Factor Two

Internet forums wouldn’t be the same without their villains and heroes, would they? Franco Cookson appeared on the UKC forums back in February 2008. He began posting prolifically from the off and rarely stopped to consider the responses from others. In those early days, he was the classic antagonist, cocksure and loudmouthed, but also somewhat detached from the climbing scene at large. He was also only 16 at the time, but in many ways his obsession with the North Yorks Moors and new routing means that he is operating in his own scene.

Franco’s early climbing career played out in an unusually public manner through the forums. A couple of months after his first post he went on a winter trip to Ben Nevis with friends Ian Jackson and Dave Warburton. It proved to be an eventful trip, with Franco being avalanched, an ascent of Point 5 gully and Dave being dropped a full rope length when Ian’s belay ripped on an attempt at a variation to Smith’s Route. Mike “Twid” Turner rescued Ian that day and wrote a short piece for UKClimbing detailing the incident and some lessons which could be learned from it.

Ian was a couple of years older than Franco and had become something of a mentor to him, introducing him to the wider climbing world. Twid’s advice was considered and didn’t name names. Franco responded angrily to the perceived criticism. He hadn’t been on the mountain that day, but felt that facts were wrong and showed no inhibition in attacking people who thought otherwise. Ian responded calmly, correcting a couple of misconceptions and thanking Twid for helping him out.

Just four months later Ian was killed in an accident while threading a lower off on a sport route in Chamonix. He was just 19 and made one of those mistakes that we’re all aware of, but that can be made so quickly and catastrophically.

Franco was in the Alps with a young team at the time. Losing his friend and mentor has had an understandably profound effect on him, but not necessarily in the ways you might expect. Rather than turning away from climbing he plunged headlong, often literally, into seeking out dangerous and difficult first ascents. His internet persona may have calmed down, but his appetite for unusual routes and not playing the game the way that’s expected hasn’t changed at all.

Factor Two is brought to you by Wil Treasure and UKClimbing.com

Music credits:

Featherlight (remix - Vocals by Heather Feather) Lee Rosevere A Bicycle Ride Through The Nation's Capitol (Lokin' Out) Honey Trappists Sad Marimba Planet Lee Rosevere Waiting for the Moment Lee Rosevere Muted Space Tajirius Blur the World Tajirius Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Patch Hammond has remained a bit of an enigma in the climbing world. If you flick through the magazines from the late 1990s you’ll see a scruffy youth with an impressive climbing CV – onsighting E6 and E7 in North Wales and climbing with the likes of Tim Emmett, Neil Gresham and Leo Houlding.

In the last episode we heard from Leo about their ascent of El Niño on El Capitan – Leo’s first big wall. Patch and Leo had travelled to Yosemite together, but while Leo was socialising at Camp Four and becoming part of the Yosemite scene it was Patch who was heading off trying to get better at the style of climbing there.

Patch met Ben Bransby for the first time in the valley. Encouraged by the Huber brothers the two of them set out to repeat Free Rider – the same route featured in Free Solo with Alex Honnold. They set off from the base of the wall to attempt it ground up, with no experience and borrowed gear and made an impressive effort. They didn’t quite manage to free climb the route, but put in what was at the time the most impressive British attempt on El Capitan.

Under the wing of the Hubers, Patch talked Leo into attempting El Niño, telling him that he’d already done a 5.13a pitch and was convinced Leo would stand a chance of onsighting 5.13b. Plus the route would suit them – no crack climbing on this one, slabs and adventure climbing exactly like they’d been training on in the slate quarries and at Gogarth.

Patch’s memories of those years climbing revolve around the community he became a part of, and the mentors who guided him. He still seems in awe of the fact that he could be a part of this scene where everyone was a hero to him. He didn’t seem to realise that maybe he was one of them too.

Factor Two is brought to you by Wil Treasure and UKClimbing.com

Music credits:

Plantation Audionautix.com

Stiller Tag Philip Weigl

Aftermath Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)

Solo Acoustic Blues Audionautix.com

Autumn Sunset Audionautix.com

Subdivision of the Masses Philip Weigl

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Flow is a concept that can divide in climbing. For Dave Thomas it was the joyous experience that removed him from other problems in life. For Mina Leslie-Wujastyk it was a performance tool. Mina told me that a lot of her understanding of flow had come from conversations with Hazel Findlay and it had helped her to develop a different mindset both on and off the rock.

Off the back of these interviews I wanted to know more, both to understand flow as a scientific concept and as a more ethereal tool for self fulfillment. That journey took me down some interesting paths in climbing, from the writings of George Mallory to US legend Doug Robinson, to an understanding of how flow can improve our physical performance or our wellbeing.

Through conversations with Hazel Findlay and Dr Rebecca Williams I've explored the strange places that a flow state might take us, how better to experience one and the apparent contradiction at the heart of it all.

There are many inspirations for this episode. Obviously previous interviewees Dave Thomas and Mina Leslie-Wujastyk, as well as current. Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind provided some of the additional thoughts and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's excellent book Flow.

Factor Two is brought to you by Wil Treasure and UKClimbing.com

Music credits:

Compassion Lee Rosevere

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Other music licensed from Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)

When you look at the books on a shelf of mountaineering literature one thing is quickly apparent: the vast majority are written by men.

The same is true with the episodes I’ve produced for Factor Two. The simple fact is that there have historically been more men engaged in the kind of adventures that we choose to tell those high profile stories about. The kind of stories I’ve sought out have often fitted a similar mould.

I came into this episode with a simplistic question. Would those stories be different if the protagonists were women?

Back in 1987 Dave Cook addressed the International Festival of Mountaineering Literature with his keynote speech, Running on Empty. He argued that climbing writing was becoming stale and insular and needed to be prepared to “push the hyperspace button”. He wanted to see writing which embraced wider topics in the world and became more inclusive of ideas and people. Writing should talk about people as lovers, workers, genders and we should see the mountains not just as a playground, but as the ecosystem of which we are a part. Sound familiar?

We often forget the fact that most of what we deem to be success or progress in climbing is socially defined. Our stories are important because they become the unifier - they help us understand community expectations and goals. Of course, there’s a good dose of vicarious glory to be wallowed in as well, but we often overlook that what we want to celebrate isn’t some objective reality - it’s the subjectivity of good stories.

To explore this I sought the help of Helen Mort and Anna Fleming, both writers and climbers. I wanted to understand whether they’d been inspired by the same stories in the same ways that I had. Are we meeting the challenge that Dave Cook laid down more than 30 years ago?

Factor Two is brought to you by Wil Treasure and UKClimbing.com

You can find writing from Anna and Helen on their websites:

Thegranitesea.wordpress.com

helenmort.com

Follow Factor Two on Facebook or Instagram.

Wil Treasure on Twitter - @treasurewild

Music credits:

All music in this episode comes from Blue Dot Sessions.

When it was released in 1998, Hard Grit gave us an insight into something we didn’t often see - the actual ascents of the hardest, most dangerous lines on grit.

In an era before everyone had a smartphone, before digital photography was even mainstream, many of the photos we saw in the magazines were staged. The hardest lines captured on video were often toproped reconstructions. Hard Grit changed that, by virtue of a few lucky coincidences and a lot of hard work.

Director Rich Heap had helped Johnny Dawes with some of the editing on his film Best Forgotten Art. Johnny left for a roadtrip in America, and Rich was left with his camera. Without much of a plan he started filming some routes on the grit.

Being a talented climber himself, and living with Seb Grieve, meant that he had access to the grapevine of some of the boldest and best climbers around. He started to amass some interesting footage. Then one day at Black Rocks he captured the scenes that would bookend the film - Seb’s first ascent of Meshuga and Jean-Minh Trin-Thieu’s famous lob off Gaia - and he realised he had something special.

Realising he had a film on his hands, Rich enlisted the help of Mark Turnbull to act as producer. The pair set about building on his footage. They created a loose storyline around the history of gritstone climbing, presented by Niall Grimes. In the process a new mythology around these ascents was born, and had an international impact.

One of the central themes to the film was the madness of the whole thing. That madness was embodied by Seb Grieve, shouting and talking to himself on the most terrifying ascents. But Seb wasn’t mad, he’d practiced the routes carefully, he’d made detailed notes about the gear and, crucially, he’d actually looked closely at the “shipwreck” of a flake on Parthian Shot.

Seb is the film's have-a-go hero, but he had a healthy CV of hard ascents already, including early repeats of Braille Trail and Gaia.

In this episode Seb, Niall and Rich recall how Hard Grit came about and how it became a part of the climbing culture it reflected.

Factor Two is brought to you by Wil Treasure and UKClimbing.com

Follow Factor Two on Facebook or Instagram.

Wil Treasure on Twitter - @treasurewild

Music credits: All music in this episode comes from Blue Dot Sessions.