood to listen to music these days.

Okay, so I don't spend all my time watching films and reading books, despite the preponderance of such in this weblog. I just spend most of my time doing things I can't talk about here. Top secret! Well, no, just generally incomprehensible or boring.

Research-wise, I'm alternating between getting not much done and being productive and excited about my ideas, in quanta of about a week. And everything else seems to go along with this; when I'm doing good research, I'm reading lots of books and watching movies, and when I'm not I'm... not. Of course this correlation says nothing about the direction of the causality. Perhaps it's something else, I don't know.

Anyway, just now I'm on a research upswing, and I'd like to be able to write about it here, but it wouldn't really mean anything. Well, at the moment I'm in a state of knowing how much I don't know, but even before this current foray into the unknown I could barely describe what I'm doing to the people in my department, never mind a general computer science community or the world.

In other news. Particularly enjoying climbing wall recently. On Sunday I was having fun with overhangs. I finally have enough strength to make some progress there...

Apparently my comment system is broken, and I can't edit my last entry. Bah. Perhaps I shouldn't write code. Okay, until I fix that, note that Kontroll featured a bear girl, it was not a bunny suit.

Okay, so I came back last week, after not walking very far or climbing hills. Took a train north, the world was of the wet, misty, boggy variety, and after spending a few hours getting soaked trudging through boggy moorland with an increasingly heavy feeling pack I decided not to bother. Walked to the now "usual" youth hostel over a decent enough section of the west highland way (would like to do that some time, if it wasn't too busy), and in due course came home. Some time remind me to go away when the weather's nice...

Seem to be getting a bit better at the climbing wall; unfortunately dearg's not been having such luck there. Wanna get outside sometime.

Started going to the indoor climbing wall, Alien Rock, regularly with dearg. Much fun, but makes me realise how much fitter/stronger I would like to be.

I was going to call this entry something involving "up tiddly-up up" or the like, and I wondered if the snippet I recalled from Those magnificent men and their flying machines was correct. A quick google, and I seem to be the top hit from a previous entry. I couldn't seem to find any substantiation that that film actually contained anything along the lines of "they go up-tiddly-up-up". Did I make this up (along with a number of other people)? (In-)Substantiation requested, if someone can.