Climbing and Mountaineering
Climbing was a large part of my life for over thirty years, fell walking about ten years longer. I began climbing as a sport in 1980 though I had done some rock climbs intermittently over the years at school. There is even a picture of me aged two climbing rocks on the family farm, so climbing does seem to have been in the blood though quite whose blood I got mine from is open to debate as no-one else in my family has had the urge to climb, either in previous generations or the current one.
I have never pigeon-holed myself as to the type of climbing that I have undertaken though true Big Walls in the style of those on El Capitain in Yosemite Valley remains one area where my experience is sadly lacking and until the advent of bouldering mats, bouldering was not something I regularly undertook and the constant (for me) dropping onto hard earth did not do my knees any favours. Neither were they (my knees) done any favours when I was run-over in April 1993.
Mostly active during the 1980s and into the 1990s, I did most of my climbing in the mountains of the Lake District, North Wales and Scotland with occasional forays elsewhere. I was never that fond of the Peak District, don’t know why but that disinterest extended and stil does so to biking and walking/running. Yorkshire was always close and it was interesting to witness the birth of British sport climbing (from the sidelines) at places like Malham Cove and Goredale Scar.
Winter climbing obviously looked northward since the Scottish Highlands invariably produce the better conditions. I think I only had a single winter climbing trip to North Wales prior to moving there in 1990.