An evening on the Ben cycling from the hoose and soloing a fantastic long route (Left Hand Route, VS) on the north face.
Hard to imagine a better morning’s climbing than this.
In the spring, we have to get our leading head back on. Depending on how you choose your routes, mileage can either train or detrain your confidence. In this video, I take you through how I choose climbs that get me ready for bigger leads as the season progresses.
The other day myself and Kev Shields went for a morning’s solo on Buachaille Etive Mor in Glen Coe. We climbed an easy classic, Agag’s Groove, that is a first mountain route for many new climbers. I decided to take a few cameras and film the climb. Soloing and filming at the same time is not all that easy. But its nice to show off the route and I hope it encourages more folk to go and climb mountain routes like this.
Last March I had a great morning out on the Ben soloing Orion Face Direct in perfect conditions. Brodie Hood came a long to film and I made this video of it which I think shows the climb off at its best.
The first in a series on how to climb trad, from the absolute basics right through to E11. Its a huge subject and not one where taking shortcuts tends to work out well in the long term. In this video, we start easy, and fun!
One of my last days in the mountains before lockdown. It was a great one! Soloing Moonwalk IV,4 on Ben Nevis on a perfect day.
Solo ascent of the classic Ben Nevis ice climb The Curtain IV,4. I shot this a few seasons ago but thought it would be nice to post it up now since the ice climbing season in Scotland is not far away. I shot this a few seasons ago with my old GoPro. I didn't actually intend to solo that day, just decided to go up and do it on on the way down from doing something else on the hill. Hence the image and audio are pretty bad. I'm hoping to do a few more solo missions like this over the coming winter. I'll see if I can make something a little better with my new cameras. Although shooting video and soloing without any help still has its challenges. Any suggestions for classic ice lines to shoot?
Many people ask me how to get started climbing outdoors. This is what I did, what my climbing heroes did and why it worked.
Some people seemed surprised by my video of soloing an 8b+ In this vlog I go through why I did it, why it wasn't that risky and why not doing it was a bigger risk than doing it. The footage of the solo is part of the movie Echo Wall. You can still stream, download or buy the DVD from the shop here.
An extract from the movie Echo Wall, free soloing Darwin Dixit 8b+ in Margalef, as part of my training for Echo Wall. The full movie is still available in the shop to stream/download/DVD.