Andy Kirkpatrick & Tim Emmett

It's been a busy week. I've lost my work keys which is almost annoying to the point of amusement (I'm in a lot of different rooms around school, all of which are now locked to me). I had a really good session at Redpoint on Tuesday that has left the tips of my fingers weeping for days. I missed the opening of the new bouldering wall at Redpoint because I was at lectures. In fact I think it's actually a good reason I missed it, last time I went to a wall opening I woke up the night after with incredibly sore hand (stupid new abrasive holds). 

The majority of my week has been actually going to some lectures. Wednesday night was Andy Kirkpatrick at the Severn Theatre in Shrewbury and Tim Emmett was small and personal at the Old Edwardian Sports club, Solihull. Both night were a success and they are really the only climbing lectures I've ever been too. Having said that I did get to see Katherine Sherrmacher at Plas-y-Brenin one cold Saturday night, for free.

Andy Kirkpatrick has sort of been a hero of mine for along time. In fact I think he's probably a lot of peoples hero's. I used to read up everything he'd written when I discovered his site psychovertical many years ago. I didn't actually know much about him at the time. I knew he'd climbed in Patagonia, the Lafaille Route on the Dru and loads on El Cap, but I didn't really know what any of this meant. At the end of the day he was just another climber to me, but someone who had done the stuff I wanted to be doing.

Andy Kirkpatrick's talk was well structured. He opened with a talk of him growing up, the fact he was going through a divorce (which he seemed happy about) and that he had a new "girlfriend, partner, thing" called Karen, who was disabled. He then went on to explain his motivation for climbing based around Captain Kirk, how he's turned away from alpinism as it's all about suffering and hard work and why El Capitain is the best place to climb. He talked about scaling Zodiac (A2, 5.8) with his Karen Darke (girlfriend) and how he "cornered the market in getting disabled people up big walls) which lead to him climbing it with Phil Packer (injured service man, raising money for charity). He rounded the talk off with a discussion about his own attempts to solo Zodiac in one single day, and the people he climbed it with and how his own ascent went (he failed, but in a good way). The talk was all in good humour, and very frank and open. He took the mick out of himself much more than he took it out of anyone else (apart from Bear Ghyrills). Sadly I didn't think he finished the talk too well, leaving me questioning the point of it all. I think that's how he intended to leave it though. All in all the lecture was very slick, his material very honest and the talk funny. If you get the chance to see him, I'd take it even if it's only once.

Thursday night was Tim Emmett. Rachel has spotted and sorted tickets for this and it was held in a Rugby club house in Solihull. There must only have been about 50 people there, packed into this little room most seemed to be cradling a beer (they had hobgoblin on tap!) and waiting from Tim to start. Tim was walking round, talking to people, fiddling around with his computer and projector, downloading something off the net to stream from us at the end (something we were not supposed to see) and generally being real. I'll get to the last bit later on. Then after about an hour of fiddling he started. This blonde haired, ripped but unassuming guy started off on a talk about his climbing, BASE jumping and wing suiting career.  

He was so enthusiastic about his climbing and life that the fact that he'd not quite prepared (or had prepared too much material) didn't matter. He talked us through his rock climbing, then

his ice climbing, a mountaineering trip to the Himalaya with Ian Parnell and then base jumping and wing suiting. He went on about told us about amazing adventures he'd had around the world, how he's tried to combine things into para-alpinism. He was pretty open about how he makes his money from sponsor ship deals with various different companies. He finished his talk off with a little about "the big climb" with Dave McLeod and Muy Caliente (E10 hard letter, hard number). He actually had loads of really nice things to say about Dave McLeod especially about focused he is about his climbing. The little section on Muy Caliente was sort of old news for me as it's been all over UKC for a week or so, but he did show us a film from Bamboo Chicken Productions about the climb. It was pretty cool to see a guy like Tim Emmett struggling at the height of his grade, just the same as anyone else pushing themselves to do something hard. 


He finished off with a short film about climbing and BASE jumping off the Old Man of Hoy with too friends. It's worth a watch here. I've seen it before but this time I saw it through Tim's eyes as he described the journey of climbing to the too and jumping off with too close friends, both of which have never really climbed outdoors. His enjoyment seemed to come from seeing his friends achieve what for them was the impossible and enjoying it along the way. 


Going back to "Tim being real". What did I mean by that? Well Andy Kirkpatrick came across and real the when I saw him. I could see him on stage, listen to what he had to say and enjoy his honesty and humour. I came away from the lecture, sort of wishing I had not gone and just left him as this hero in my mind. Tim's lecture was same, in a bar. I could see every expression and every smile. The passion he had for life, not just for climbing came across with every breath. He seemed much more real to me than just another hard climber who puts up E10's.