Filming the Wide and Wonderful - Part 2

Day 4 - Giggling Crack

So after ticking and soloing the 2 hardest offwidths in the country it was time to go up to Brimham for the thrutch fest of ‘Giggling Crack’ (given E6 6c). The plan was to solo the crack. I think Bancroft may have soloed this back in the day when he was drunk, which is funny. Anyway we thought it would be cool to have a go aswell…not drunk, obviously. Tom stepped up first and to say he walked it is an understatement, he absolutely cruised it into next year, I’m not joking he made it look no more then HVS. Amazing! After Tom’s ascent I felt more nervous because of how easy he made it look. In the end it was fine and thankfully I felt solid. Infact we both felt so solid on it we went back for round 2 and put in an extra solo lap for some training mileage and Paul to get a different angle with the camera. That deadbarring seems to be paying off!

Paul with his Camera near the top of Giggling

We decided to get Richie P on it, which was funny. He definitely couldn’t have put more effort in then he did as I’ve never seen The Patterson power scream, however on the top section downward thrutching did seem to out weigh the upward thruthing and unfortunately he didn’t quite make it. Next time Richie.

Below is a video one of my first attempts of Giggling back when i was 16/17ish. I guess this just showed to me how much i have improved on this type of climbing and how much of a complete punter I was, you can see my technique is so unbelievably shocking, (i can guarantee that i won't have been arm barring and whats my left foot doing?!...puntering). Its funny that i can do this route without a rope now and it feels about E3 5c rather then feeling the E6 6c sandbag it did back then.

Day 5 - Our Forte

So today I was really out for the laugh as Tom and Richie had decided to have ago on a new route I did a few months back at Stanton Moor Quarry. The line is a 15m splitter hand and finger crack which I named ‘Our Forte’ and gave E5 6b. it requires 2 sets of cams, some good core (even though it’s a slab) and good hand jamming endurance.

Tom put in a really good effort, getting past the beach section at the start, to the last move of the crux sequence and resorted to using some of the funniest traversing technique I’ve seen for a while. Round 2 is waiting for him.

After watching Tom, Richie decided to second. He also decided not to tape up and came out with the most mauled hands I’ve seen for a while. Anybody next up on the route should be fine as sequence of jams should be perfectly lined with blood.

Richie busting the moves, seconding 'Our Forte'

Day 6 - Slate Action

We Met up with Mark Dicken (Hosey B) today, which was cool. He was psyched to show us around a slate quarry on the other side of Llanberis where he had done some first ascents. Obvioulsy being another wide crack enthusiast his route we went to try was of the 7 inch variety. He called it Liquid Armbar. It was a good route to get on because there were minimal face holds so pure offwidth technique was needed the whole way up. The crack was a little wide for knee locks so a good dose of thigh locking was used which felt like a good bit of practice. Tom and I made the 2^nd and 3^rd ascent of this short little beauty. A technical classic I reckon.

We also made a rare repeat of a Stevie H offwidth. It wasn’t hard but I just thought it was funny because Tom got his knee stuck from getting overly keen with a knee lock.

Team Wide in the Pass

After the filming I had a real personal mission I had wanted to do for so long. Basically it involved Vivian Quarry and a headtorch and that’s all I can bare to say at the moment…

Man, a lot has happened over the last 9 days, so the next few days, which consists of:

A lot of squeezing on Colbalt Dream, bit of wide pony action and a massive training session

I will post up when I’ve written them.