Scottish Winter Climbs West

Winter

Don’t you love it? 

The bleary eyed start?

The sweaty walk in, pack tugging (should have done more Autumn hill walking)?

The first sight of the crag, is it “in” (and where are those 2 ahead of us going)?

The first faff, gloves (damn them), pointy things (ouch).

The sweet thunk of a well bedded axe vibrating like a twanged old school ruler.

The scrape of points on rock (i’m sure Tom Patey said knees were “fine”- maybe check the next SMC publication to find out!!).

Hit it harder and maybe it’ll hold. And i wonder when the next one will be coming?

Should have taken the trouble to pull my hood up, do the zip up, close my glove wrists. Spindrift. 

Please no hot aches today. Please!

But how do you choose where to go? Aye, we all trawl social media to see who has done what but what’s you’re starting point? Your tick-list? Where are your must visit venues this season?

Hold the page on that list. If you didn’t get your copy when it came out you NEED this guidebook. 

Scottish Winter Climbs West is step forwards in SMC paper guidebook production. Maps, locations, parking, descriptions, timings, aspects and overviews make this guidebook so much more user friendly than any UK winter guidebook I’ve owned before. 

And the pictures. Full disclosure, i’ve a few in there. They feel rubbish compared to some of them though. I can taste the delight and feel the grin, even though i can’t see Neil Kerr’s face, on the full page shot of him finding the Chasm in winter conditions. Hamish Frost’s double page spread of Greg Boswell on Un Poco Loco makes me want to duck like the arch is about to collapse on me. I want to scrape the crud away on Left Twin for Andy Moles and Ali Rose is having way too much fun on Isis. 

And how utterly outrageous (Hamish Frost’s shot again) is Greg’s position on Lost Arrow.

Its  not just the action shots. The layout pictures will make life a lot easier. And there are gaps on those crags for the adventurous…

Motivation? This book’s dripping with it whether you climb II or X.

But for the far-sighted and cunning its also a really canny tool. There should be smaller queues on Dorsal Arete this winter. The honey pots a bit less sticky and attractive. Read the crag heights… check the aspects… there is an awful lot to go at at your grade you’ve never heard of or considered before. 

West is best!!

Feeling rusty on the rock? Are you dealing with Skill Fade?

I don't know how many times I've climbed Pinnacle Ridge at Polldubh. It's a classic solo for some personal exercise, a fun route I guide a few times a year and, as the closest route to the road one I teach on every week or so in the summer.
So why is my ankle wobbling like that on the wee smear and how come I can't find the piece of gear for my second runner without looking for it?

The answer is that I haven't been climbing for 3 months and outdoor Trad rock climbing for 6 months owing to the pandemic. I normally have an enforced layoff the rock over winter. Lets face it the Scottish rock season is done by the end of October at the absolute latest and (other than the odd freak winter like Feb 2019) the rock shoes only come out for indoor walls until some point in March. I do get the odd overseas rock trip to help feed the rat (digression November in the Ameln Valley in Morocco was amazing last year- highly recommended when we can travel again) and, crucially my ropework and protection skills are getting a thorough work out all winter long... usually.
So 2019-2020. My last rock route was a day of new routing on 26 November 2019. My last day at the wall was 3 March 2020 and my last winter route was 20 March 2020.
So over 10 weeks later setting off up a pitch on the 3rd of June 2020 was probably breaking the longest running period of no climbing in.... 30 years!

"Skill Fade" is defined as: "the decay of ability or adeptness over a period of non-use". Its a fairly well understood concept in the Medical, Military and Aviation worlds and is often noted after a break from work due to maternity or other issues. Its when you get a little rusty from lack of practise and some research showed that soldiers lost the experienced the greatest skill fade in the first 2 months.
How well you know something, what the 'something' is, how you learnt it, how recently etc. are all other factors that will contribute to how much skill fade you experience.

I knew there was the strong potential for some skill fade in my climbing so what can I do about it?

• Keep it easy. Build up the difficulty again slowly. Harder Grades, unknown routes, dirty routes, poor weather, pushy partners etc. can all make things harder. So control the variables and make life easy for yourself so you have the space to focus and return to 'former glory'.

• Immerse yourself in it again. Talk about climbing, read about climbing, watch videos of climbing. Research from the medical world showed that Doctors able to talk about work issues and procedures lost their skill at a slower rate than those who lacked those opportunities.
• Use checklists and mantras. Now would be a really easy time to forget something you have done as second nature in the past... especially if you were 'unconsciously competent' or did things without thinking about them before. Build habits and ways of checking them. What belay building nemonic did you use when you were learning? "Check or Deck" sounds a bit twee but the importance of both buddy checks and double checking (knots, anchors, krabs done up etc.) is hard to overstate.
• On the same theme climbing mindfully; staying aware of what you are doing and focussing on that rather than 'what ifs' or thinking to far ahead too soon at the expense of your current performance may help reduce errors.

• Mileage. Getting out plenty, moving lots, placing lots of gear, building lots of belays and doing all of that with the other 4 points above will help.

For example. My first day out was 10 pitches of Severe climbing, well within my grade, on a perfect weather day, with 2 friends of a similar mindset all routes well known to me. We'd all agreed the purpose of the day and were happy to have a relaxed day out reconnecting with each other (socially distanced of course) and the rock. 

I think it would have been amusing to video my first pitch and watch the process. "That hold doesn't feel as good as usual". "Where is that No.5 wire?" "This all feels hard!"

That last is quite important. If you aren't expecting it the realisation that things aren't going as well as you expected them to can have a negative effect on your mental state. That can become the start of a 'spiral of doom' where you realise you aren't operating as well as you were, which makes you worried, which negatively effects your performance further, which makes you more worried etc.etc. Just knowing that skill fade is 'a thing'  and taking steps to manage it in advance can prevent this negative feedback loop, keep you safer and help you get back to where you were sooner.

As its not just personal climbing I'm thinking about but work too my kids have been taken climbing to help me re-perfect my tangle free ropework with 2 students and in idle moments on my daily exercise I've been thinking through teaching progressions at stances I know well mentally for different types of students.

I know. I don't get out much- but as lockdown eases on it I'll be working on it!

Thanks to Paul smith for inout and ideas on this piece.

Sublime on Solitaire

Haven't blogged in quite a while but today was so good I've got to put some pics up:
Its getting tough to find routes Claire hasn't done as we've been hitting the winter hills together for 6 or 7 years. Ken suggested Solitaire as I was bemoaning this fact and as its one of the few lines I don't know well on the West side of Aonach Mor I though we'd give it a shot. This meant that although there were many teams getting the 0800 gondola we didn't feel any pressure to rush. Several groups went to Golden Oldy, Ken and Scott W both did Western Rib and we were followed up Solitaire by a slightly misplaced team who thought they were on WR too. The start to Solitaire looks intimidating, steep rock and roofs... but a nice wee gully lurks at the RHS of the face. Today it reminded me of the start to Fawlty Towers- mixed crud, good turf and some really fat ice in steep bulges gave a good tussle for pitch one (definitely more at the III end of II though and no gear above half way). P2 Was thinly iced slab and no runners at all! Then the sun hit and we sought shade behind walls and in gullies wherever we could as we, the snow and the ice all baked in the heat. By keeping to the shade we found some more ice and pretty good turf but anything under the dampening snow in the sun was to be avoided. The route is longer than Golden Oldy starting low at the RHS of the clutch of summit ribs and the first 2 pitches pulled no punches today. Higher up its pleasant and meander with occasional easy steps and it was with relief that we stripped off layers on the summit and gulped down fluids. Don't get many days this beautiful in a season but after the slow start this winter I reckon we learnt this one.

Winter Part Deux

The blog has been quiet this winter as my 'hits' statistics show a drop from a high point of over 2500 back 10 years ago when there were only 4 or 5 winter blogs around to now maybe only 100 or so. I make lots of use of Facebook https://www.facebook.com/climbwhenyoureready/ and Twitter https://twitter.com/AlanHalewood now though. However this is a nice place for pieces like the one from February highlighting some issues with decision making for winter climbers or this wee 3 minute video of the second part of this winter.  
Its still winter up high but I'm all about rock climbing now! Pictures of teaching climbing and mountaineering, Winter Mountain Leader and Mountaineering Instructor Certificate Courses at Glenmore Lodge and Plas y Brenin and my own climbs. What a great season, thanks to all who shared it with me! Association of Mountaineering Instructorshttps://vimeo.com/263684935

Winter Part 2 from Alan Halewood on Vimeo.

One reason experienced winter climbers get avalanched.

I've watched with interest the avalanche forecast and where climbers have been climbing this weekend. I've been winter climbing for just over 30 years now and have been in, on or in immediate proximity to friends in avalanches 4 times. More recently I've started trying to be very critically aware of why and how this happens.
The concept of heuristic traps is now becoming well known in relation to avalanches. Heuristics are the simple 'rules of thumb' we employ, subconsciously, to make sense of complex information. When we get the answer wrong this becomes a 'trap' with potentially negative consequences. The bodies that study avalanches and provide our forecasts The Snow and Avalanche Foundation of Scotland, The Scottish Avalanche Information Service and others (Instructors, Guides, Winter Mountain Leaders and other avalanche educators) promote the Be Avalanche Aware process as a decision making tool to reduce the chances of us falling into these traps. Many novices to the winter environment are being introduced to this planning tool from the outset of their winter careers. Its a structured routine, a habit to fall into if you will, that provides a better framework for walkers/climbers and mountaineers to employ their experience when making decisions about where to go in the Scottish mountains.
What's interesting to me is that I believe far fewer hill goers who are already competent and experienced are aware of or using the process and therein lies the problem. Rope work, use of crampons and axes,  placing ice screws, even taking care of yourself in bad weather are nice closed  skills that can be learnt and performed repeatedly and its relatively easy to distinguish when they are done competently or well. There is even often a 'right' or 'wrong' way to do them. Unfortunately the quality of decision making is a great deal harder to measure....
As I go to the mountains and journey around each time I go out and don't get avalanched adds fuel to the belief that I'm making good decisions. Unfortunately this may be erroneous (nonsense). I may well have just been lucky. A few metres to the right or left, a degree steeper, a little more or less snow, humidity or temperature and I might have been avalanched. But the fact that I wasn't becomes a form of attribution bias. This is where I dismiss luck and chance and attribute my success to my knowledge, skills, experience and ability; my Jedi like ability to 'read the snow'. This means I'll be inclined to repeat my actions again and again and often get away with it. Until the day I don't...

Note I'm not advocating that people take no risks at all... that's up to them. Just that we become more critically aware of what we are actually doing and how we are actually making decisions. For more on risk acceptance -including some cold hard figures- see this excellent article by Mike Austin of Avalanche Geeks: https://journal.fatmap.com/avalanche-safety-series-part-2-hazard-risk-the-big-lie-59fb7e0994eb and find some though provoking ideas from Phil Ebert on understanding your own competence on Page 22 here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59d2a0f0e9bfdf20d6d654b7/t/5a60031c8165f5dba0435b6b/1516241701613/TAR3304_LowRes.pdf

The Winter so far...

My Scottish Winter started 10 weeks ago! here is a 2 minute video of some of the highlights of what is shaping up to be a great season:

First 10 Weeks of Winter from Alan Halewood on Vimeo.

3 minutes of the best of 2017

Winter, summer and winter again... indoor walls and trips to northern Namibia and Eastern Greenland. Another great year. Here is a 3 minute video of some of my favourite images and clips from the last year. Have a cracking 2018 folks... see you on a crag or a hill!