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Johnny Dawes – Moving On
Interviewing Johnny Dawes is both fascinating and challenging, as much intellectual joust as interview. Compared to discussions I’ve had with some other climbers, it’s like listening to free-form jazz rather than some anodyne boy band, the melodies obscure, sometimes dissonant and prone to sudden tangents, but never, ever boring. The challenge with Dawes is to […]
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Johnny Dawes – a storm in a teacup?
Johnny Dawes – Moving On Interviewing Johnny Dawes is both fascinating and challenging, as much intellectual joust as interview. Compared to discussions I’ve had with some other climbers, it’s like listening to free-form jazz rather than some anodyne boy band, the melodies obscure, sometimes dissonant and prone to sudden tangents, but never, ever […]
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The KTM Kapoho 27.5+ – more of everything?
The prospect of losing your bike for a week while TFTuned work their magic is always scary, particularly when the UK is enjoying the longest dry spell since the last ice age. Thankfully, my pal Henry Nottage at Tony Butterworth’s had a solution – a courtesy bike. However, he’s known me long enough to […]
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SHAFF Highlights – Operation Moffatt
I read Gwen Moffat’s Space Below My Feet early in my climbing career when women were still strange and exotic creatures in climbing circles and those that ventured out were treated to a quick top rope on a fiendish 5c by a surly boyfriend before being asked to return to tea-making. Which goes some way to […]
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SHAFF Highlights – Mountain Bikes and Bothy Nights
Alastair Humphreys has produced a charming short film that is essentially a paean to the delights of Scottish mountain bothies. Armed only with an Orange mountain bike and minimal bike-packing kit, he regularly takes the night train from London in order to recharge his batteries and enjoy the solitude of the glens. Simple and unselfconsciously poetic, […]
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A Line Across The Sky – Two Go Mad in Patagonia….
Let’s examine the standard mountaineering film template. Craggy heavily bearded types take months planning an assault on Parba Nangbat, drone on endlessly about the challenge and gather a mountain of gear that is finally, after a tedious build-up, carried to the foot of the mountain by some nice cheap native bearers. The next hour is the cinematic […]
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SHAFF2015 Shorts Round-up
The Wedge A wedge is wave that forms in the angle of a cliff or as the result of a man made structure like a jetty. They’re generally the ugly face of surfing, mutant waves that don’t conform to the usual rules. They tend to take no prisoners. The Wedge is an eye-popping four minute […]
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SHAFF2015 – Project Mina
Project Mina is a thought provoking film. Essentially the story of Mina Leslie Wujatsyk trying to make her mark in the world of competition bouldering, it ends up being an honest appraisal of the pressures that elite climbers have to tussle with. Wujastyk is a phenomenal climber, as those who have seen the short film […]
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SHAFF2015 – Redemption – The James Pearson Story
Way back in 2008, rock climbing underwent one of its periodic naval gazing episodes. James Pearson, having shaken up Peak District climbing by cruising a number of existing hard routes and nabbing a couple of last great problems, climbed The Walk of Life on Dyer’s Lookout, grading it E12. I’m sure I wasn’t the only […]
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SHAFF2015 – Santa Cruz 5010 in Terrific Torridon
Santa Cruz 5010 may be a film promoting a product but it’s Steve Peat riding in beautiful Torridon, so it’s easy to forgive the product placement. It’s a little gem featuring a bona fide sporting hero, the production values are top notch, the riding is exceptional and the scenery is jaw dropping. This film made it a certainty […]
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SHAFF2015 – Valley Uprising
Valley Uprising is to Yosemite climbing what Stacey Peralta’s Riding Giants was to big wave surfing. Using a similar mix of first person testimony, original footage, photos and reconstructions, it weaves a picaresque tale of the dirtbags, heroes, villains, dope fiends and climbing superstars who contributed to the development of the big walls of Yosemite […]
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Great Britain Mountain Biking – Tom Fenton & Andy McCandlish – Vertebrate Publishing
Over the years, Vertebrate Publishing have produced a series of area guides to Britains diverse mountain biking landscape. Detailed and authoritative, they’re arguably the best mountain bike guidebooks in the country. This mighty tome however is an attempt to encapsulate all that the UK has to offer, the best of the epics, quick blasts and […]
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Does Sport England understand climbing and mountaineering?
The Peak Adventure Sports Alliance campaigns on behalf of outdoor pursuits enthusiasts and is determined to impress upon Central Government and the National Park Authority just how crucial adventure sports are both to the economic viability of the Peak District and the health of the nation. Many column inches have been devoted to […]
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Mountain biking – going downhill, but in a good way….
When someone as steeped in the world of mountain biking as Andy Waterman suggests that the sport is in decline, it’s got to be worth taking seriously and, in an article entitled ‘When Did it all Start to go Downhill for Mountain Biking‘ in the Independent, that’s exactly what he suggests. However, the picture he […]