Steve Mc Clure's blog

The team gathered on Saturday morning and boarded their coach. 24 climbers, including some of Britain’s best, Nick Sellars, Ryan Pasquil, Neil Mawson, Paul Smitton, Sam Whittacker and Myself. That’s a fair collection of E9’s and 8c’s in there. The destination? Not a day’s climbing! Too hot for that, and way too humid. Instead it was an all day dance festival – ‘Cocoon in the park’. After last years great success it was back again, but bigger and better, with thousands of like minded people gathering at Temple Newson in leeds.

It could not have been more perfect, huge open fields of dry grass to lounge around on under the sun with the temperatures soaring. The pumping tunes and a massive stage in the centre was where the action was going off. Noon till 11pm, non stop. I chilled till 1pm then got on board the dance train and amongst the techno. Ten hours straight. Awesome. It was a long walk back up the hill later with legs of lead, and an even further cycle ride home at 2am.

Next day I was 3kg lighter than the day before! Maybe I should have gone climbing. Though maybe not! Instead it was a very different party, my daughters 4^th birthday complete with bouncy castle and many bouncy kids. I had figured an all day event compared to an all night event would be easier on the head the next day but funnily enough it was not!

Alistair Lee, one of the best film makers, comes up good again. 

Adam Ondra came to Britain!  A very big deal indeed. Adam is the best sport climber in the world, no questions asked. Chris Sharma, who has done a bit of climbing, said he was totally blown away by Ondra’s performance! He went direct to Malham and directly to try some of my routes that have laid untouched for years…

I went up to Malham cove to catch up with him, its been two years since I last climbed with him and I was keen to see how he was doing. But I already knew how good he’d become. Al Austin texted me on the way to say “at least you’ll know how it feels to be a punter at the crag now”. Good style, just turning up and going climbing, why should people know his agenda? I guess we assume that with his status there will be some kind of press release announcing his movements and selling tickets for the display. But no: Just him and a mate, over for a week. No team of photographers, no film crew or helicopters. I arrived at the crag and there they were, just another team trying their routes.

Adam climbed a lot of stuff in a week, the most anyone has ever climbed by a large amount. It sounds impossible almost, but then we remember he is just at that new level, away up there by himself, a good notch above anyone else really. It was exciting for me as seem to have been operating in a vacuum for years putting up new routes with no one to gauge them with. You never know their real difficulty and you always stand to be knocked down The British climbing public are very fast to throw mud, and though grades are not that critical to me, having everything down graded would have led to a real beating!!

But it ended up being perfect, Adam nailed a load of stuff and commented that though our grades were stiff they were not super hard, so that helps put a sock in all the Brits that think they are so good with their super hard grades that would be harder than any of Europe. He also found Overshadow hard and didn’t manage a repeat, so I wasn’t being a bumbly. But he did do Northern Lights and North Star confirming quality and grade. His visit was almost like me climbing the routes again, a confirmation perhaps being just as important than the actual first ascent. And if anyone knows his stuff it’s certainly Ondra!!

But it still feels like a very long way off! That feeling you get when you first try something really hard. It's alien to most climbers, as they don't often try hard stuff relative to them. I'm talking about routes where you can't even do the moves, where success is measured in tens of days or even years. Not something that was desperate but you'll probably do next go.

Funny game climbing, sometimes its like buses, you wait for ages, getting more and more frustrated, and then, just when you've given up, two come along at once.

The Petzl Roc trips get better and better, bigger and bigger. This year was no exception, with single pitch routes 100m long, I don't think they get any longer. I was invited again, obviously as the token Brit, there for dry humour and poor dress sense and perhaps because I've won a few trips, even up against the likes of Sharma and Andrada. Fortunately they hadn't spotted it was clearly either a fluke or involved some serious cunning. On performance alone I think I'd be lucky to scrape in!

I was hoping for others to get to the top in the competition, to share first place. I guess that doesn't make me a great competition climber!

So far this year climbing seems to be going well. I managed to redpoint a new 9a/9a+. I always thought it was 9a+, but it went fast, so I wondered, is it really so hard???