Grivel Ultra Light Plume carabiner, by Stevie Haston

The Grivel Plume carabiner is one of my favorite bits of kit, its just plain useful and damn light. It is about 28grs, you can get biners a few grams lighter but they wont feel as ‘big’ in your hand, this is important if you have big clumsy hands like me or are just plain clumsy. If you use them in winter you will also find the gate open width very favorable to gloved hands. Nowadays people carry a lotta of very useful gear but in the end in all mounts up and things get heavy. The plume helps things stay light and real.

The Grivel Plume also comes as a screw-gate and which is so didi you just cant believe it! It comes in at just over 30grs for a screw-gate, so you might not even notice two of them at the back of your harness.

Each Plume is individually tested on a very controlled and computer calibrated machine. (check the video on www.grivel.com)

Melloblocco May 5th/8th 2011, May 6th slideshow by Stevie Mellow Haston

The Melloblocco international bouldering event is staged in the incredible Val Masino on May 5th to 8th, it’s an event not to miss. The great –and I mean size of houses boulders- are a sight to see, and for the enthusiast a joy to climb. The often rough granite is an excellent medium to climb on, while the scenery is a feast for the eyes. Each year this competition and fiesta attracts up to 2000 happy visitors, some come to watch most come to boulder. I have been invited to give a lecture/slideshow which pleases me as I wanted an excuse to visit the valley again, so if you have time visit my

show on May 6th. My slides will cover some bouldering, big rocks, and bigger mountains and I hope it will please diverse tastes, it normally does. In the past the Melloblocco has attracted some of the worlds best boulders and believe me it is a shock to see what they can pull on, probably even more of a shock to see them do stuff way beyond your level first time around! A visit to the area is a must if you are a boulderer but do not neglect to go if you love climbing granite single or multi pitch. When I went to the valley I thought the climbing comparable to Yosemite but without the crowds. There will be crowds on the weekend of the competition but away from the boulders it will be tranquille. Likewise if you like running trails you will be delighted with the high trails in very wild mountains. The valley has been used as a Sky running comp before so it is an exciting place for running giving high rough trails and lower valley mellowness. My fondest memory is of doing the classic route which looks like a stuck on boot, it was in my opinion better than Astroman. There you go, you can’t fail to have a good time.  

DESERT TOWERS a great book by Steve Bartlett aka "Crusher"

Just got a book written by Steve "Crusher" Bartlett, a flash of  some nice memories of Desert climbing, some epics, freeing quite a few towers!!!! A great book about the history of desert and towers climbing.. And if you haven't climb a Desert tower, in the Fisher or Monument Bassin you've missed something....Stevie will do a better review later...

Laurence

We look so young!!!

Crusher and Stevie, fully racked!

Sunset on the Fisher

Freeing the Hindu Tower.

Ruby's café

Honouree, and Honourable by Stevie Cry Havoc Haston

Being an Honourable Member was I always thought a bit of a veiled joke, the stress, in my mind, was always on the word Member. Kinda appropriate when thinking of Members of Parliament for instance. Anyway the Malta Climbing Club thought they would flatter me by creating me a lifelong, Honoree Participant. Great except the engraver wrote Honourable, when I pedantically pointed out the mistake they were dully apologetic, and insisted on having it changed, I adamantly refused. I preferred the Honourable to the Honouree, in fact I would even like a few more words tagged on, like venerable and then venerated. So we would in fact need a scroll, rather than a plaque! Reminds me of those ancient generals with tons of medals, which they clearly didn’t earn. Or perhaps those climbers who turn up year after interminable year at international meetings, harking, and barking on about trivial things they did a quarter of a century ago. I am now over a half century old, and I am tempted to ask will I ever do anything that is note worthy again? Hopefully I will do a few honourable things and so the Plaque I had from the Malta Climbing club will serve as a reminder to be Honourable, so thanks guys. Plus I think I don’t have the energy to be even mischievous, let alone, cause dishonourable havoc ever again.  

Personal reality check, Philip A Dick Haston

Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? Maybe. Was Philip K Dick a sportsman? No he was an interesting an imaginative writer of cracking science fiction. I am a boring sports Jock, who unfortunately is stuck with reality. What is my present reality? Every now and then you have to take stock, so here goes. I am poor at everything! Plus I am poor! I am however happy, maybe that’s what’s wrong. I just had a great time in Malta and made some friends, but I did realize I was not very good at anything physical. Do I want to be? Yes. So access what’s wrong and change it. I have no ambition or goal! So make a goal! Last year was a great one, I did 2 rock climbs of the 9a grade, a mixed route called Cannabis, which is both one of the top for beauty and difficulty in the world, and did enough endurance to do the Tor de Giants trail race. I am not going to have another year like that, it was off the back of 2 years systematic training, and I work a bit now. Since the Tor de Géants race I have done a lot of endurance and neglected my climbing skills, but training has been all over the place, unsystematic and too unstructured. My pulse this year is much lower than last year, but my running is of a disappointing standard! What’s wrong? I enjoy my endurance rather than work at it! My rock climbing is as low as it ever gets, but I really enjoy it, and really appreciate it a lot. My snowboarding and mountain skills are back to where they were, but I don’t like the risk, and I used to love the risk. I have to make a plan, and try and stick to it, or things could get even more erratic! I am too relaxed and fat. I needed to put some weight on after two years of training to give my body a break, but unhappily, I think that holiday is over! So my plan is to get back to above 8a standard climbing, but more importantly to improve in the Tor de Giants race. I can’t really improve at climbing, but at running I am a baby! The rock climbing standard will be easy; lose some weight and just go climbing, 6 weeks max. The Tor is on September 11, 6 full months away, and time to get into a solid systematic training regime. I must try not to over-do it, and get injured. Wish me luck.

First day of the Tor des Géants Photo Lorenzo Belfrond

What is a realistic target for this race of 330 km and 24, 000 meters of  up? It’s 3 Lake district Bob Grahams in one go! It’s such a demanding race that I wont put a number on it, in case I try too hard, instead I will be happy with an improvement, but it will be a big, realistic, possible improvement, that will give me something to aim for. There you go, plan is sorted. Now comes the pain, a  mountain of pain ! An ocean of pain, I will bathe in its turbulent waters and cleanse myself of human weakness. I will become an Ibex, that tough imperial mountain goat, which is the emblem of this mountain region. A proud regal horny old goat, yep just like the old days.  But it’s not the old days, don’t remind me. I am too old for sport, every body says so, I agree most days, and then sometimes, I know that old high standard is just under the surface. So, what to do? Running for three or four days without sleep is fairly tough, so it’s appropriate to take it seriously. I bought a basic heart rate monitor to keep track of my resting heart rate in the morning, as this is the only simple way of assessing if you are overtraining. Running is great, and simple. Running well, is on the other hand annoyingly difficult, and complex!  Your max performance on a given day is asking for several different aspects of training and resting, to come together, like the wind and the tides, to create a personal tsunami of excellence. Running is like climbing, a divine pain in the arse!   

Lost in Translation, by who gives a Bombay Duck Haston

Peuterey Integral versus Ben No comment!

I get some criticism about my work. Surprisingly I do a lot of work, so not surprising that some of it is not 10 outta 10. One of the funniest complaints I get is why don’t I climb in Scotland and do some climbs over there! I live in Courmayeur, don’t you square headed Jocks realize that it’s more beautiful here! One of these chauvinistic nincompoops complained to two of my sponsors and to another manufacturer who doesn’t even sponsor me, they all told the guy to get to Bombay Duck. For the record, I don’t like Scotland very much, and when it is raining, blowing a gale, or in the MIDGE season, I really hate it. I just came back from Gozo and Malta, lovely food, lovely people, interesting climbing and I felt sorry to leave, but as soon as I got off the bus, I went for a walk to look at the incomparable Peuterey Intergral ridge to the summit of Mont Blanc. Wow, Wow, Bow wow ffing wow, you can howl just looking at the beauty of that long long route, it’s a tadge more attractive than Ben Bloody Boring Nevis. God made the Peuterey route first thing Monday morning, when he was fresh after his second triple cappuccino. You can even see where he was shaking and his celestial brush slipped and caused the great gap in the ridge that is the Dames Anglaises, thank god for that over caffeinated miss-doodle, it’s the flaw that makes the ridge ultra perfect. So to that guy who keeps contacting my sponsors, I would call you an idiot but that would be insulting to idiots, if I have any spare cash or time there’s a couple or more places I’d like to go: The Dolomites for climbing and trekking, Norway for real ice, and before I die I’d like to worship the Himalaya again… Hey bonnie lad to be above 7000meters on a starry night with the moonlight sparkling, carrying a snowboard, de ya nay ken?

proper stuff

Oh yes by the way, when I write, Laurence my wife, sometimes finds the words where I’ve lost them in a computer somewhere, she then corrects it and adds some more mistakes-she is French and dyslectic and has a mind that Goggle fish are head hunting. Her ability to make my perfect English look like Serbo-Croate married to Cantonese is admired by the CIA. I am nominally Cockney. Sometimes my “work” then goes on to another web site, or a magazine, and is then corrected by an expert i.e. someone who has spent a couple of years at a state run comprehensive school, and who has failed to get a well paid job since. Once one of my pieces was corrected 15 times, before being inflicted on the public! That short piece earned me 3500 dollars, they could have corrected it more, they could have written it themselves, as long as I get paid, I don’t care. What I dislike is the writing that doesn’t mean anything, or the plain lies you get, like Scotland is Great, it’s not, just read the weather report, it’s ok if you like that sort of thing, you know dull over cast skies, poor conditions generally for ice climbing, flying kites and wearing kilts.

 I read a mag on the plane the other day, it had 60 pairs of shoes ‘reviewed’, and not an article worth reading, triple wow! I think it has the biggest outdoor circulation in Britain, but it does have the commas in the right places, so I guess everything is ok then!  

Joined Meditation, by Laurence Gouault.Haston

Just done a joined healing meditation for all those people in Japan going through such a devastating time! We are all affected by what is happening, we are all fragile, our planet is fragile, our world is fragile and we should all say a prayer for them and many others people in the world.

Sat Nam