From Cwm Pennant to Wyoming

 Photo: Slam Media

Following a recent blog post Nantmor Ghost Materialises, which detailed an old climbing name from the past who had popped up in a Welsh language programme with legendary Welsh climber,Eric Jones. I'm delighted to have tracked down the actual programme on Clic, S4C's equivalent of BBC's iPlayer.(Link at the bottom of the page) The programme, 75:Byth Rhy Hen, (75: Never too old) is actually a really inspiring example of the eternal spirit that lives inside of all true lovers of the mountains. Jeremy Trumper and Eric Jones were both 75 when they climbed The Devil's Tower in Wyoming. As a warm up,they were shown in the programme,roaring up the Pass on their motorbikes to climb the classic Brown/Whillans E1, Cemetery Gates. The S4C website offers the following information on the programme......

So many of us have dream impossible things, but Jeremy Trumper from Gwynedd was determined that he would make his dream a reality.
At 75 years old, with the company of his great friend, renowned climber and adventurer Eric Jones on the adventure, Jeremy set off from Cwm Pennant near Porthmadog to the state of Wyoming in America, with the intention of climbing to the summit of the eminent Devil's Tower.
Follow each step of their journey on 75: Byth Rhy Hen (75: Never too old) on Thursday 18 April on S4C.
"I started climbing when I was in school. At fourteen I went to the scouts and the famous climber Showell Styles would lead us on climbs."
Jeremy Trumper ran a caravan park and farmed a small holding in Cwm Pennant all his life, so leisure time wasn't something he had in abundance to say the least.
"I didn't climb in Europe until I was in my forties, but I'd climb with the Porthmadog Climbing Club often, and that's where I met my wife, Margaret."
And it seems that it's Margaret who's responsible for igniting Jeremy's obsession with the Devil's Tower in the first place.
"One Christmas she bought me a book which was full of amazing climbs all around the world, and that's when I first came across the Devil's Tower. And since then I've been obsessed with the idea, and determined to climb to the summit."
Devil's Tower is a strikingly steep rock that rises over 1,200 feet from its surrounding flat landscape. Located in the Black Hills of Crook County above Belle Fourche River, the igneous tower is a popular location attracting climbers from all over the globe.
Finally, in September 2012, when Jeremy was retired and had reached 75 years of age, after over ten years of imagining and hoping his great dream came true.
"It was such a great feeling, something you've dreamed about for so long coming alive, and it was even better than I'd imagines. I was so glad to have Eric by my side as well; I couldn't have found a better friend to come along on the adventure."
The challenge of bringing the excitement of any sporting event to life on screen is important to Aled Llŷr, but Jeremy and Eric's story really touched a nerve with the programme's producer from Slam Media.
"What delights me most about this story is their friendship. They are both fine men - they've lived and their values and friendship are something special. I hope the programme will inspire the viewers, however old they are."

The programme will be online until May 25th and is only available to UK residents.

 To watch the programme, just click on....75: Byth Rhy Hen 
Click 'S' for English subtitles.

The art of Lomography and talking digital photography blues.

Anthony Gormley's Another Place: Crosby Beach, Merseyside. Taken on a Holga 35BC film camera on out of date 200 ASA film. Original-unedited Print.

As someone who is more a happy snapper than a fully fledged photographer,I'm always impressed when I see a professionally created landscape photograph. An image which transcends the mere technically proficient capturing of a scene, by instilling mood and atmosphere into a composition. However, the digital revolution has brought near professional results within reach of just about anyone who can afford a decent camera and who can find their way around an editing suite.

One of the unforeseen side effects of these technical advances, has been the way landscape photography has evolved into a creative yawn fest. I very much include my own compositions in this. I was downloading images onto my laptop the other day and I could only think..God...these are dull! Images that while being reasonably sharp and well composed,lacked any element of creativity.

 It made me hark back to my earliest forays into the world of photography when with my first proper camera-a Soviet Zorki 4 Rangefinder camera- I was taught the dark art of developing and processing black and white film. For this education-and the donation of a Gnome enlarger and all the necessary equipment, I will always be grateful to a guy called Bill Simmonds.Now long dead I imagine? Bill was an old black guy who worked as a storeman in a laundry company in Chester where I was driving a van, and it was he who taught me the basics of film photography and developing.

Like most happy snappers, I gradually got lazy and moved over to idiot proof compacts and digital photography, but in recent months,my interest in film photography, in particular lomography has grown  in proportion to my increasing boredom with digital photography. If you are not familiar with lomography then here's a brief rundown.....

 The Lomo 35mm film camera was a tiny Soviet compact camera based on a Japanese Cosina to which it was identical. My memories of owning a Lomo in the early 80's was that it was very crudely built compared to Japanese cameras.It's results were frankly weird and unpredictable. Over saturated images with unintentional vignetting ( darkening at the edges) and prone to light leaks. Mine didn't last very long before the winder broke and I gave it away.

Sometime in the early 90's, two Austrian art students bought a second hand Lomo and just loved the very elements of a lomo image that would have seen a professional photographer hurling it in the nearest river. The cult of lomography had been born. These days it is a world wide creative movement but like all movements, prone to misinterpretation. For example, you don't necessarily need to use a Lomo camera-which are still being made- to take a lomo photograph. Various cameras are classified as 'Lomography cameras' but what they have in common tends to be their technical lack of sophistication and agricultural build quality.

Lomography is often also referred to as Analogue or Lo-Fi photography. If you look on eBay at cameras being sold as 'Lomo' type  then you will see a huge array of cameras from quite sopisticated SLR cameras to 90's compacts. Basically, anyone selling a camera like this as a 'Lomo' camera is a con merchant. There are several cameras which are now included into the Lomo stable. Most notably the mass produced Chinese made Holga and the Diana. Both these cheap little plastic cameras use both 120 and 35mm film formats. The mainstays of the Lomo range tend to be Soviet/Chinese cameras such as the medium format Lubitel, the Cosmic Symbol/Smerna and the Seagull, but there are other cameras  from outside the old Soviet/China block which compliment the range. Like the mass produced mainstays from the East, these are inevitably totally unsopisticated plastic wind on 35mm film cameras which will take an image not unlike that taken by a Lomo or Holga. For example, in the last 12 months I've picked up a Prinz Junior camera-As sold by Dixons in the 1980's ( £4 in Church Stretton Antiques) and a similar model, an Inovar, ( £1.52 on eBay) which take Holga-esque images.

A fivers worth of 'Lomo'cameras.

A Lomo image is as distinct from a professional digital photograph as an Abstract expressionist painting is from a Pre-Raphealite work. Lacking the technical refinements of an expensive digital camera, a print image taken by a 'Lomo' camera is all about creating something different. Something which instinctively works through those very elements which would be seen as failings in a digital image.Over/under exposure, producing skewed light and shade, exaggerated colour and saturation, blurring and light slashes etc.

These days, a successful company in Europe is marketing Lomography as a life style choice. Promoting cameras like the original Lomo,(£300+ on some models) The sardine can La Sardinia ...the Sprocket Rocket ( A camera which shows the sprocket holes on a developed image) etc etc, but be warned. They charge an arm and a leg for these cameras. Much better for your bank balance if you scour the charity shops or eBay for a Lomo type camera.

 
Of course one area where digital will always triumph over film is in it's accessibility and ease of sharing images over the internet. Even if you live in a town with a local  film processing store, you will still need to cool your boots while waiting for your film to be developed. Then you will need to scan your prints if you want to use them on the net. However, there is something about a film image that works in that inimitable Lomo style which can't be replicated by photo editing of digital images. All editing suites these days it seems offer 'Lomo' and 'Holga' editing effects.Incidentally. the ubiquitous Instagram images and mobile phone photographic suites like Hipstamatic are unashamedly aping the Lo-Fi results of a lomograph film print.

While digital photography is here to stay and will continue to sweep all other formats before it. The fact that it offers the punter endless possibilities in creating image perfection is for me it's Achilles heel. Who wants visual perfection. I've got two eyes in my head that can give me that. I want a format which skews perfection in an artistic and creative way. Given the huge success of Instagram then it's obvious that even a huge company like Google have picked up on that.

words and images John Appleby

What becomes of the broken hearted?

I stood at a crossroads...literally. My GPS indicated that I was close to the Fire Tower which had eluded me a week or so back (see All along the Watchtower). A fire break cut through the denser forest but that too had succumbed to natural regeneration. Would it go? At that point my eyes fell upon a simple post set back off the trail. I initially thought it was an old fence post but I was sure that I could see something carved beneath the lichen. Perhaps it marked the way to the Fire Tower or was a waymark-or blaze as they call them in the States-  indicating an old pathway that had been swallowed up by the forest. Picking my way across the rough ground I saw that it was indeed carved with an inscription....'Julian..  14 April 93.. died of loneliness'.

Wow..talk about a left hook into the emotional solar plexus! First thoughts of course..Who was Julian? followed by how did he die of loneliness? It was exactly 20 years ago almost to the month. Given it's position I wondered if perhaps I was the first person to see this? You immediately think of a young male suicide. Suicides are sadly all too common in these remote forests and backwaters and appear to be nearly always men. As the crow flies,about a mile away is a little cairn atop a little peak which takes in the vast panorama with the main Snowdonia peaks to the north and the wild Berwyns to the south.

In between the Arans and the Arenigs hover above the clouds. On this cairn is a simple plaque which remembers another young man who it reminds us 'dedicated his life to the disabled'. Two old farmers I met up there told me that he had committed suicide nearby. 'When they found him they didn't know who he was..took them weeks to find out' one of them said. No wonder Hiraethog translates as 'The moors of longing'. This is a melancholic place to be sure.

Getting back to Julian; thoughts and theories formulated in my head. Perhaps Julian himself had knocked it in before taking his own life..here..elsewhere?  Was this a special place. Somewhere he had regularly brought the love of his life.The one who had broken his heart and led him  to die of loneliness? If friends or family left it why such a maudlin statement and why did he die of loneliness if there were people who cared enough to come to this remote spot to remember him? Perhaps Julian was a family pet who pined away when his owner died?

I left Julian's lonely memorial behind and followed the trail which eventually reached the very edge of the forest. My GPS revealed the spot where the Fire Tower should have been but it was no longer there.Like Julian it had slipped into the past and no longer existed. At that point, Fergus disturbed two huge crows feasting on a lamb. One of them lazily took off and immediately crashed into the stock fence, catapulting back almost into the hounds' jaws. Recovering, it took off again and, seemingly gorged on fresh meat, cleared the fence with some difficulty and sluggishly took off into the West. The day before, a blue tit, obviously in a state of spring fever, had crashed into a shed at home. I picked it up and it had clasped my finger with it's long claws. Looking surprisingly perky considering it's situation. I prized off its claws placed on a shed roof,well out of reach of cats and eventually it took off and continued it's play making amongst the silver birches.

If I was native American or Australian aboriginal then I would probably consider crashing birds a portentous sign. 'These are the days of miracles and wonders, this is a long distance call'.

Homage to a Hound- Crafnant Valley

Fragments: The secret life of essays

I was sorting through various files and papers and rediscovered a number of old essays,short stories poems and even some short plays which I'd written years ago. Mostly pre word processor and typewritten-complete with tippex corrections- or scrawled in Biro. Amongst the collection of stuff-from a horror story set on a whaling ship in Newfoundland to agitprop plays- were some old climbing articles and related poetry. Some of these poems were so high flown they would have made a Victorian romantic disciple of Wordsworth blush, but I was surprised to find that some of these pieces still worked reasonably well.

It was interesting to re-read some old articles which had either been written as part of a collection of essays, originally intended to be brought together in book form-only half completed- or as magazine articles. These had either been rejected or never submitted. I found an old article a few years ago which was originally accepted for publication in Climber when Cameron MacNeish was editor but as it coincided with him moving out of the editors chair, his successor obviously wasn't so keen and he never used it.

It had gathered dust for ten years or so until I decided to dust it down and put it out on Footless Crow. Ironically, the article about Alistair Crowley's Himalayan misadventures-'Mountains and other Goats' is the most popular article ever published on FC,regularly topping the most read features despite it being on site for three years. Incidentally, I don't think it's particularly good-Robin Campbell's Crowley piece also published on FC is much more rounded and scholarly but hey...a lot of people out there like it so I shouldn't complain!

Amongst the material is a collection of articles which had been commissioned for a now defunct outdoor magazine called Outdoor Action. I had completed six features which were to be published in monthly intervals as 'Classic scrambles in England and Wales.'. Once again fate intervened.The magazine folded and the feature ended up never seeing the light of day.As did the 'action' slides I'd taken on each route.

Some of these essays are incredibly personal and poignant. One recalls a magic week on the Argyll coast 15 years ago with my kids and female friend and her two youngsters where under a roaring sun and sublime indigo skies we lived high on the hog and swam in green waters and climbed on virgin sea cliffs. Sadly she died suddenly two years ago after Leukemia took hold and went through her like wild fire. It took her life just three weeks after diagnoses.Re-reading it again and looking at the photographs taken at the time raises a tear and a smile

Another essay details the time I spread my Father and his dog Gypsy's ashes on Bryn Castell in Snowdonia. An event which bore incredible similarities, with regard to the elemental forces at work that day,with someone else whose mortal remains ended up on this little Scot's Pine topped knoll-Menlove Edwards.

I might use some of these essays online in the future.After all,what good are these pieces gathering dust and unread. Someone out these might find something in them hopefully. I might even give some of the poems an airing......Now,that IS a high risk strategy from which my reputation might never recover!

Post card from Wetherspoons

Wetherspoons-Ruthin.The temporary Crow Towers.

Those who tune in regularly to the Crow blogs might have noticed that things have been a bit staccato of late. Truth is, my phone/internet line has been down since Easter. Apparently knocked out by the exceptional weather we had in March when deep snow and gale force winds ripped into the system and took a number of us out. For an internet based media,that's rather a bind to say the least. As I write,I'm sitting in the corner of the Wetherspoons' Castle Hotel in the ancient market town of Ruthin, tapping away on my laptop and slugging a pint of Quagmire, a rather fine 6% dark ale. It's become a twice weekly ritual.The 22 mile round trip to tune into the outside world. For someone who spends quite a few hours every day on the net,it's been a not too traumatic an experience I'll admit. Not least the fact that I've been able to transfer the time to catch up on a thousand and one jobs outside which had been on the back burner.Another bonus has been the peace and quiet of an evening when it is usual pattern is an endless succession of calls.

I have to make the political point about the UK phone system which still sees the actual network controlled by Open Reach/British Telecom. Since privatization,rural areas like North Wales have a communication system on a par with Bhutan or Bukina Faso! No longer a public service,the private company now runs the system with an absolute minimum number of engineers in order to maximise profit. The number of times the phone lines and power system is knocked out by the weather has to be experienced to be believed.

Despite the communications holiday,I'll admit I'm looking forward to getting back on line,not least being able to post regular updates to these sites.  Thanks for bearing with me.

J

All along the Watchtower

I've seen lunar eclipses and desert sandstorms,and lightning that made my hair stand on end'

I've seen fires burn so hot,they made their own weather.

I've watched deer and elk frolic in the meadow below me,and pine trees explode in a blue ball of smoke.

If there's a better job in anywhere on the planet,I'd like to know what it is.

Phillip Connors: Fire Season.

'Fire Tower'...interesting!.. I'd been looking at the OS map of my backyard, looking for some new local walks where I could take the hound,and my eyes alighted on the above feature. In the state owned forests of the UK, fire towers- or forest look out points- are few and far between,unlike over in the States where remote Fire Towers are often manned-or even wo-manned- by firewatchers who are often on duty for up to six weeks at a time,at these isolated stations.

Some regarded literary figures have been employed as Fire Watchers at one time or another. Notably Jack Kerouac and Edward Abbey. Both authors recording their lives in the forest through works such as Kerouac's Dharma Bums.However, the best literary work I've ever read in this field was Phillip Connors fairly recent book Fire Season. It's a fascinating and well written work which details his decade in the wilderness atop a fire tower on a remote mountain above millions of acres of forest which stretched as far as the eye could see.

With the advent of satellite technology, Firewatching in the US is going the way of Lighthouse keeping over here. However, the biggest forests in the US are still employing fire watchers who often need pack horses and muleteers to ferry their provisions to the work stations which might be days away from a highway. Once they are there, they usually remain on the job for over a month. The work routine involving the daily ritual of climbing the tower to scan the horizon for tell tale wisps of distant smoke-usually started by lightning strike. At the end of their shift,they climb down and settle into their simple cabin abode which of course is inevitably without main services. But why don't you just read Fire Season to get the full romantic picture.

As for my Fire Tower. I set off to find it but any fire breaks had been taken over by the self seeded conifers which made the direction I was heading for impossible to reach. I'll try again perhaps later this week via another route. I have an image of a rusting tower, unseen and unused for decades ,reaching up into the sky supporting a viewing platform. Perhaps it's fallen down and all that remains is a twisted scattered hulk? There must be something there though?...Watch this space.

Fire Season

Barbarians at the gate?

Half way up Central Route on Llech Ddu: With the assimilated Scar Face finish,this classic climb will be a three star HVS route in the new guide. Would a winter ascent of this line be appropriate if tooled climbers deemed conditions appropriate?

Following a recent blog piece- The Ice Warrior Cometh- which outlined my misgivings about making tooled ascents of traditional rock climbs; in this case The Great Corner on Llech Ddu, although the initial piece was not specific with regard to details of the route or the participants; I have to my great amusement, been subjected, on't net, to something of a pincer movement by three of our most talented winter climbers. Nick Bullock, Pete Harrison and Ian Parnell.

The former duo being the Great Corner ascentionists and Ian who has made a tooled ascent of a VS climb on the same cliff. Two main points stand out, namely that I'm accused of not being au fait with the technicalities or ethics involved in mixed climbing and furthermore,of being some sort of Ken Wilson traditional zealot and luddite. The second point is that as someone who has written enthusiastically about 'gardening'  out new routes from vegetated cliffs then any comments re the environmental impact of tooled climbing should be considered as hypocrisy on my part. Fair comment so here goes..

Firstly, it is true that winter  tooled climbing has never floated my boat.Been there,done that and bought the T shirt. In that respect I appear to be in good company. Think of our foremost climbers of the last thirty years..Fawcett, Livesey, Moffat,Moon, Dawes,Redhead et al. What's the mental image you get of these activists? It's certainly not swaddled in Gore-Tex thwacking their way up some frozen waterfall in the Northern Corries. In fact,although I'm sure that each of these individuals have at one time or another wrapped their mitts around an axe or two-as Graham Norton might have said- in all my years of reading the climbing media, I can't recall ever seeing an image of these rock athletes in winter attire?

Not that I would place myself in such exulted company you understand. It's just to point out that not every climber is a devotee of  summer and winter climbing.I'm not sure of their own reasons for not expanding their reputations in winter? Perhaps they don't like early starts,long drives,the cold...Perhaps they find the often mechanical process a bit soul less and artificial.Maybe in their heyday they felt day glo tights and ripped T shirts looks more fetching than red kags and  bobbly salopettes????

What I would take more exception to is comparing the environmental impact of the  time honored tradition of gardening out new climbs- often on unclimbed heavily vegetated cliffs- to ascending traditional routes in winter- more especially in thin conditions- with sharp pointed metal clamped to each appendage. To me there's no comparison. In fact, think of the BMC sponsored Tremadog clean up-isn't there another such gig this weekend?- where climbers arrived en masse and strip the encroaching vegetation from existing climbs. We're are not talking about stripping off rare plants here but removing common grasses,ivy, heather etc, and cutting back small trees like holly or small oaks which might have taken over a ledge.

Of course venues like Tremadog and Llanberis Pass were not so long ago totally vegetated. They became world class climbing venues by being heavily gardened. Stripping back vegetation is not just the preserve of barbarians like myself. One of Joe Brown's climbing cohorts arrived at remote Craig Bodllyn in Mid Wales and identified where he was on the cliff by the mound of vegetation at the foot of the climb. John Sumner proudly boasted of leaving an 8' mound of matter at the foot of Will o the Wisp. Some of our foremost midWales explorers like Martin Crocker, Pat Littlejohn and Terry Taylor have not created hard new climbs on remote cliffs by pulling their way up on bunches of heather!

I've commented before that I often see a line which has emerged out of the vegetated backdrop as almost a work of art. A creative process which is both aesthetically and physically highly satisfying. Apart from the aesthetic result,is there that much difference between the rock climber creating a new route on a natural feature and someone like artist Andy Goldsworthy creating permanent and transient nature sculptures out of natural materials? Should Andy be considered a barbarian for tweeking nature like the new router or reclaimer? That's not to say the the Welsh activist has ever gone as far as the Borrowdale crag developers of the 70's who in one case went as far as burning vegetation off a cliff and causing a fire which spread and burnt for days!

I do think though that the future lies with those who see the remoter crags as winter venues. Within twenty years Llech Ddu like the neighboring Black Ladders will probably have evolved into essentially a winter venue. I know from my time climbing on Arenig Fawr in the 90's where I did over 40 first ascents the most of these climbs will never have seen a second ascent and will have returned to nature by now. That's the thing about gardening out trad climbs.They either get re-ascended and hopefully enjoyed by others or they quickly return to nature. I mentioned to Lakes legend Paul Ross the fact that so few first ascents are repeated and he just told me that it doesn't bother him whether or not his own routes enjoy repeat ascents.The kick for him is in the adventure and satisfaction of completing the project. With that philosophy,he would feel relaxed about new routing in Mid Wales or areas of the Carneddau where repeats are as rare as hen's teeth.

For the committed environmentalist in north Wales who is concerned at the rising tide of plastic washing up on on our sea shores,polluting beaches and ensnaring sea birds and mammals or the wide spread proliferation of wind farms in the uplands, then a tiny constituency arguing about whether or nor stripping vegetation is ecologically worse than scratching a rock surface that  only a handful of people will ever see, is like two bald men arguing over a comb....and they'd probably be right.

21st May 1998: The author on the FA of Viridian Groove-HVS-5b, Pen Tyrau,Mid Wales. In 2013 it has returned to nature like most climbs on Arenig Fawr.

* all opinions expressed are those of the author who does not seek to represent any organisation or associated individual.

John Appleby