"The best climber is the one having the most fun" Alex Lowe
The Red Bull website has an article by Alison Mann with a list of some of the top via ferrata around the world. It was flattering to be interviewed by Alison for the article. Since Alison and I talked, I’ve been curious to see which via ferrata people suggested as some of the best and the article highlights some amazing routes. Reading about these via ferrata and seeing stunning photos of them really makes we want to get out there to climb.
The article is at:
You need a lot of hope if you want to rock climb in the UK. Hope that it won’t rain on your weekend climbing trip. Hope that the rain will stop by the afternoon so that you can go climbing. Hope that the rock will dry out quickly from the last lot of rain because you’ve been sitting in the café far too long. Hope that the rain will hold off until you have finished your climb. Hope that the water slowly trickling down your sleeves as you climb is just a quick shower. Even hope that the patch of lighter cloud you can see in the distance is the “possibly clearing later” that the weather forecast mentioned. You need that hope, particularly if you are a London-based climber like me and every trip to a climbing venue is an investment of time and effort. It’s that hope that gets you in your car to drive to the Peak District or North Wales and it’s what gets you out of your tent when rain is pattering on it first thing in the morning. Read more
My main priority in my return to rock climbing is to build up my strength and develop my climbing technique in a way that reduces the chance of injuring myself again. To do this I need to reassess how I climb. My hope is that if I do this now, I can stop slipping back into any bad habits as well as stop new bad habits developing. I decided that the best way to do this was to get an expert to assess my climbing and coach me on what to do to improve it. So, I booked a climbing injury prevention session with Alice Turner, a qualified mountain instructor (MIA) and physiotherapist. What I learned has really got me thinking about how I can climb in a smarter way by changing some of the fundamentals of how I move. Read more
