James Pearson - quick report from Newfoundland...
24th Jul 2011
James Pearson has sent us this quick report following his trip to Newfoundland...
"I'm sat in Deer Lake airport, Newfoundland, waiting for my flight home. This seems like a very long trip, mainly because of the amount of waiting and hoping for good weather, which sadly never came.
I left Europe around the 6th of July, and up until today I have managed to climb 2 full days! Thats not very much - in fact, I would say it is right up there as my least productive trip ever. The weather here completely sucked! According to locals it is their worst summer for 30 years, unrelenting fog and rain, mixed in with winds up to 70mph - pretty grim.
Still, its wasn't a complete wash out, and on the few dry days we were actually super productive, establishing a new route on the cliff during our first day, and on-sighting the current hardest route on our second day. The cliff is very impressive, 1,300ft of good quality granite rising directly out of the ocean, and currently has a selection of free and aid routes upto upper 5.12 and A4. The top of the cliff is capped by some big roofs, which I feel would go free at around upper 5.13, but were completely soaked the entire time meaning I could only look and not touch!
The mist actually had one benefit - incredibly atmospheric photo and video courtesy of the guys from Camp 4. I saw some of the raw images before Tim began working and have to say they are probably my best images of the year so far, which was a nice consolation for not climbing very much. I made sure to be wearing the new Alpine Project Jacket, helium friends and Quantums, so you should all be pretty psyched on the results!
I will start blogging about the trip when I get back, over at my new domain (jpclimbing.com, which should all be working in a few days), but thought you would all appreciate a little advanced report."
