Saturday 26 November 2011

A Film Of Do You Know Where You're Children Are? E8 6c (Charlie)

A friend of mine Liam Cook, was on hand last August to record my ascent of 'Do You Know Where You're Children Are?" E8 6c. Its always nice to have some kind of record of an ascent but this is a particularly well made film in my opinion. He opted to do away with the usual format of music and fast edits in favour of a more accurate portrayal of the mood of the day: stillness, birdsong, the echo of Huntsman's Leap and encouragement from Gilly mu wife who did a large portion of the camera work.
I like the pace of the film, again leaning towards showing how these routes take a little while to climb whilst at the same time cutting out most of the long winded shaking out time.

Anyway, here's a link to the film on Vimeo. Many thanks to Liam for taking the time to put this together. And thanks also to Neil and Paul Gresham for the belaying and extra camera work, as well as, of course, Gilly.

http://vimeo.com/31051423

Thursday 3 November 2011

Indoor Scenes & A Quick Look Back (Charlie)

Very little of interest has been happening on the climbing front this last month except i've been indoors pulling on wood and resin in an attempt to get up to speed for a couple of lines that are filling my waking moments with excitement.

A fine weekend out with old chum Ken Palmer was one highlight, where he did his usual trick of announcing how terribly weak he was after his shoulder operation earlier this year and then proceeded to dance effortlessly up all vertical obstacles in his path.

We had a day at Anstey's Cove for old time's sake and then a day at Lower Sharpnose Point. Bit a sport, bit a trad for the symmetry. Ken eased his way up Fay E4 5c, we both had a play on Monk's Satanic Verses E8 6c (one desperate move sandwiched between jug pulling - not psyched) and I onsighted Culm To Mother E5 6b just keep my eye in.

In the mean time I've put together the footage of my ascent of Walk Of Life from almost a year ago. I have done this more as a personal record of the ascent for myself rather than a jazzy MTV style bonanza of quick cuts and slick tunes. As such it wont be to everyone's tastes as it quite long and it's only shot from one angle so cutting is a problem anyway. Bearing in mind that it took over an hour to climb on the actual ascent, this edit is quite swift......its a long route! Its a shame that neither of my falls were caught on camera, and even more of a shame that the camera card runs out before the top out. C'est la vie. As i said before its just good to have some kind of a record at all.

Check it out here:

http://vimeo.com/31508979