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© Core Climbing 2022
© Core Climbing 2022
Having recently returned back from my travels in Europe, it’s been nice to reflect on a Spring season ripe with memorable moments and good lessons. It’s hard to communicate my experiences without a little context as the projects I had in mind had influenced my climbing for quite some time before this.
During my first trip to Ticino in the Spring of 2022 Giuliano Cameroni, a local of the area, showed me this project (which soon became known as the ‘midnight’ project) perched on the hill above the famous ‘From the Dirt Grows Flowers’. It was a massive boulder on quite a unique rock and from the outset it captured my imagination. Indeed, enough so for me to have a session trying the first two moves only to end up with pretty ruined skin. Perhaps the first of many moments when I learnt the limitation of haste whilst trying this climb. The climb itself sits at about 30-35 degrees, about 6 metres or so before the easy top out climbing and the rock, despite not being by the river at this point in time, is completely river polished. This latter feature makes for quite an interesting style as there are a few gas bubbles which create very small incut crimps with rounded edges and very little else remotely usable (even for feet). The result is an incredibly intense crimpy style where you need to move slowly between the narrow slots whilst utilising footholds in positions far to the sides. Almost perfectly my wheelhouse in many ways.
Yet it was a line which necessitated a lot of development in this specialised style I had always relied a great deal on, a pretty rare phenomenon to find a project of this nature and something I always felt incredibly grateful for. So I set to work and upon climbing ‘Alphane’ the following season I set my focus to Midnight and solved some of the moves, leaving a few still as puzzles. It captivated my training objectives the following winter and a trip in Spring 2023 saw me pretty focused on this line. However, this tunnel vision felt to have its limitations. A feeling that I ‘could’ climb this thing quite soon turned into a ‘should’ and I found myself turning up with this very outcome-focused attitude with little regard for my motivation at the moment. I threw myself at the climb pretty relentlessly until eventually being forced to step away following a high fall from the lip with a trip-ending split.
In hindsight, I’m grateful to have not climbed it that season. Partly as I was trying it at that point from quite a high start on quite arbitrary holds, the lower start from the most obvious holds felt utterly unattainable at the time. But also as it really spotlighted the limitations of this outcome-focused attitude and showed me the degree to which it can go against the grain of organic motivation.
Following that trip, my first day of climbing outside in the Lakes saw me visit a project located very close to my home, soon to become the ‘Helvellyn’ project. It took a few sessions to realise that it wasn’t a case of missing obvious beta or just feeling tired after my long trip, this climb was legitimately one of the hardest climbs I’d tried. It was a pretty special realisation. At a time when I’d been looking further afield for these sorts of ambitious projects and the dissonance I felt over a lifestyle of travel whilst acknowledging its environmental impacts, it was comforting to find what I’d often been looking for right in front of me in the landscape I grew up in. And the climb alone, beyond what it represented, was appealing to me. The rock is very compact and the overhanging face remarkably under-featured, a rare quality of Lakes rock. The style it creates is a fascinating combination of static isolation on very small but flat edges and powerful movements between positions of vague body tension. It felt to bring together the style of climbing which suited me well with the novel interest of the powerful style which I was less used to, the comfort of my own wheelhouse with the curiosity of having to learn to move well in a different way.
So the year that commenced felt very much curated by my motivation for these two projects. Both offer appeal for slightly differing reasons but somewhat work perfectly in conjunction with each other. The consistency in which I could try the ‘Helvellyn’ project felt like keeping my foot in the door with the psychological preparation I find so beneficial to projecting whilst also offering a lot of inspiration throughout the training seasons. The sessions themselves being physical enough to offer a pretty effective training stimulus. With this balance of training and projecting being integrated, I found much more motivation to train and thus commenced the most beneficial summer and winter training blocks I’d experienced and beyond this, a total contentment to be living in the Lake District with a routined training practice and consistent sessions on rock.
Slightly fast-forwarding through around 20-25 days on the Helvellyn project and a winter trip to Europe which opened my eyes to the potential feasibility of the Midnight project from the lower start, re-stoking my awe and motivation for it even further, the UK entered a rainy January even by Uk standards. As the clouds began to clear on an occasional day, I began to integrate some regular sessions up at Helvellyn and reap the rewards of some hard training. The positions took some relearning but soon I could tell that the tools were there to climb this thing and I began preparing for proper tries from the start. It was fortuitous timing as rest became important whilst considering attempts on Helvellyn and at the same time a Swiss trip in March drew closer, the pieces felt to fall into place in my training which was all focused towards Midnight at the time. Indeed, it felt to make little sense to train specifically for my local project when I could try it so regularly.
So as my training season began to taper, I utilised the rest to recover and focus more on the Helvellyn project. And in a pretty gradual but consistent trajectory, the links got bigger and attempts better. The day I climbed the boulder felt remarkably similar to all the days trying it actually. My sessions felt rather routined and it was comforting though a little saddening realisation that I almost preferred having the climb there as a project than I did the satisfaction of having done it. I’d recently found a lot of value, for the sake of the enjoyment and also the performance of climbing, in stepping away from a more outcome-focused approach and this seemed to confirm a little of that. On reflection now, it’s opened my eyes to the benefits of a home project and the lack of pressures which come with it. The feeling of no time pressures to climb something and only ever being there on the days when you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Past experience often would indicate a waning in climbing motivation following a project of this nature, but I felt no need to contend with this in this case. With Switzerland only 2 weeks away and my training for Midnight going really well, it was hard not to feel a certain excitement. And so, with the feeling that I was proud of my season of climbing almost before it had begun, I felt very few pressures on the outcome of my trip to Switzerland. However, during my first few days trying Midnight again, it became obvious that the training seasons had been effective and my margin on the moves which felt totally maximal a year before now felt less draining. With this relaxed attitude, the sessions were fun and within a couple of weeks, I found myself on top of this line which represented a lot for me. Of all the projects I’ve dedicated myself to, this felt like the process which took the most physical and psychological energy, whilst also being a pretty rare case of an almost perfect reflection of my preferred style. I can say with relative confidence that it’s likely the hardest climb I’ve done and to find this relaxed and almost playful attitude was the most effective and also fun state in which to climb it certainly fills me with optimism when looking for future ambitious projects!
And so, in a special Spring season, likely the two lines I’ve done which mean the most to me came into being. The former ‘Helvellyn’ project became ‘Spots of Time’ whilst the ‘Midnight’ project became ‘Arrival of the Birds’.
