Blog - May 2009

Sheffield is home to two very important guys in the world of sport, both named Steve, yet if you were to ask your average Sheffield resident if they’d ever heard of either I suspect the answer would sadly be a resounding no. Steve Peat is the greatest ever downhill mountain biker – and we’re talking worldwide here – and Steve McClure is quite probably the UK’s best climber of all time.

Steve Peat took his second consecutive win in the men’s Downhill at Vallnord and the 17th of his career, breaking Frenchman Nicolas Vouilloz’s record for most World Cup wins, and extending his lead in the overall standings. He’s from Wharncliffe, is responsible for most of the singletrack in the woods in that neck of Sheffield, runs the Wharncliff Weekender, and is an all-round very nice guy. Interestingly his brother Andy Peat climbed with Jerry Moffatt back in the day and was pretty handy! Born in June 1974 he’s no spring chicken, but is still delivering the goods, having won the last two downhill races of the season, one of them only yesterday! How can it be that Sheffield, the UK’s national ‘City Of Sport’, doesn’t do more to raise this man up and celebrate the fact that he’s here? It’s not like we can even blame the Olympics as Mountain Biking is an Olympic Sport! We should have streets named after the man!

Whilst we’re on the subject of mountain biking check out Danny McAskill’s incredible video that was uploaded to Youtube four weeks ago and has gone absolutely bonkers since then with over 5,000,000 hits. I hear that his phone hasn’t stopped ringing with offers from all manner of celebrity chat show hosts wanting him on their show. Strange world…

Steve McClure is a climbing phenomenon. Approaching 40, and with a 3 year old kid, he’s still climbing at the absolute top level, and so far above any other British climber that it beggars belief. Last week he returned from another of his lightning trips to Spain where in six days he managed 1 F8b+ on sight, 4 F8bs on sight and multiple F8a+ and F8a on sight, coming within a whisker of that elusive first F8c on sight. A forum poster on UKClimbing had the audacity to ask what might happen if Steve were able to spend longer on one of these trips? Steve has just been dropped by high street lifestyle sponsor Fat Face (they have dropped virtually all of their sponsored athletes in an attempt to stave off the recession which has hit them particularly badly – they’ve also pulled out of sponsoring any Heason Events for the time being). Aside from a few other sponsorship deals Steve makes his living driving up and down the country route setting at climbing walls. It clearly keeps him fit, but it ain’t exactly Chris Sharma’s lifestyle! My point should be fairly clear: give him the means to go to Spain for the winter and I am sure he’d jump at the chance and we’d no doubt see something quite special. If he can operate at the levels that he does on the income he does, and with the workload and family commitments he has, heaven knows what he’d be capable of if he was given some financial stability! Perhaps we, the climbers of the UK, should sponsor Steve collectively for a couple of years and see where it gets him?

He’s another sportsman that Sheffield should really be recognising and nurturing. Rant over, but perhaps this Blog entry will help enlighten a few more people to the two great Steve’s we have in our midst.

Steve McClure in Mallorca on a DWS trip in 2008:

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I thought I was a fairly experienced climber. I am a fairly experienced climber actually - I started doing it 17 years ago so blinkin’ well should be. However I learnt the other day that being an experienced climber doesn't necessarily mean that one doesn't make mistakes, and when climbing, mistakes can be fatal. Fortunately I'm here to tell the tale, but it was a hairy moment!

It was a sunny afternoon, I was bored with work, so decided to go shunting for an hour at Electric Quarry, an esoteric little venue with its own generator and resident buzzing, just a few miles from the house. Cabbage Crack is an E4 that had been my nemesis for a season a few years back, taking three, maybe four visits to make a clean ascent. Shunting, for those who don't know, is a method of climbing whereby you set up a fixed rope on the line that you want to climb, tied off to a belay at the top, and then climb the route, self-belaying up the rope. There are a large number of methods, techniques and devices which lend themselves to shunting, or self-belaying, but it would appear that there are none that are foolproof.

Having never shunted before I did a little searching on the net before heading out, and decided upon my method. I set up a rope, tied off to a tree, abseiled down the line, tensioned off the rope with a camming device in a crack to make the rope tight (lesson 1 - I should have used a weighted rucksack as I you can at least lift the rucksack to give yourself some slack rope if necessary), and attached myself to the rope with a belay device called a Faders SUM (See review). This is rather like the more commonly known and used Petzl GriGri, but is suited to thinner ropes than a GriGri (I was using a 9mm sport rope). They both use a self closing camming mechanism to bite the rope if you fall off. I climbed up a few feet and jumped off to test the system. It worked fine. The only issue was that I didn't have the kit necessary to make a chest harness (lesson 2) which meant the device was sometimes 6 inches below my waist meaning a longer fall if I fell off - though nothing to drastic.

Approaching the crux, some 50 feet up the route I looked down to see that the pear shaper karabiner (lesson 3 - should have used an oval karabiner with a locking device to stop it turning around) that I had clipped the SUM to my harness with had turned around (lesson 4). The narrow end of the krab had caught on the lever on the SUM that is used in order to release the camming mechanism once locked. In effect it was locked in the open position, stopping the cam from being able to bite the rope. I calmly reached down to turn the krab back around, and realised with horror that I couldn't, it was all under too much tension and I couldn't move it. If I fell off now I would hit the ground! I climbed up another move to try to free it. This didn't work either. Panic started to set in. I grabbed the rope with both hands and began to down climb. After half a dozen hand movements down the thin roped I decided I would not be able to continue like this without my sweating hands slipping, so reached for a rusty peg. With a finger through the peg I was able to unclip a spare karabiner from my harness, somehow clip the peg, and then clip into the karabiner. From there I was able to use two hands to forcibly free the lever, unclip from the peg, weight the rope, and then use the lever for its intended use, and abseil back down the rope.

On my way home I stopped off at Calver bridge and jumped off it to cool off and calm down!

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Check out this telescopic ladder!

No need for fiddly stick clips or long brushes ever again. I might just buy one!

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Continuing the theme of fringe-climbing activities I headed out on Sunday to the Llanberis slate quarries with some friends on a mission to follow 'Snakes & Ladders', a 4 hour adventure exploring some of the more remote and exciting parts of this gargantuan scar on the landscape. I grew up just a few miles from Llanberis and it was only last year, whilst driving past on a bouldering trip to the Pass that I looked up and thought 'that really is a scar!'. I must have passed underneath it hundreds, if not thousands, of times during my childhood and since and never once gave them a second glance. I guess it was literally a part of the landscape to my young eyes. Imagine if a mining company wanted to do something like that right in the middle of a national park now! (check out Red Gold - it happens!).

Anyway, I heard years ago about a devious route that takes in some of the ladders, tunnels and scree slopes of the quarries, but had never managed to find a description. There’s a new guide to the Slate due out soon so I asked the author if he'd ever heard of it. He emailed back with a brief description and said that he'd be including it in the guide! I won't publish it here, suffice to say that the guide will be worth buying just to do this route / adventure.

It took us 3 hours, not 4, and that was fairly leisurely as a group of 4. There wasn't really any climbing to be had, but it helps to have a steady head as there are hundreds of metres of wobbly ladders to climb and a massive old chain to pull up. Torches are strictly forbidden (it's an adventure remember!), and not really needed anyway. If you do it, just make sure you take a decent camera and a spare battery (mine ran out half way around)!

Left hand two photos courtesy of Kat Cartwright

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