Bear Grylls Ruined My Redpoint
There’s a million reasons you can roll out for not succeeding on a project: skin, conditions, tired from training, a hangover. I thought I’d used up every excuse in the book until last week. 
Julia sends Thriller while Bear Grylls isn't around....
There’s a route at Malham I’ve been trying. It doesn’t get done very much, but it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s called Thriller, and it’s a burly, bouldery, desperate 7c+ extension to the well-trodden warm-up Consenting Adults. I think people might be put off by the fact that it’s bouldery, but don’t be fooled – there is literally nothing more fun than power-screaming your way through undercuts in a roof way off the deck. The fact that it tackles the roof itself is also really cool. This roof caps many of the shorter routes and for years seemed to me like an impossible barrier never to be overcome. Managing to breach it and break through to the headwall above is an amazing feeling. There is also a no-hands knee-bar rest thrown in for good measure. The route has everything.
Above Thriller is another extension, Victor Hugo (8b). Again, it hardly ever gets done so the headwall isn’t the cleanest and it’s had a bird’s nest in it most of the autumn, but the terrain it goes through is breath-taking. My aim for the year was to have a crack at the full 8b link.
I’d usually hope to try and do a 7c+ fairly quickly, but sometimes in climbing the grade just doesn’t reflect the difficulty for you of that particular problem or route. A style you aren’t used to, or a particular weakness you have, can make something supposedly amenable feel like the living end. Thriller was desperate for me. When I first tried it in the spring I couldn’t even hold my weight on the holds, let alone start to move off them. I wasn’t strong enough on burly moves and I didn’t have the technique to move on terrain like that. Stu took me aside one lunchtime and tried to give me a reality-check by suggesting I should pick something else to get stuck into, but I am not in the habit of listening to what he says so I cheerfully ignored him. And so Thriller became my first project.
With other climbing goals like the BLCCs on the go at the same time, I didn’t have much time to spend on the route itself so I figured my best chance of doing it (and perhaps Victor Hugo) when conditions got good in the autumn was to replicate the crux moves on the training board at the Foundry. With the help of a friend, who is amazing at creating masterpieces on plastic, I got some pretty good problems worked out and I trained on them every week. I knew I wouldn’t get many redpoint sessions on the route so I also worked hard at other areas of weakness like general technique and climbing well under pressure. Sporadic sessions up at Malham showed improvement, and I slowly found myself going from being able to do some moves, to linking them, to feeling close to the tick.
Last Tuesday we headed up to the Cove in torrential rain and 7 degree temperatures. Being a weekday as well, I was sure there would be no-one there. That was pretty much true if you discounted the 20-strong film crew equipped with walkie-talkies and a drone ready to film the extreme descent of Bear Grylls from the top of the cove. Apparently, Bear was going to interview Steve McClure mid-air and try some of the moves on Bat Route. As pre-redpoint entertainment goes, this was pretty good.
In such cold weather and with the prospect of Thriller getting wet in the rain I was feeling the pressure and struggling a bit to focus. A blown redpoint or two saw me on the deck and angry. Not as angry as I was about to be an hour later though. Starting up the route again, this time I finally felt in the zone. I was climbing well and I knew it. After shaking out in the knee-bar I was just about to set off when I heard the immortal words from someone in the film crew “could everyone in the cove be quiet please. We’re filming the interview now”! Knowing that I often power-screamed on the moves, this was like a death knell to me. How does one climb aggressively through a roof when all your concentration is taken up making sure you don’t let out a yelp of effort by accident? Slumping on the rope yet again, I silently cursed Bear Grylls and his extreme abseiling!
Luckily for me, fortune did swing my way and after the crowds had left later in the day I found enough juice for one last effort which was, thankfully, enough. Clipping the chains on Thriller meant an awful lot to me. Not a big number in the scheme of things, but definitely one of the hardest things I think I’ve done. Now it’s just Victor Hugo to go. Can’t wait!