Traditional climbing is where my roots lie but sport is an easy tick, fitting in easily around work and kids and a desire to perform rather than be scared. As the grades go up the amount of gear goes down making hard routes that can be onsighted hard to find. But I still needed the adventure, it feeling more distant with every soggy summer that passes. Pabay has been on the list for a while, "hard pumpy climbing with excellent gear on amazing rock" was the word.

Alistair Lee, one of the best film makers, comes up good again. 

Camera men maybe good guys, but the bosses at the TV companies are not! you cannot trust them! This year I was lined up for 8 weeks of work with the BBC for a big project. It was ‘guaranteed’ and I was told to drop all other work, but of course, at the last moment it all fell through leaving me skint, but at least with plenty of time to climb!

There is list of thing climbers should do (in my opinion), and it's a
long list. Climb in Yosemite, sport climb in Spain
and Ceuse, stuff in Verdon and Pembroke, go to Stanage. Treck in Nepal,
do some stuff in the Alps; it goes on. But multi
pitching in Riglos is something I have been meaning to do for a long
time.

Adam Ondra came to Britain!  A very big deal indeed. Adam is the best sport climber in the world, no questions asked. Chris Sharma, who has done a bit of climbing, said he was totally blown away by Ondra’s performance! He went direct to Malham and directly to try some of my routes that have laid untouched for years…

But it still feels like a very long way off! That feeling you get when
you first try something really hard. It's alien to most climbers, as
they don't often try hard stuff relative to them. I'm talking about
routes where you can't even do the moves, where success is measured in
tens of days or even years. Not something that was desperate but you'll
probably do next go.

No Pain No Gain

If everything was easy nothing would be a challenge. If we could fly we wouldn’t bother climbing; the harder the challenge the bigger the buzz. Failure hurts, but without failure there is no success. Without failure there is no need to work hard to gain success.

Funny game climbing, sometimes its like buses, you wait for ages, getting more and more frustrated, and then, just when you've given up, two come along at once.

Only 8c+ but still the big one

Hubble was first climbed by Ben Moon at the cliff of Raventor in the Peak. The world’s first F8c+, one small set of moves for man, but one giant leap for mankind. The route is pure power, it’s a boulder problem. It would be a font 8B boulder problem if it had a flat grassy landing. Seven hand moves, nine if you’re short.

Only 8c+ but still the big one