My summer plans

[chroma]

A local sport climb rated at 8b+ font 7c...
One of the hardest in Europe, (The hardest is an alternate route on the same climb)
Been running 5 miles a day minimum, pressups till fail, pullups till fail, crunches till fail and at least an hour of aerobics and stretch/flexiblity training.


A lot of upside down work, need to be able to do 1finger pullups on a single arm, at least 100 without breaking a sweat, i can do 12 i can dangle from a single finger all day though


Rope up to the belay station, the rock face at the top is horizontal to the ground, its the ceiling you see in the 1st diagram.

[chroma]

Double post cause it was throwing up too many images errors when ive only tried to post 4...


route layout, a lot of pinchy grip work and ive not yet figured out what to do with my feet... ive got a few of the moves required down but its my leg placements that let me down by the exhaustion point.


The split at the top, voodoo is a 8b route and happiness is a 8b+ i cant fathom which is which as i didnt have abseil gear with me to rope down and have a gander and had my dog in tow. The routes may be reversed. dunno.

As of feb1t i was 16st 2lb, as of today im down to 12st 4lb of lean muscle instead of my old flab
Even still i doubt i'll hit my target of gaining another 2st of upper body (predominantly lats and biceps to pull me into the ceiling) and get it climbed by August.
Wont be for lack of trying though!

[evs]

Take it the lifts are down again.
good luck m8, from one who thinks fishing is too strenuous.

[Meat-Head]

AWESOME remember to log on to DK mid way to up date this thread


cool, thought "Team Meat" plans for summer were OTT.

Hoping to see some members of DK for real.

Going to cost a fortune in fuel

[patkins]

Best of luck chroma.
I've got the head staggers just looking at the pics.

[steppenwolf]

Nice one mate. Extraordinary...

[Lainie]

@chroma yer mad

are you raising money for charity?
id sponsor you

[opsmonkey]

Mate that's hardcore.. Good luck

[chroma]

@chroma yer mad

are you raising money for charity?
id sponsor you

Nah no charities, doing it for myself, ive been looking at the same climb for just over 5 years and its always been "I'll do it next year."
I have the hardest traditional route close by too that im wanting to tackle, that will be next year (E11 7c) need to drop more weight for that and come in well under weight (10st or so of raw sinew and muscle)

The heaviest climbing ive ever really tackled has been HVS stuff.

Climbs are graded and it gets a little complicated I just realised im throwing acronyms letters and numbers around and it has very little meaning.
Possibly an explanation of the technical jargon?

There are 4 main types of climbing, Traditional, Sport, Winter and Bouldering.

Traditional means you climb up a bare wall and protect yourself by inserting gear into the face as you go, little nuts on wire, mechanical camming devices, hexes and seldom pitons hammered into cracks (this is frowned upon as it causes irreparable damage.) your buddy on the ground whos feeding out rope to you and who acts as a counterbalance in case you fall will follow up after you and remove all your gear whilst you take in rope at the top in case he falls.

Sport is already pre protected, that is to say someone's been and drilled/hammered/glued bolts to the wall, instead of sticking on technical traditional gear you simply clip in a quick-draw to the bolt then clip your rope into the other end (a quickdraw is just 2 caribiners stuck together with a piece of sling)
there's an offshoot to this called "Via Ferrata" which is just climbing with a short shock absorbing sling instead of a rope and clipping into ladders, chains and bolts in a wall, not all that popular in the UK.

Winter is the same as traditional with the inclusion of using spikes on your toes called crampons and axes in your hands to pick into the ice/ rock holds and climb that way. theres also more specialised gear because conventional trad protection is unlikely to work in most situations.
there's an offshoot called "dry tooling" which is just ice climbing without the ice. its more practice than serious climbing, like bouldering for winter.

Bouldering is like training where you find a boulder and practice crux moves, no gear except shoes, a chalk bag and a crash-mat are used, you fall off a LOT on boulders but its better falling 10feet onto a mat or someone spotting than 300feet up a wall


Traditional routes are graded on exposure from MOD to E11.
Sport is graded by numbers from 1 to 9b+

Mod - Moderate - sport 1
Diff - Difficult - sport 2
VDiff -Very Difficult - sport 3
HVDiff - Hard Very Difficult - sport 4
Sev - Severe - sport 4+
Up till this point there's no real challenge
They're not technically classed as climbing routes more like a hard scramble up a steep incline (think of an incline like a / slope), only dangerous without using rope. anything under a 70degree incline generally falls into one of these categories.

Real climbing where gear becomes essential starts at sport routes of 5 or the US 5.9 grade, these are mostly vertical with some incline work, a lot of hand holds and are ideal for beginners to really push themselves.
They're graded:
HS - Hard Severe - Sport 5
VS - Very Severe - Sport 5+ to 6
HVS - Hard Very Severe - Sport 6a to 6a+

At HVS inverted work starts to creep into cruxes (more on cruxes later) think of an inverted face as a \ where its not so much a slope but trying to get up a ladder backwards.
At this point handholds and footholds become less like jugs that you can grab and more little ribbons of rock that you need to pinch with finger tips to keep yourself stuck to the face.
Sport wise they start to involve subtle gradations by including letters a- being easy, a being harder a+ harder still, b- even harder all the way to c+

It then moves on to the E1 to E3 (Extremely Severe) grades, these are exposed, with limited protection, few handholds difficult cruxes and generally reserved for people who've been climbing for years at a high level of fitness and technique.
Doable with a lot of training and practice, this is where most climbers careers taper off. (6b- to 7a in Sport terminology)

After that they get to E4 to E11, E11 being neigh on impossible, think about trying to climb up a sheet of glass held out ant an inverted angle with very little in the way of protection (possibly only one dodgy placement on the entire route, and with non existent handholds and footholds, you fall and you get seriously hurt) (7a+ to 9b+ in sport routes)
Theres no E12 or 9c as of YET, but as gear improves harder challenges will get climbed, an E11 for instance 10 years ago would have been impossible but de to technological advances in rubber compounds and improvements in protection they're possible today.


Cruxes,
These use the French "Font" graded system, used to describe the hardest part of the climb, the terminology comes from Bouldering these go from 5a up to 9a and work the same way sport routes do, 5a being easier than a 5a+ or 5b- etc.

Think about a crux like a technical move, you climb up a wall and notice that your next handhold is a foot and a half out of reach, if its a nice big jug (a hold you can get a full handed grip of like someone's bottom lip) you can transfer your weight into a crouch and spring off the wall jumping up for a couple of feet and slap the hold using both hands to pull you up to the next part of the climb. this would equate to a 5a situation.
6a or so would be one handed.
7a would be no jug at all but there might be a nice crack or pinch hold.
8b might be no hand holds at all but a place to be able to twist your body round and hook an ankle or toe into etc and maybe or a hole that's able to accept one or two fingers and you can progress from a single finger pullup.
The higher the numbers the more demands on stamina, psychological impact and technical ability there will be.

The 5a of jumping to a 2 handed jug is fine but if its 300 feet up it increases the psychological impact, your stamina is already low from climbing up that high, your actively concious that if you screw up you might die and the risks go up, therefore it would move up a few font points from a 5a to maybe a 6b+

Hopefully this is all making sense and you can now figure out the difference from a HVS 5c and an E4 7b route.
The letters describe the amount of exposure and frequency of protection the numbers describe the hardest move required.

An 8b+ sport route (the one pictured) equates well to an E10 7b Traditional climb.
So yeah its going to be impossibly hard to achieve without practically living in the gym but even if i fail the climb isnt going anywhere i can always come back again and again till i kick its ass!

[thered]

Do you have a button behind your head that makes yor eyes move


~~~~ that for a game a soldiers 2 weeks 4* AI in Turkey for me in may i might stretch to a game of water polo then again i might not

[chroma]

Do you have a button behind your head that makes yor eyes move

And a ripcord that makes me say badass phrases with my velcro hair.

The whole gig relies on me being able to lift my entire body with one arm using only a grip from my fingertips...

Ive got a weird metal spider behind my house, i was out there yesterday, gripped one of the bars and pulled my body up till it was parallel with the ground elbows bent at 90 degrees, and saw how long i could hold it. Managed less than 30 seconds, and this was with two arms using a full bar grip.
one handed using only my finger tips seems a distant milestone at this point, especialy when on the day im going to have the weight of my harness, the rope, chalkbag/chalk and gear loadout going against me

[Meat-Head]

*BUMP*SPAM*BUMP

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[RedSpider]

The split at the top, voodoo is a 8b route and happiness is a 8b+ i cant fathom which is which as i didnt have abseil gear with me to rope down and have a gander and had my dog in tow. The routes may be reversed. dunno.

so you've already been to the top then?
what's wrong with you?

[Stuart 0366]

That looks like Dumbuck...not that I ever climbed there. I climbed at Auchinstarry in the day but Dumbuck is actually just up the road from me.

I was never that good though, not to your level chroma. I am actually scared of heights which prevented me getting better than average at climbing (V. Diff in old money).

Good luck mate, looks a cracking climb.

[C64]

I can hardly climb out my bed.

Good luck Chroma.