Monkey Butt

At the end of the last long ride back from the South of France to our French base near Chamonix, I honestly could say I was broken. I could barely press my cheeks on the saddle for one minute more. So before starting our latest 3000km epic, I thought I had better sort out the "ar.." problem.

 

I have up until now been using a cheap pair of £30 cycle shorts with pad, but after the last trip these have been relegated to turbo training sessions. Motorcycle blogs are full of useful and increasingly in my experience, useless advice. So firstly this is not advice but observations from an unhappy bottom.

Knowing the KTM 690R seat was a little sharp I bought a Touratech high enduro seat. This should have worked but no amount of shuffling, baby powder, talc and creams sorted  the butt pain. After 2 hours in the saddle it was just as uncomfortable.

So a comfy butt quest was started and I have to say it has been successful, after all I would prefer to ride rather than be distracted but a painful butt.

So to the underwear I turned. I bought 4 pairs of pants, (underwear)

Nike Men's 9'' Pro Cool Compression Shorts

Craft Greatness 9'' Boxers

Moto Skiveez  Adventure Pants

and 

Hummel HERO BASELAYER MEN SHORTS Style no.: 095582055

They have all been tested over quite a few hours and I have to say the Hummel Hero pants are by far the best. 

10 is good 1 is bad

The Nike shorts don't have such a flat seam and although good enough, smell awful after a day in the saddle. 

Comfort 4 - Smell - 1

Craft. The Craft short is much better than the Nike, but it did not seem to wick so well and on the hot days felt as though they were quite sweaty.
Comfort 6 - Smell 3

Moto Skiveez Adventure. I had high hopes for these as they we supposed to be designed specifically for off-road adventure biker types. They have a bigger pad than a cycle short and are the only padded short in the test. So they were a bit disappointing. They were hot and after a full saddle day, began to feel like a wet nappy. Heavy and not so wonderful as expected 

Comfort 6 - Smell 7

Hummel were the long shot but from the off were the most comfortable off the bike and by far the best on the bike. Unlike the others, which only lasted a day before they were either discarded or relegated to gym wear, I wore the Hero Pants for 4 days in a row without washing them and on full hard hot enduro days. Brilliant !

Comfort 9 - Smell 9

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 

HTTP://WWW.HUMMEL.NET/GB/MEN/SPORT/BASELAYER/HERO-BASELAYER-MEN-SHORTS-BLACK-DARK-GREY

Spectrum Magazine 16th May 2010

Wonder world and the dread of not knowing

A short parable to start with…

Two years ago I had the fine experience to find my self in Kalymonos Greece on a climbing trip. It’s a limestone festooned island with black volcanic ash beaches. It not over developed, not tacky and kind of rustic, run down and nice. We were climbing in a small group of people who all new each other but not that well. After a late start, as we were waiting for the sun to leave the cliff so we could climb in the cool I reached the top of my first warm up climb. It was a 30m route sitting on a big cliff 100m off the sea on a raised beach. The last two moves of the route involved climbing through an exposed layer of fossils embedded in the limestone matrix; quite beautiful.

As my partner lowered me to the ground, I just happened to comment that I thought that it was amazing that we were playing and taking pleasure from a structure that a billion years ago had been at the bottom of the sea. A shell, which was once alive, had found itself as crucial hold on a rock climb. My partner then said that this was not true, and that the world was only 7000 years old and that all fossils were put there by God as a test of true faith. I was flabbergasted! ‘Evolution is an unproven theory’, he continued. Well the latter point may be worth debating whilst stoned in a tent somewhere in the high mountains to pass the time in a storm. The fossil “test” assertion, however, was absolutely impossible to argue against. The cold logical conclusion that every thing was a test of faith is clinically final; end of argument.

From my earliest excursions in the North West of Scotland, I have wondered at the rocks. The beauty of 1000ml year old Torridonian sandstone, which already prehistoric, contain even more ancient river wash pebbles. The huge folds in the Lewisian Gniess in the cliffs above Kinlochewe, signal ancient forces pushing the crust of the earth with unfathomable pressure, 2500ml years before any thing walked in the tropical forests and deserts of Scotland, when our ancient mountains were high mountain ranges.

To the struggling climber they are just an inconvenient change in friction. But to me they are an unimaginable mystery in time. Imagine the next time you walk on Sullivan that this beautiful form is just the crumbling stub of a once great mountain, which could have been tens of thousands of feet high.

The pebble beaches of Tiree are strewn with hundreds of different rock types all rounded off into fist size pebbles all from different eras. They are some of the oldest rocks in the world, there for you to touch. Sitting on top of this West Coast Mountain at the junction between the ancient sandstone and the Gniess, to me is truly a spiritual experience. It does not have a text laid out in front it, to try and make sense of the vastness of creation. It has no pacifying psalms, torahs, verses or chants to try and explain the wonder. It leaves me open, with no answers, no creed, no tribe, rules or dogma. I do not need an answer. Touching this land, these rocks, walking in this fantastic landscape fills me with a wondrous joy. I know that I am part of this universe and that the material that made me, the crystals of the rock, the fingers of the wind and the waves on the beach, are all from the same source.

We live in an ancient and incredible land. The mountains lochs and beaches, all tell a tale of an incomprehensible time line. From where it comes from I do not know, where it is going; only time will tell. But here, just now on this mountain watching this sunset, its beauty makes me cry with wonder. The next time you have the chance, pause on your walk, climb, ride or run, put your hands on the earth and thank whatever creation you believe in, that you have the gift of consciousness.

Spectrum Magazine 17th April 2010

Function over Fashion

Winter sports in Scotland can be a revelation. The hills in full winter garb, under a blue sky can rival any landscape I have seen. In bad weather, even the simplest of winter days can be an arctic test of endurance. I have long been a fan of the Cairngorms, their rugged beauty both majestic and intimidating. To the ill equipped, they are a place of tragic encounters. Today was a test day for an expedition to Kashmir. Neil Baxter, infamous Kayaker and recent on-screen torturer of Fred MacAulay and Dougie Vipond and I were heading off to the Himalayas to join a bunch of hardened big mountain ski-tourers. The scene was set for 3 weeks of digs about “slowboarders” and “gays on trays”, so in order to deflect as much of this verbage as possible, we thought we had better work though our gear and systems on a Scottish winter hill. It was a foul day with a pretty high wind. We parked in the Coire Ciste car park. The lifts were shut. We were promised a people free morning.

We opted to try short approach skis and to carry the snowboards. Just the simple act of putting on and lacing boots was a test of endurance. It was about -8 oC at the car park with a healthy 30-40 mile an hour wind, dropping the temperature to about -30oc. Our exposed hands felt the bite within just a few seconds of gear fumbling. Note to self: “buy Black Diamond ski touring gloves”.

With the wind blowing horizontal snow at our backs we took it in turns to break trail up into the Coire. As we zigzagged our way up it became obvious to me that even though Neil is a magician on the water, and had a good few years of Canadian snowboarding under his belt, this was altogether a new experience for him. Dressed in some trendy snowboard gear he quickly overheated and stripped off to thermals and micro fleece, which within minutes became encrusted in rime ice. He was walking too fast and sweating too much. Having learnt the hard way, I have long since dumped snowboard and ski clothing and opted for mountaineering kit, so I was pretty comfortable, apart from a cold ear and a freezing pinkie.

Soon the wind picked up again and our ridiculous snowboards began to act as unwanted sails on our backs. Layers of wind-slab began forming in patches on the hard snow underneath our test approach skis. The combination of being blown about like some snowboard weather vain and the snow breaking away under our feet meant it was physical, be we were having a ball, or at least I was, This is what I wanted to feel; alive, in a wild place, working out problems, feeling in control in difficult conditions. With visibility down to 50 meters we reached the top of the ski lifts just below the summit of Cairngorm. Neil had been making all the right noises, but as soon as we stopped to check the map, things changed. His skin looked in patches like white putty, and without a decent shell layer he chilled fast. 400m from the Ptarmigan restaurant we bagged it.

Making the transition from climbing to boarding, the wind threatened to blow our gloves away, rip our jackets from our hands and send our boards skidding off down the hill, Neil’s hands were stiff and cold. The ski/ride back to the car took ten minutes. It had taken over and hour and a half to climb to the high point. It was short day on the hill but we learnt a lot. I learnt to look at the big picture and make decisions not just based on how I felt; Neil that it was time to shop for some serious hill gear.

Spectrum Magazine 28th Mar. 2010

Slowly opening eyes.

It is almost 35 years ago to the weekend that I stood in the cold early morning light in the Golf Course car park at the foot of Ben Nevis, with an ill-fitting rucksack on my back and a pair of bendy hill walking boots on my feet. To say I was scarred was over stating it, but I was nervous. After all, this was my first ever winter climbing experience and it was on the “big bad Ben”. My climbing partner, Ian Dally was 18 years older then me; a mighty veteran of expeditions to the Alps and the Artic peaks off Baffin Island in Canada, so I was in good hands. Why he thought that climbing with a gangly school boy in a pair of cut off jumbo cord breeches on one of the biggest walls in the country was a good idea, I will never know, but we set off up the track, with the morning frost crunching under our feet. Every breath and footstep took us closer to the biggest ice festooned cliffs I had ever seen. Icicles and gullies drop from the Summit observatory plunging towards the famous climbers hut, which lies under the North Face of the Ben. The names of these climbs; Point Five, Mega Route X, Gully, Echo Wall are legendary to climbers, mapping out a history of generations of climbers who, for over a hundred years, have dared to test themselves in this magnificent arena.

As we walked under the dark rock and ice walls, I could feel their weight baring down on my shoulders but any thoughts of actually climbing on these walls, were soon lost in the processes; simply putting one foot in front of the other.

We stopped at the hut and were handed a cup of hot tea from one of Ian’s friends who was lucky enough to have a place for the weekend. I stepped into the hut, its dark smoky walls echoed with the spirits of Patey, and Haston, dead legends whose deeds and words filled my young head. To the mountaineer, especially the ice climber, Ben Nevis is truly a giant, which to this day still offers unclimbed challenges to set the mind wondering and the palms sweating. We headed out from the hut. Like a puppy, I tried to stay as close as I could to Ian’s heels, stepping in his prints, matching his slow steady and relentless pace.

It took at least another hour to reach our objective, “Bob Run” a Grade II/III ice climb, one of the shortest routes on the mountain but with the longest approach on the hill. Ian dug a ledge into the snow and we put on our crampons. He then cut a T-slot into which my brand new ice axe was battered, and tied it off with a sling. Looking back, this would never have held a leader fall, but this was more to make me feel comfortable and stop me tripping over my crampons and pulling him off the route. I flicked the rope over my back and proceeded to waist belay Ian as he tip-toed up the ice above me. That day was a make or break for me. It was long, hard, and I had no clue what I was doing, but at the end of that day, sitting in the West End Hotel with an underage pint in my hand I was hooked. I cannot thank Ian enough for having the patience to guide me into a life in the mountains. That day I learnt to step-cut in ice, abseil from a snow bollard, to walk at “guides” pace, and so much more. Climbing and travelling in the Scottish Mountains has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.