I'm a woman

I'm a woman
Photos copyright Laurence Gouault
No reproduction on other media without the photographer's permission.

STEVIE

 Stevie has been climbing with a rope since he was 14 but was climbing with his  Maltese Grandfather long befor.e At age 55 Stevie is still climbing 8a when he wants and when his training allows. He is proud to be part of the tribe Homo Grimpupalot and has grand children who enjoy climbing. In this blog expect to see stuff about climbing, running, caving, swimming, anything in fact.



Early climbs with grandfather, mostly on dodgy rock.
Roped climbing at 14 but often solo
First trip to Alps 15
First winter trip to Alps 16
One of the early E5 leaders in Britain and soloers
Bouldering font 7c+ 1979
One of the fast and light brigade in the Alps and greater ranges, mais je préfère en Français Pur et Dur
Mixed climbing first VIII in Britain
Mixed climbing first M9 M10 M11
Mixed climbing gear development and....see more.....





My bestest route, Cannabis by stevie haston.




Years go by, and you do little. A whole life can go by in the blink of an eye, without a single glorious moment. Even when you do climb well, most times, it’s just filling in the dots, and dashes.
The last new route I did,...SEE MORE....



 

 

 

The Education of a Mountaineer - by Stevie Haston



I grew up, if I ever grew up at all, in two places; the Dickensian jungle that was the East End of London and Gozo, a small cliff encrusted island paradise that sits in the Mediterranean a few miles north of Malta.
I grew up in the Sixties, I was born in 1957.
It's a long time ago and the world has changed, but I am almost the same as that long lost boy....SEE MORE... 







The Way of the Dervish, by STEVIE HASTON

Katie Haston on the Dervish

Are route names important? 'Seventy Thousand Assyrians' is the title of a short story by a brilliant writer called William Saroyan. I was going to use it as a route name but instead I chose 'Comes the Dervish'. It became the name of a symbolic route of a thousand shades of mauve and purple.... SEE MORE... 


The Best cliff : GOGARTH, by Stevie Haston


Journalists love superlatives and absolutes and the sound of their own voices, and often don't have the faintest idea what they are talking about. In this they are not dissimilar to the rest of us of course, humans being human and all that. But rock is not flesh and blood, rock is the foundation, it`s solid. Rock is an absolute and something we can rely on. And what more ancient and venerable collection of rocks can we consult or learn from than the superlative ancient stones of the Gogarth cliffs...SEE MORE...



The truth about women, by Stevie Haston


This blog piece is going to be too good for this blog. It should be in a magazine but of course magazines are failing to do any kind of job. Blogs are just blogs so can't fail, Andrew Bisharat take note. Women on the other hand don't fail, they succeed, they succeed more than men because they don't try as hard as men and still do a great job. Well most...SEE MORE....






Being grateful, by Stevie Haston



I have had a bad week, but I did the "welcome the sun salutation" with the grand kids, and other stuff like caving and pull ups, their joy was my joy. The man above is the Yogi Bhajan, he is dead but he speaks to me thru his work. It is the Yogi's birthday tomorrow and many of my wife's friends around the world will all be celebrating this man's work and life, I will be too...SEE MORE....






Then and now, by Stevie now Haston.


Here are two photos separated by 30 years! In the first photo you see an amateur climber enjoying a really great day with C.Gore a good comp climber of those years, Kim Carrigan top Ozz climber, Shagger top Party man, Chriss Griffiths photo man, and meee of course doing a Y Fronts advert-Calvin Kline not being invented....SEE MORE....







Burning off Ben Moon by Stevie Gibbose Haston




Ben Moon did the first ascent of Hubble in 1990, it was the first 9a in the world under the new Uefa grading system, I burnt him off once. He wasn’t pleased!
Ben Moon was eclipsed in many ways by Wolfgang Gullich, who was certainly not Bens equal in pure bouldering, or redpointing. This is the odd....SEE MORE.....







Biased News and stuffy stuff, by Stevie Haston.


This bit of writing is an experiment, to see if you lot out there in the web zone actually read! I have had a tremendous amount of hits on this blog recently!!!! And I cant really imagine its just my Mum, cos she is dead. But what do you lot want? I like all climbing, little rocks to Giants, but I also like Sense and Sensibility, and learned opinion, I am getting very little from established mags and web zeens. 
Firstly, the Fontainebleau boulders seem to be being torn apart by young climbers from all over. What is interesting is that it is not the obvious bouldering specialists who are doing the damage but many lead climbers and comp climbers. The excellent freezing temps have helped but things have been pulled down in all weathers.
Adam Ondra was notable in a flash of an 8B+....SEE MORE...




Games Climbers Try to Play Stevie the Player Haston.


There was an article nicely written by an influential climber in which he described each of the parts of climbing and described them as almost separate games. Tejada Flores was his name we need him back desperately at the moment.  
People describe themselves as climbers nowadays when they are just people who play around on artificial plywood and resin constructs in purpose built commercial...SEE MORE....





Happy spliffmass by Stevie Haston




Happy Xmass, from the International Jamaican Federation of Ice Climbers against Global Warming, please donate generously. At this precise moment in time (somewhere in December) we implore you to cut your carbon footprint by not exhaling, and of course by not ....SEE MORE....