TheShortSpan
Bouldering in Ireland
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Features26/05/10
The Arch in Portrane is climbed
Last Sunday Michael Duffy did the first ascent of The Arch in Portrane, he named it Leviathan and graded it 8a.
21/04/10
Irish Bouldering Championships
 The first ever Irish Bouldering Championships are being held in The Ozone in Belfast on the 8th of May organised by Mountaineering Ireland. "The comp will consist of 2 rounds, a qualifying round in the morning and a final round in the afternoon. The qualifier will consist of 8-10 problems, on which competitors have 3 attempts. The highest scoring competitors in each category will compete in an afternoon final, in which problems will be climbed with unlimited tries within a certain time period. The route-setter will be Percy Bishton, one of IFSC’s setting team and the regular setter at the Climbing Works, Sheffield." see www.mountaineering.ie for more information.
27/03/10
Climbing meet in Gap of Dunloe
The Gap of Dunloe climbing meet is on the weekend of the 16-18th of April, there is camping available at Dunloe Golf Course. Last year was great. good crowd, dry weather and a very nice camping spot. There is a good bit of bouldering the Gap and The Black Valley, there is even some real climbing as well I believe. Also there is a lecture by Andy Kirkpatrick in Cork on Friday night which is only an hour's drive from the Gap, details here.
26/03/10
New RSS feed for this page
I have created a new RSS feed for this page that will allow get notified when there is new content. Paste
into your RSS feeder. More info about RSS at www.whatisrss.com. Remember there is also a feed for the message board
25/03/10
Irish Bouldering Meet Report
The Electric Mountain boulder. Another meet over. After a damp looking start the weather turned perfect and the meet was a good success. In the few days before hand the forecast looked very mixed, which was particularly frustrating as the last month had literallly zero rain. And while the weather did turn to more usual irish conditions it was very cooperative, drying out quickly as each day went on. About a dozen stayed in the hut on Friday night and woke up to a damp grey morning, but after a leisurely breakfast it had cleared sufficently to justify heaing to the boulders. By 12 pretty much everywhere was dry and a large crowd - maybe 40 - were clambering all over the usual suspects. Sunday also dawned wet and cloudy. Instead of waiting for it to dry we went to the boulders in the forest at Electric Mountain (in Wicklow Gap). Only a few problems were dry but they kept us all enterained til it was safe to venture out into the open. We then climbed in the sun on the Electric Mountain boulder. After a while people started to drift off home, some of us went back to the hut for some tidying, coffee and heavy lifting.
Thanks to everyone who got off their arses and bothered to come along I hope it was worthwhile and a special thanks to to the MI, the IMC for the use of the hut and Wicklow National Park without all of whom the meet couldn't happen. 17/03/10
Irish Bouldering Meet 2010 THIS WEEKEND
Bouldering Meet is this weekend, please make the effort to come you won't regret it. Unfortunantly the quiz will not happend but I have something else planned. My beloved brush - that features in this years poster - was lost the Sunday before last on the slopes of Camaderry so I will be leading a search party up the Camaderry to safeguard its return. Shouldn't be too hard to find, its a green brush about 5 inches long lost somewhere on a few square kilometers of rocky, heather covered hillside. The forecast isn't looking too bad and it should be breezy so even if it is damp it should dry pretty fast. Remember in the long history of the meet every year some climbing has been done. The Seventh Annual Irish Bouldering Meet will be on the weekend of Friday 19th to Sunday 21st March based in the I.M.C Hut in Glendasan Country Wicklow. The Hut has cooking facilities and bunks/wooden platforms (you will need a sleeping bag and something soft to lie on - bouldering mat?) for about 40 people on a first come first served basis. If the hut fills up there is plenty of room to camp in the garden (It can get a bit noisy in the hut so those looking so a quiet nights sleep might be better considering camping also). Either way the cost is €10 per night (please pay me as early as possibile on the weekend). Usually we plan to go to Glendalough on the Saturday and Glenmacnass on the Sunday but when the weather was very changeable we would give Glenmacnass a miss . Last year a few decent new problems were climbed in the scree in Glendalough, it would be good to continue that trend this year. Another possibility would be check out some of the less popular - but very good - bouldering in the valley above the hut, there is well over a hundred problems in the Glendasan/Wicklow Gap area and plenty of the new problems to be done. So come along, the weekend is a great laugh and is a good chance for to meet up with your fellow climber and do some great bouldering.
You can download a larger verison of the poster to put up at your local climbing wall or anywhere it might be seen.
27/01/10
Plans for a print guide
TheShortSpan is 10 years old soon. I can’t remember its birthday but it was some time before the end of February 2000 Check it out on archive.org here and here. This website started off with some very scant information about bouldering in a few obscure spots in Dublin and Wicklow. It grew as bouldering become more popular. As areas became discovered and documented new web pages were created with some fairly crude topos. A few years ago it became apparent that having the topos spread over many – difficult to print – html pages was not the way to go, the answer was to assemble all the information from the web pages into one document. The first edition of the guide was 50 pages and it has grown to 123 pages in the latest and fifth edition. The updating of the guide has been my main focus and so the rest of the site hasn’t been updated with articles, news and photos as much as it might of otherwise. As the guide got bigger it took more and more time to update and the gap between updates started to get larger. So. I have decided to publish a printed guide to bouldering in Ireland. The information contained in the web guide will be the basis for it but the print guide will have loads of photos, everywhere will be re-research and the topos and maps will all be redrawn. Over the years a good few people have encouraged me to do a print guide and I always felt the time wasn’t right so what has changed? From a personal point of view I now have time on my hands and I felt if I don’t do it now I never will. Also the rate of discovery of new bouldering areas has slowed down so there is less risk of the guide being out of date before its printed. At this time I hope to have the guide ready for Christmas. This may be too ambitious as I have never heard of a guidebook meeting its deadline. Guidebooks are expensive (€25 seems to be about average), I will do everything I can to keep the price of mine as low as possible for two reasons firstly I want to sell as many as possible and secondly this isn’t a money making exercise for me. Once the print guide is finished I will be taking down the web based guide but it will be freely available until then so no panic. I will be looking for as much feedback as possible. I really want to hear from people about what they would like to see in the guide. Also feedback on the information in the existing guide would be very helpful. I would especially be interested in hearing from anyone who has any good photos so please get in touch. To make all this easier I have started a blog to keep people up to date on my progress, I will use it as a sounding board, I will post up previews as I go along and hopefully there will be some useful insight into creating a guidebook. Keep an eye on http://boulderingireland.blogspot.com/
03/11/09
New hard problem in Carrigshouk, Wicklow
On the 20th of December Michael Duffy climbed his long standing project in Carrigshouk, Wicklow after a protracted siege. Contact 8a+ is a tall, hard and very elegant arete on the large boulder on the righthand side of the cliffs. Michael's suggested grade of 8a+ makes it a contender for hardest problem in Ireland alongside John Gaskin's Darkness before the Dawn 8a+ in Glendasan. It's great that Michael has climbed a hard problem that is such a great line and really representative of Wicklow bouldering being a slopey arete. Darkness is a great line as well but a bit more atypical as it's an overhanging face.
Contact is less than five minutes from the road and right beside the more popular area of Glenmacnass. Makes you wonder what's hiding in the middle of the forests and valleys?
Michael's description "The imposing arête of Carrigshouk is one of the finest and most striking lines in Co. Wicklow and has been a long standing project for years.Climbing the rhs of the bulging arête, a dynamic dead point to a slopey edge leads to delicate climbing above with a tricky move to gain the top."
03/11/09
Bouldering in Tramore, Waterford
Jade O'Connor has written a guide to the bouldering in Tramore, County Waterford. I don't think Jade was the first to boulder in Lady Elizabeth’s Cove but she is the first to document it, the South East doesn't seem blessed with bouldering so its great to have some concrete information.
The guide can be downloaded from Jade's site and will be integrated in the next version of the guide. "I love bouldering by the sea, as it combines two of my great loves, waves and rock, a feast of sensory pleasures. When I first approached Climbing and Bouldering in Waterford in The South East of Ireland I was amazed at the amount of shear sea cliff, and felt every bit ‘A Child In A Candy Store’. After many weeks of exploration, both physical and virtual I was disappointed, as the quality of rock was poor and friable everywhere I went. One Morning, purely by chance I stuck my head around the pier at Ladies Cove (also sometimes known as Newtown Cove). After a closer inspection of the wall I was quivering with excitement…. I had found bouldering at last! That evening armed with crash pad, shoes and chalk I set about finding problems."
29/10/09
Åland,Finland Bouldering
Words and photos by Michael O'Dwyer.
Åland are a group of Island off the coast of Sweden. The population speaks Swedish and there is a distinct Swedish feel about the place, but the islands belong to Finland. Therefore in the €uro zone.
Getting there is easy from Stockholm. There are ferries from Grisslehamn 1.5 hours from Stockholm 2 hour boat journey Kapellskar, 1.25hours from Stockholm 2 hour boat journey Stockholm 5 Hour boat journey. The ferries are all really cheap. € 25 should cover a car and 2 people return. The fares and food on board are subsidised by the sale of duty free alcohol! The Finns and Sweds drink a lot. www.vikingline.fi The climbing is on good pink granite and is concentrated in the north of the main island in the district of Geta. It is most famous for its steep overhangs and layered rock. The northern part of the island is very rocky and since there are strange laws on Åland about trespassing and camping I would advice to stay in the huts at Soltuna. € 10 per night per person. Nice wooden cabins near to Grottan. Soltuna Restaurang & Café Please read more on 27crags about access to the bouldering areas. I think there might have been some problems before. There is also a small shop in Geta for supplies. They don't open on a sunday!
The best of the climbing is to be found in Grottan, Fågelberget and Kasviken. The best time for climbing is from September until the first Snow, December-ish and then from when the snow melts until the summer heat. April to June. For more info and topos go to www.27crags.com
29/09/09
Ailefroide Guidebook Review
By Pierre Fuentes. Pierre is a tall Frenchman who lives in Scotland.  Ailefroide’s new guidebook (Ailefroide, Topo des blocs, Team les Collets, 2009) was published last June, right on time for the coming summer event, the Ailefroide bouldering meet following the “Tout à Bloc” competition. I was going to spend a week there in August so I spent the money on what I thought was the result of some hard work by the locals. Apparently this 2nd edition is an improvement compared with the 1st guide. According to Zebloc (www.zebloc.com), 100 new problems have been added to the original 200 in the first edition, with 5 news areas and 2 children circuits added. The quality of the paper is better and the cover stiffer. The whole document is in black and white apart from the usual colourful sponsoring ads. The info is plain but well organised. For each area you get a numbered list of climbs with their names, grades, and a quality indication based on a 3 star scale. Each boulder has been photographed and has been attributed a letter. The problems have then been indicated on the photos by a white line and the number corresponding to the list. And if you’re not sure where you are, a basic map of the boulders and their corresponding letters is also given for each area. A small “Edito” introduces the guide. It is written by a certain Gilles Estrambouli but you cannot be sure if it is the right spelling because the name is handwritten and does not appear anywhere else. However the guy clearly wants to become famous because he claims Ailefroide “contributed to making him a legend” I might be wrong but when you have to tell people that you are famous, somehow I think you’re not there yet. Apart from this you do not get much text and this is maybe why I felt a bit cheated. It looks like the authors have wanted to keep it easy and simple. The photograph approach is indeed very handy for identifying the problems. On the other hand photographs do not give you indications of how to climb the problem. Of course we do not want the tricks to be given away, but when no description is given, you always come across that one problem where the question remains “Is this in? Naaah, can’t be, that’d be too easy... wouldn’t it?” So you climb the line again without the hold to make sure you have done the problem properly. It can be fun and it can be a good way to get strong. I think it can also be a good way to frustrate visitors, and this is how I felt a few times. So the question remains, is it worth €13? Here is a comparison table including various guidebook details I gathered on the net:
However to really find out the answer to our question, we would need some sort of rule of thumb to compare prices. For example, spuds are priced per Kg, childminders per hour, and translators per word. So I think guidebooks should be price per problems. This way we can see that The Peak and Northumberland are roughly £0.01/problem, while Font is about €0.014/problem. We can also note that the sneaky John Watson does not want to give away the price of his hard work. The real deal is coming from people like Dave Flanagan who give you the best competitive rate on the market at approximately €0.00/problem: the guy must be Chinese. But Ailefroide’s guidebook, at €0.043/problem is far from the crowd and should not therefore be contemplated... ...but if you are not one of these brainless traders who made a fortune by bringing the world’s economy on its knees, you might be able to acknowledge somebody’s good efforts (someone had to clean these boulders, right?) In this case, you can buy the guide on the following webpage:
04/09/09
Updated bouldering guide to Ireland 2009
Another edition of the guide is ready. 123 pages for the bargain price of €0.00 The main addition is a guide to the Black Valley, Kerry. I have added a vague topo for Carrigshouk, made some other cosmetic changes to the Lough Dan and Wicklow Gap information (and done lots of tinkering with topos) and have added most (not the shit ones) of the new problems submitted to the new problems database. To download the guide right click and select "Save Target As..." guide5.pdf 4.9 MB Huge thanks to all who contributed (especially Eoin Kennedy for the information about the Black Valley and the Gap). Comments, corrections and feedback welcome on the message board. Next job is revise the Glendo information into a completely new format. |
ArchiveBouldering in Sweden b by Michael O'Dwyer Voices in the Forest by John Watson Essential Fontainebleau Review by Dave Flanagan First Ascents by Dave Flanagan Stone Play: review and interview by Dave Flanagan Friction by Dave Flanagan 8a in 9 simple steps by Dave Flanagan DVD review by Dave Flanagan Introduction to bouldering in Glendalough by Dave Flanagan Michael Reardon's second visit to Ireland By Michael Reardon Blackrock bouldering by PeterTom McMahon At Glendalough by Mick Ward Introduction to bouldering in Ireland by Dave Flanagan Le French Glendo - Targassonne by Pierre Fuentes Bouldering with Goats by Chris Redmond Gap Of Dunloe by Nigel Callender Injury prevention - Shoulder by Nigel Callender A cheaters guide to Glendalough By Dave Flanagan First visit to Ireland By Michael Reardon Dawros Head By John Watson Working Class By Pete Kirton Stone Country - bouldering in Scotland Review Bouldering in Fairhead By Ricky Bell and Ali Wilson. A beginners guide to bouldering Information about Bouldering in Fontainebleau How Bouldering Turned Me Blind by John Watson. The Medium by Niall Grimes. Bouldering for real climbers by Stephen McMullan. Common Ground by Niall Grimes. Understanding Movement and The Bear of Little Brain by Si O'Conor. Interview with bouldering legend John Gill |
