Coach Randall done good!

I'm not going to write much about my weekend, because it was wet and fairly unimpressive on the climbing front. On saturday I went to the Works with the two mini-Ruperts (age 33 and <1year, respectively). On Sunday Jules and I went back to Malham to get some pics. It was horrid, so we drove from there to the Tor, which was also horrid, so we drove to the Foundry. Which was dry, at least.


Much more exciting though, is that Coach Randall destroyed his U.S project, the only off-width visible from space! The ascent has made a bit of a splash in the news, with UKC articles, a great blog post from Alex Ekins, and some grumbling from Stevie Haston, one of the great heroes, who's lost a project to a younger man.

What I like about this news story is the backdrop of obsession and quirkiness that lies behind it. Developing an unhealthy attraction to off-widths is pretty rare behaviour for anyone, but is right out of left-field in the UK, where we don't have much of this particular type of climbing. It's so impressive that Tom and Pete buried themselves in their cellar, burdened themselves with huge weights and hung from parallel joints of wood until their eyes bled, their muscles burst and their sanity cracked. There's something oddly British about emerging from a small cellar as two of the best crack climbers in the world. As someone posted on supertopo.com -  "this is the attitude that built the British Empire". What a pair of legends!