Finnish climbing 2008

Of course it's no surprise to hear that we were climbing throughout the year in Finland. December has been a bit grim, but otherwise Tony had been climbing in Finland during every other month. Anni joined on many of these trips. Highlights included two trips to Olhava, one trip to Kustavi and many to Revetenvuori and more local crags. We made a few first ascents. The first by Anni and Tony being the rather easy Heinähanko (F4+ PG) in Haukkakallio. Tony also made first ascents Mastodontti (F6b) and the rather surprisingly Tutu hard (F5 ), both at Haukkakallio and the latter done on his stagnight in a tutu. Unfortunately we're not publishing the photos here! We also repeated some great routes, Anni did fantastically well to climb Ruotsalaisten reitti and Salama (both long F6a routes at Olhava). Other favourite routes of the year included Urkkupilli at Revetenvouri, Sledgehammer at Falkberget and Leppakomiehenfriendi at Kvarnby. Several of the photos here are from Toby's blog and complete accounts of the various trips can be found on his blog at http://lightfromthenorth.blogspot.com/ by clicking on the rockclimbing label.

Winter camping near Valkeala with Toby

On the crux of Mastadontti - the crack flares making jams feel insecure

Anni in action on Constant Gardener at Haukkakallio

Simon climbing Urkkupilli at Revetenvuori

February climbing in Rollarit

Spring flowers in Kvarnby

Olhava - a tranquil place to climb

Many of the climbs are accessible only by boat

Salama follows the obvious crack system running up the face with two traverses to the right. Ruotsalaisten Reitti starts behind the island and follows a rising traverse out of the frame.

July - Scotland

Anni had never been to Scotland. On our week tour with our good friends Gwilym and Caroline we ended up seeing an incredible amount of it, and still found time to go climbing and trekking.

3 small figures at the bottom of Spantastic (F5 R/X) at Flodigarry on the Isle of Skye. We had just abseiled down to do this rather unique route.

Anni following the exposed pillar, even seconding this pitch was serious as a fall would result in swinging into the opposing wall. Thanks Caroline for the fantastic telephoto snaps.

The easier (but loose) second pitch (F4+ R)

Steeper but safer; Anni did a fantastic job seconding this route. On the North West the sandstone sea cliffs at Reiff make wonderful cragging. (Unknown route about F6a+)

Castles and lochs - truly this is Scotland

A lone orchid beneath Stac Pollaidh

A wet hiker on top of Stac Pollaidh

The beautiful Smoo caves on the North coast close to Durness

The Ring 'o Brodgar Standing Stones - one of many visits to Neolithic sites

The visiting of such places involved considerable crawling underground.

Rackwick bay on the Island of Hoy

The Dwarfy Stane was carved in the sandstone by neolithic man without metal tools.

The Hackness Martello tower provided protection of a "more modern" kind.

The Glenmorangie distillery in Rosshire

The Magic Islands of Lofoten (Arctic Norway)

During the time the blog was dormant, many adventures went untold. Perhaps we'll find time to tell them, but in the meantime here is a sneaky peak at what has was missed.

June 2008: Tony and Simon were climbing in the North of Norway.

Typical weather in the North, but something we didn't see a lot of

Our trusty little Getz made it from Finland to the North of Norway.

Cruising up perfect granite cracks (about F5) on Bare Blabaer (Only Blueberries)
After the Creek this route lived up to it's name, the Norwegians describe a trivial task as bare blabaer.

From a small task to a slightly bigger one. Vestpillaren (F6a+ -11 pitches) forms the skyline.

The 1910 route on the Svolvaer Geita redetermined what man could achieve. Now it is "only blueberries" but following the classic route was an eyeopening experience.

Honest words.....

Steep sport climbing....... preparation for the Blue Mountains?

Crimson Chrysalis 5.8+/5.9

This is a popular and classic line. It actually features in the top 25 routes of North America http://lamountaineers.org/NAC/browserf/other/climlist/clindex.htm. This is the top 25 climbing routes not only the top lowland rock routes. The list also features alpine rock, alpine mixed and snow and ice climbs. It's also the easiest climb in the 25 list and accessible. This probably makes it one of the 25 most crowded climbs in North America and it was with this in mind that we left the campsite at 06.30. It's not uncommon for the route to have 4 parties on it. Whilst, this might not sound too bad the descent is to abseil the route and the thought of having people climbing below you, people climbing above you and people abseiling through you is unappealing.
The route goes straight up the Cloud Tower in 9 pitches. The climbing is consistently 5.8 for almost all every move. It is sometimes slabby, sometimes overhanging but most of the time dead plum vertical. It looks improbable for mostly 5.8 climbing and would be but for the jugs. British climbers call large holds jugs, Finnish climbers call them handles, whatever you call these - make no mistake they are big and easy to grasp. The climb mostly follows cracks which are used for protection and links these with bolt protected face climbing. I rarely used the cracks for climbing and only employed my Indian Creek techniques when not faced with a climbing wall sized hold. The climbing felt continous and fluid. The route was sometimes run out but the climbing was so intuitive that these were dealt with almost without noticing.

I did this with Tacos. After the previous days exploits we felt confident for something bigger. After only minor bush whacking to find the route, we were delighted to see that nobody else was there. I took the first pitch (which the guidebook claimed was run out), I disagree. I found the gear perfectly adequate for the 5.8 climbing. I think this was a sign of things to come as I was to power up the steep walls placing about 10 pieces in a pitch and feeling totally safe and in full control. I'd been sports climbing at .10d and on this route I could focus my full attention on enjoying the moves, the exposure and the fact that I was on the longest steep climb that I'd been on. We mostly switched pitches, but in such a way that I got the 3 ones with the hardest ratings. This suited me perfectly.

As we got higher the exposure started to kick in. I enjoyed watching my rucksac, which I left at the bottom of the route, get smaller and smaller until eventually (I didn't have my glasses) it became to small. Perhaps it's visible in the photo (I again don't have my glasses). To my delight, more so than watching the shrinking rucksac was that nobody else started the route. All day. As we got higher I was relieved to think that it would be us abseiling over other people, and not the other way round. I wondered what the procedure was. Surely, four on one of the hanging belays would be too crowded. Luckily, the situation never arose.

Tacos on the fifth pitch. On the abseil we got the rope stuck only once, which was no small achievement based on the plentitude of what I no longer saw as jugs but now as rope snaring objects. We started the hike out as the sun set and were almost 12 hours car to car.

Lotta Balls

On Wednesday morning I met a Japanese lady named Tacos and we decided to do a multipitch route. Although I had some longer lines in mind, as it was already quite late and as we hadn’t climbed together before we decided to do something shorter. The Lotta Balls buttress seemed to house routes which would fit this bill.

We hiked in with the plan to do either Lotta Balls itself (5.8 four pitches) or Black Magic which was a similar grade and a similar proposition. When we got there, we found that both routes were taken by various groups of old timers. Later, I discovered Joanne Urioste was among them. In the old days, Red Rocks was never considered a world class climbing destination, long approaches, loose rock and poor protection made Red Rock climbing something esoteric. With the spread of Vegas, the inevitable development of new roads, cleaned up rock by increased traffic of climbers, the advent and widespread use of camming devices and the placement of bolts, the popularity of Red Rocks grew. But compared with other climbing places where the routes were done by a huge number of people, Red Rocks is unique in that very few people did most of the first accents. Jorge and Joanne Urioste’s routes are perhaps the most popular, they believed in safe climbing and as such placed many bolts on their climbs. This was a huge achievement as all the holes were hand drilled by Jorge and most of the time on lead. Don’t think that the Urioste’s made sports climbs. We climbed Olive Oil and Cat in the Hat (which were both theirs) and there was not one protection bolt on either of the routes, but when needed they were prepared to bolt and many of their face climbs have plenty of bolts. One of the other pioneers was Joe Herbst, he favoured clean climbing and most of his routes are bold and adventurous (even today with modern protection). Certainly there was controversy between the two styles, but they seem to co-exist perhaps most likely because of the huge quantity of good rock in Red Rocks.

I only had the Select Climbs and it didn’t show many other choices but Joanne suggested that we climbed Trihedral, which was one of Joe Herbst’s routes. I later noticed that the Select Climbs mark this as “ugly loose corner” in their topo. It wasn’t ugly and loose, it was aesthetically pleasing and loose. Joanne did say that she didn’t remember the route very well (it was 25 years ago when she climbed it). I remember it well, it was hard, the crux felt like very sandbagged 5.8 and was poorly protected. I had an excellent cam 7m below me and managed to get a so-so microwire and an appalling cam to protect the crux. This involved cutting on to the face and making thin face moves for about 3m. The moves felt shakey, and I was very nervous on them.

Trihedral is marked in red. Lotta Balls is marked in blue. Subsequently, when I saw the definitive guide I noticed that about as much information is given in this picture as in the guide, and now readers of this blog will know more than those blessed with owning the guide. It's not a bad route, but very testy at the grade.

We then did Lotta Balls. It was again done by Joe Herbst but this time with his wife and had two very important protection bolts (I don’t know if the bolts were her influence). This felt excellent, the protection was secure (albeit spaced) and the climbing felt intuitive (perhaps having a guide book helped). There was a fantastic and memorable section of the second pitch where you leave a crack system and start face climbing on bizarre looking nipples of rock. This wasn’t difficult but required extreme care. When you placed your foot on one of these, you had to keep it very still as the slightest movement could twist it off. The only handholds were the nipples which you had to pinch in a strangely sexual way. I had previously thought the buttress was so named because you had to have a lot of courage to climb on it, but after this pitch it was obvious how it got its name. The face climbing was protected by two bolts, it felt run out and strange but contrary to the previous route I felt in control and confident at all times.

See I wasn't telling lies about the nipples.


And the same for feet.

Olive Oil 5.7R

UThis was Anni's second multi-pitch climb. It was a grade harder and every one of the six pitches was 5.7. Sounds like a tough challenge? You bet it was. The first challenge, which we didn't even consider was finding the route. We followed the description in the guide book and as is so often the way ended up bashing our way through vegetation and scrambling up loose rock slopes. Eventually we found the route and when we did were amazed at how good the path was and how quickly we could have got to the route.

The line follows the obvious crack system, traverses across the face on huge jugs and finishes up the corner to the right.

The first pitch was the crux, it wasn't hard but it was awkward. It involved climbing a chimney and then pulling on to the face to make some initially difficult lay back moves before gaining comparitvely easy terrain. I had found it quite tricky but not hard and Anni raced up in no time. There was a pair climbing ahead of us, I had anticipated that we would be fairly slow, but Anni dispatched the pitch so quickly we were soon behind the pair ahead. Normally it isn't nice to have people climbing so close behind you, but as another pair started behind us we realised we had to do it. We were much quicker than the pair in front, bearing in mind it wasn't either of their second multipitch climbs and that one of them had done the route before it was a huge testiment to our climbing abilities. On multipitch routes climbing quickly can be a vitally important skill as it could mean finishing the route in the day light or not.


One thing that could have acounted for slowing things down was that all of the bolts (only for belays) had been removed. This is the belay at the top of the fourth pitch. The wire is fantastic and the tied off flake felt solid. However, this isn't an ideal belay and it would have been awful to have shared it with two other parties. Bolts are a big debate in Red Rocks, whilst I'm generally against bolts where they are not required, I wouldn't have minded some nice belay bolts here.

Anni looking happier after we had warmed up. We got surprisingly cold waiting for the others, we started the route in T-shirts and finished with fleeces and waterproofs on. It was windy and shady, and in combination with the slow moving party meant that we got quite cool waiting.

Nervous in Suburbia

I’ve been pretty happy with the way that I’ve been climbing recently but almost all of the routes that I’ve climbed have been on cracks. As a climber there are many skills that are required, and despite how this blog may sound, crack climbing is but one of them. I was keen to test myself on a face climb, and I was keen to try Nervous in Suburbia which I had done on top rope near the beginning of the trip. The route requires a cool head, I didn’t think that the route was dangerous, but it would be a bad one to fall off. It’s 5.10a, and consistently difficult for its entire length. In comparison to the security of the cracks, the moves are delicate and balancey, and required neat footwork on small holds. It is only 65 feet long and protection consists of one bolt and three drilled pitons. I stood at the bottom of the route and looked out at the dark clouds, I knew that it was going to rain, but I thought that I could do the short route and then feel content for the rest of the day. As I started towards the first drilled piton, I felt the inevitable pit pat of rain and saw small drops appearing on the rock. One shouldn’t climb sandstone in the rain. Really climbing in the rain generally isn’t good as the friction is reduced. This is as true for sandstone as it is for any other rock but in addition sandstone becomes brittle when wet and holds can break off. I had one more difficult move to make before I could clip the piton which involved a step around a pillar on to a good foothold but with virtually nothing for the hands. I decided to downclimb. Downclimbing is never easy and despite the fact that I hadn’t yet reached the first piton I was still quite a way off the ground. With Anni’s guidance, I made it to the ground and the rain ceased. I was ready to call it a day and use the excuse that rain had stopped play. Anni pointed out the blue clouds and suggested that I gave it another go. Her faith in me felt really significant. I think she knew that I really wanted to do the route; I also think she believed that I could do it, and more importantly I think that she trusted my judgement that I could do the route. Like I said earlier, I didn’t consider the route dangerous in the sense that I would seriously harm myself, but I was aware that if I fell before clipping the first protection then twisted/broken ankles would be the likely result. Also the protection on the route was such that if I fell at the wrong time, whilst I wouldn’t hit the ground I would probably fall a reasonable distance. I knew that I could climb it, I just needed to keep a clear head. Despite being nervous, the actual climb went uneventfully, which is probably the best way for such a climb to go. I felt really pleased to have done it but even more touched by the support and encouragement that Anni had given me. I think that climbing essentially is a safe sport, or more accurately, could be a safe sport if you carefully chose what and how you climbed. But the things that draw people to climbing - the trust in one’s ability, the beauty and simplicity of commitment and the aesthetics of clean featureless lines up a rockface - don’t always draw one to the safest routes. Of course this inevitably means taking risks, and calculated risks form a great part of climbing. Many climbers will solo (climb without a rope) routes that they know are well within their comfort zones, others will place less protection on routes that they think are easy, knowing that if they fall they will get injured but having the confidence in their own abilities that they won’t. Well, for me Nervous in Suburbia was a calculated risk. I wasn’t playing with odds as high as the prementioned examples, but I could easily have chosen safer better protected routes. It must be difficult to have a partner who is prepared to (albeit occasionally) test himself on hard suboptimally protected climbs but Anni responded in the perfect way with faith and encouragement. With the complete security of a top rope she was able to try the climb herself but unfortunately rain really did stop play just short of the first drilled piton (which did I mention was quite high off the ground)


I have never seen drilled pitons anywhere except Utah. I can’t see that they would work on anything other than soft sandstone. Basically, the first ascentionist drills a 1/3” hole and hammers a 1/2” piton into it.

My efforts in crack climbing

Well, I did not become a crack climber overnight. I was very keen to try, believe me. Tony picked a route called The Naked and The Dead, which wasn't actually a real Indian Creek crack, but a little varied corner. I could not get off the ground. Tony claimed that technically I seemed to be doing everything right, but I had a splitting pain in my feet, when I tried to step up. I first thought that I had injured my toes in the Narrows trip (I had a little incident involving a small rockslide), and actually, when I took my shoes off, I could find the sore spot by poking. It didn't hinder my walking, and I had a nagging feeling, that it would be something more complicated than just an incidental injury.

The next day we decided to first do some touristing in the Canyonlands, and climb the afternoon. This time Tony picked a 5.9 wide twin crack, called The Twin Crack, and I started going. It felt better. My feet felt definitely a lot better in the wide crack, although this crack meandered quite a lot, and almost provided steps at times. But the wide crack was not OK for my hands... The relatively narrow start was good. I got half way up, and the crack opened more. I just couldn't find a position, where my hands would stick. Bugger. Anyway, it was promising, and I thought, well, let's try something narrow again.

Tony did something interesting looking on top-rope - courtesy of our neighbor climbers, there were queues forming here and there - and we continued after that to our next target. It was again 5.9, but looked fierce. And it was, judging by the way Tony had to fight to top off. But the start looked inviting, so I took position and was ready to go. Knee down left, foot in crack, twist knee back up.

Again, a bone splitting, teeth rattling pain in my foot. I could have cried for frustration. I knew I had it right, but still somehow, I didn't. It was getting dark, and we had to give up. Tony noted a few times about me being incredibly silent in the car on our way back. I felt cheated. Others could do it, without tears running down their faces, why couldn't I?

After an overnight sleep, I have come up with a few ideas to try, when I get the next opportunity to try cracks. Let's see, if they are the correct ideas.

Cat In the Hat

Cat in the Hat was our first climb in Red Rock, together. Obviously Tony had been doing lots of things before I arrived. It has 6 pitches, rated 5.5 and 5.6. The most important thing about this route is that it was my first multi pitch climb... The second most important thing was that it was my first touch of sand stone. I found that I liked it. The holds were plenty and huge. All belays were on ledges (which Tony is telling me is not quite usual) with space to dance. The fourth pitch felt a bit shaky, not because of the holds, but because of the rounded face, opening to the abyss below me. I was quite relieved to reach the fourth anchor, I have to confess.

We didn't finish it, quite, we turned back after the fourth pitch. We did not have the earliest start in the morning, and we thought it might get too hot to climb, if we leave it late. Our camping site neighbour persuaded us to give it a go. And it was not too hot, after all. I was actually wearing my fleece hiking in. So we missed the pitches 5 and 6; a short traverse, and a face climb on black rock. We were not the swiftest pair on the route, people were coming and going past us. Also, we had a pair of brand new ropes, and you wouldn't believe the twists and kinks they had, despite being continuously recoiled. On top of this, the park gates close at 7pm, so we really needed to be back at the car quite early. Excuses, yes, I know. I felt quite beaten after it. Four pitches as a warm up is quite hard for me. I'm still walking, though.

Last Day in the Creek

The day started wet. Frustratingly, it didn't seem so wet to abandon hope of climbing but it was too wet to actually climb. We decided to look at some of the less popular crags and were set to spend the day, in Tom's words, "like the Foreign Legion - carrying around heavy packs without actually doing anything". To get to the unpopular buttresses isn't easy. The paths are poorly defined and the terrain quite challenging. We first went to the Sabatical wall. I was overwhelmed because I had only really heard about a couple of Buttresses and suddenly there was 30 or more Indian Creeks all in a row. As I saw these close to it became apparant that for a lot of them the rock quality was quite poor and that there were considerably fewer possible lines and even fewer that I'd actually like to do. That being said there were some absolute gems there. Sabatical Wall was unsurprisingly wet, we didn't want to wait for it to dry so we went to Critic's Choice. This is home to "Belly full of Bad Berries" which is a hard wide crack that is well known after featuring in the film Return2Sender.

Belly full of Bad Berries follows the crazily steep arch shown in the picture. It starts off fingers and finished off width. In the film they make improbable moves. They seemed to spend as much time upsidedown pulling on their feet as the right way up. It was great to see but I know I'll never try it.

Getting to the base of the route was really hard. It was interesting because we had to cross strange improbable formations of sand, loose rock and mud. I've shown some images below. The approach was eerie and seemed otherworldly. It was also moderately scary as stable was one word that I would be reluctant to associate with the terrain.

I didn't go very close to this. I have no idea how it has survived or if it will be there tomorrow.

We had to detour around formations like this. How can you possibly ascend them. Apart from destroying something beautiful I think on a practical note it would be virtually impossibe.

We actually climbed one route (Bunny Slope). It was 5.9+ and after a sandy start followed a perfect handcrack up a slab. The route was over 50m and after the first 7m was all yellow camolots. Luckily we had a small arsenal. It was a joy to climb after the wider stuff on Blue Gramma. Nevertheless, I was struggling to keep up with the pace and decided that it was time for a change of scenery. Las Vegas was calling and I was hearing its call.

more Indian Creek action

I had now spent longer at Indian Creek than I had intended, but was reluctant to leave as the climbing and the company was so good. I headed out with Kevin and climbed a couple of routes on the smaller Blue Gramma cliff. This seemed a little different from what I had done previously, as things were either a little wider or a little narrower. We had met (Jim Donini) a veteran of Indian Creek climbing the night before. He had explained that the grades at the creek were a little meaningless and could be seperated into more logical demarkations such as "anatomically incorrect". A good example of this can be seen at http://www.bigupproductions.com/bigUpSite2/parallelojams2.html
I haven't been climbing finger stacks or ringlocks, but the person who sends (climbs) this is the one whose fingers best fit the crack. As the cracks in Indian Creek are often the same size for their entire duration, what matters most is if it is a good size for you. If the crack works for you, it'll seem easy, if it doesn't it'll be a struggle. For this reason the grades are only crudely defined. I've been climbing 5.10. Usually this is subdivided into a,b,c and d. But here most of the routes have just been plain 5.10. On Blue Gramma we were planning to climb some of the wider stuff. I have small, delicate, girlish hands and the wide stuff was going to be a challenge.

Blue Gramma cliffs

Gearing up for some wider stuff. Not a yellow camalot in sight. For me yellow is "perfect hands", red is "tight hands". I can climb reds where some struggle (e.g. Kevin - I hope you don't mind). Although I loved Supercrack that was tight blues and for me nice "cupped hands". I'm gearing up for a wider blue crack which I found to be shakey "cupped hands" but too tight for "fists". Kevin cruised this, I like to think because he has larger hands, Toby would have loved every moment of it. I was unsteady but managed to complete the Unnamed route 5.10.

Kevin at the base of two routes. We climbed both Dawn of an Age 5.10b (left) and the unnamed (right). Dawn of an Age was problematic as the crack became awkwardly wide and you had to layback on rounded edges. Laybacking is a funny buisness because when you do it, it's virtually impossible to place gear. You also have to layback quickly as it's strenous. It's also more demanding in Indian Creek (compared with Finland or Norway) because the friction for the feet is worse meaning that more force is necessary on your arms. This is also my least favourite, elbow-injury inducing move. Also when you're laybacking the most challenging thing is to stop laybacking (this is invariably done above your protection as it's almost impossible to place whilst laybacking). Anyway for me this was the crux of the route, and it was with relief that the angle eased, and I could get the weight onto my feet to place a cam.

We then climbed a fantastic unnamed 5.10. The guide book description read "tight hands to off width". The guide book description didn't lie. I thrashed my way up, but it was a really good summary of almost everything that was Indian Creek. I placed every camalot from number 1 to number 6. The photo shows Kevin in front of the crack (which is tight #1s at this stage). He's holding a #6 which shows how wide the crack got. I was pretty solid from sizes 1 until 4, then things got really hard and Kevin had to hold me on the rope several times as I puzzled the, what then seemed intractable, wide wide moves. Eventually I topped, with all the style of a sumo wrestler performing ballet. I had bled over the route and Kevin's larger cams. I felt truely beaten up, but I was laughing as I lowered down. I doubt I'll ever place all the camalots from 1 to 6 on a single pitch again (not least because I don't own a #5 or a #6).

Kevin not seeming to mind his bloody big cam. I refer to the presence of my blood on the hardware, but bloody as a adjectivoral modifier works just as well.

Day 8

There is a huge wealth of climbs in Indian Creek and I’d realised that it was important to play to my strengths. I’m better suited to endurance climbs than steep test pieces. I also prefer the splitter style cracks to the corner cracks. My mind kept coming back to Generic Crack that we had done on the first day. I’d got it clean despite it’s length and my newness to Indian Creek climbing. Also, I was the only person in our group who could either do it, or liked it. The bottom part of the crack was flared and I think that this phased some people. To me it wasn’t a problem as I had spent a large amount of last year working on a flared crack project in Haukkakallio . On lead I felt the same as I did on Supercrack, I didn’t plan the gear well and brought too few #2 camalots and too many larger ones. This meant that I had to run things out a little further above the pieces I did have, but even then I felt in control in a similar way to Supercrack. I felt good and confident again but exhausted, particularly by the unrelentless heat of the desert. I then climbed Binou’s Crack 5.9. This was a bit different from where my strengths are but I felt fine the whole way. It involved a bit of laybacking, and the top part of the climb was protected entirely by Aliens. Aliens are small cams, and with their counterparts from other manufacturers they have revolutionised the climbing of thin cracks, providing protection where previously none was available. Small camming devices are not as good as the larger ones and whilst people do fall on them even on soft sandstone I don’t trust them in the manner that I trust the larger pieces. Despite this I stayed calm and in control. At this stage dark clouds provided some relief from the sun but the wind picked up and rain looked imminent. Despite just having done two routes, we decided to call it a day. Calling it a day wasn't a bad idea, the weather turned windy and blew dust into the tents, I don't know whether it counts as a dust storm, but the combination of dust and wind was enough to convince a Northern European not to climb.

A random punter on Generic crack. Actually, I told the belayer the URL of this site and offered to email photos if they got in contact. So if you want them, you can have them.