ONWARDS & UPWARDS - Overcoming Fear & Rock Climbing in Jersey

For the past decade or so I've spent most of my time exploring this great planet of ours. I chose to live nomadically, rarely waking up in the same place twice. However, for the past 6 months I've been stuck on the tiny island of Jersey. The borders here have essentially been closed and escape to the European continent just a stone's throw away was practically impossible. If you haven't heard of it, Jersey is a stunning island. I can personally vouch for it because this was the island that I was fortunate enough to grow up on. But at only 9 miles by 5 it really is tiny and I've seen most of it. When I came back I thought there would be very few places left to explore and limited opportunities for adventure. Boy was I wrong. Never been here in my life. But to embark on this adventure would be much harder than I ever imagined. Seriously, this is a joke. And I'd have to overcome some deep-rooted primal fears of my own. Just concentrate on where you are, come on. So I guess we're heading west, right? The past few years on the road has taught me that the real voyage of discovery is not about seeking new landscapes but having new eyes. So if I'm going to be stuck in Jersey, I wanted to see what inspiration I could take from my world travels to help me see the island in a new light. To find fresh challenges and adventures on this familiar island. My recent escapades in Italy must be credited for providing the kindling for this chapter. There, high in the stunning Dolomite Mountains, I discovered the thrills of Via Ferrata and the chance to explore more demanding terrain through the use of specialist equipment. With the benefit of hindsight, I now see that those challenges were relatively easy. Still, at the time I didn't know if I could summit that mountain and the ensuing cocktail of adrenaline and self-achievement was intoxicating. I made it! I can't believe I just did that. Pure adrenaline. Oh my days, this place all to myself. Definitely worth coming up here. Later in Italy, I had the chance to climb with local combi crew member Riccardo where again, a further seed was planted. So when I returned to the island for the first time in my life, I looked at the surrounding granite sea cliffs with new eyes. Wondering if climbing was possible on the island and what adventures awaits when you explore beyond the hiking trails that I love and know so well. There's a couple of pretty substantial problems with me wanting to climb the sea cliffs in Jersey. Firstly, my primal survival instincts kick in causing an innate fear of climbing. I mean, I don't think that I'm scared of heights but whenever I've gone up, I've not been able to look down. I've got to get better at looking down. I'm going to enjoy this view. At any time I've tried climbing previously, just before I go up, there's a voice in my head saying Don't do it man, you're definitely going to fall. You're probably going to die. It's too dangerous. Please don't do it man. Look, I can probably get over that but I'm telling you man, it is bad. All I have to do is think about climbing or even just watch a climbing video and my hands literally start aching and pouring with sweat. Seriously, this is a joke. It's not exactly ideal for the required grit that you need to climb. And the other problem is, climbing in Jersey requires specific experience and technical knowledge without which there is a genuine and very real risk of serious injury and more likely death. More about that later. Fortunately, this was about the time that I met Tom. The climbing here I think is great. You know, I think it's always funny because no one's really heard of it. When I speak to people who are really into their climbing in the UK and travel the world and climb loads of places in the UK, they've always said I've heard of Jersey but I've never known if it's any good and everyone's unsure. As soon as people come over and try it, they're like wow, this is amazing. It's so good. Single pitch climbing here, there's some absolutely outstanding routes. It's really good. It's just a bit of a secret, I guess. No one really knows about it. Tom, with the help of a small group of volunteers, helped run the Jersey Rock Climbing Club. We'd like to think that the club's a really welcome community of people that you can kind of come along, have a go, see if it's for you. And if you're keen and you want to learn, there's loads of members on hand to help you out and get into it really. I wouldn't say the scene is huge in Jersey. As a child, I never knew about rock climbing in Jersey, but now I'm part of the club. I think it's a really special, special group of people. And I think clubs are really important for climbing because it's really hard to get into as a sport. You might have a keen friend, but even then it's so hard to know if you're doing the right thing. So clubs for me, I've always wanted to be part of because they've helped me so much. So that's why I kind of try and get involved as much as I can over here. Tom was right about how important it is to have a club to learn about climbing here. So to hopefully get over my fear and to learn the ropes. Pun intended. I joined the Jersey Rock Climbing Club with my brother, Conor. That is Conor, by the way. How was that Conor? It was so cool going out of the place. You're like, oh my God, it looks easy from the ground and all the stuff in it. There was literally a point where I was just like, I don't want to do this. At this point in the story, both Conor and I were complete noobs, but we were both super keen to acquire the skills necessary to discover Jersey's hidden adventures. Not only to climb with the club, which actually you can do with zero experience, but one day hopefully be able to embark on our own independent adventures and expeditions. The problem was it was coming into winter, not exactly climbing season in this part of the world. And to make it worse, the island was heading into lockdown and the only indoor climbing wall in Jersey had just closed due to the pandemic. But when I said we were keen to learn, I meant it. So right now all the gyms are shut and the indoor climbing wall is shut, but there is an outdoor climbing wall in a kid's play park. This is St Andrew's Park and I tell you what, we've converted it into our own little climbing gym. It is designed for kids, but it's a nice little workout. Yes, I realise I'm putting a video of us playing on a children's climbing wall on the internet, but there's a pandemic on, damn it. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So rather than going up like the kids, we attempted to go around the wall. First in a 360, then 720 and then until we just couldn't hang on anymore. This gave Connor and I a couple of key benefits. We were able to train our bodies to increase finger strength and learn the moves that would one day be necessary for us to explore on real rock. But mostly it gave us the excuse to try out our fancy new climbing shoes. Mercifully, before we were chased out of the kids playground by five-year-olds, we discovered that St Andrew's Park wasn't our only option to help us get stronger. Heading out on a little mission to scope out a little place that we might be able to climb. I'll do a little bit of bouldering. We've just got to find it first. Somewhere on one of the cliff paths around the south coast. It's flipping freezing today. It's like minus one with the like basic wind chill factor of like minus 12. So the snow has just cleared. An extraordinarily cold day in Jersey. But still a chance to get out for an adventure. Look at that guy down there. He's just crossed as the tides opened up to the tomb. Look, you see him on that tiny little sand bridge. Jersey is just so stunning. Love it. Love Jersey. So this is Gritstone Crag. There's a couple of climbing spots or more than a couple up here. But we're not going to be doing the whole wall. We're just going to be traversing across this section here. Basically bouldering. We don't have any mats. So if we stay low to the ground, we should be pretty safe. And we've got the sun setting behind me and we've got a windbreak. It's really windy here today. We've got a windbreak. So this is the perfect location. It's a great opportunity to do a little bit of outdoor exercise and keep our climbing muscles strong whilst the gyms here are closed. And the climbing wall indoors is closed as well. So luckily we have these natural resources like 10 minutes away from our house. So very blessed. Love Jersey. Connor and I spent many evenings here at this private natural gym over winter. But rumour has it there are other hidden locations around the island. We just needed someone to introduce us to the bouldering scene. Hello mate. You okay? So nice. Other side then. It's American. Or at least German. Yeah, we're walking in the back here. You know what? Maybe we should go up to the north. Trying to decide if it will be... When's it last rained? I don't want to go on there. There's like pretty good stuff actually. I don't think I've been down here either. I've never been here in my life. What about you Connor? No, never. If you don't know much about climbing, you will have noticed that we're not exactly tackling big sea cliffs here. Nor using any ropes actually. That's because this is bouldering. I'll let Tom explain. It's going to sound really pathetic saying climbing up short pieces of rock. Essentially, it's the art of getting from A to B without ropes. Instead of a climb or a route, it's known as a problem. And I guess it's known as a problem because it's kind of solving a puzzle. And usually with a boulder, there's only one way to get to the top. It's a lot more physically demanding than climbing because if you're climbing something so short, you want more bang for your buck. So you go for something that's incredibly difficult that you wouldn't ever want to encounter halfway up a sea cliff. But you're happy to try from your bottom. It's a completely different thing. Some people exclusively just boulder. Traditionally, it was seen as training for rock climbing to practice these really hard moves so you'd be able to do them on the actual crags themselves. But now it's exploded into its own sport indoor and out really. One of the challenges with some of Jersey's climbs, particularly in the winter, is finding dry rock. That's because many of the bouldering rocks are submerged twice a day by the huge incoming tides. And in winter, the rocks don't always get time to dry out. Around the island, there are countless beautiful rocks, many of which are exposed for just a few hours a day by the huge Jersey tides. New boulder projects, perhaps previously unclimbed, can still be discovered around the island. So I made it my lockdown project to scour the coast, kind of chip away each week and kind of try and explore and find some decent bouldering spots. A lot of the bouldering here is coastal, so it involved checking low tides and going around and seeing what hadn't been documented. And slowly but surely put together this document that will hopefully be a little bit of a beginner's intro to the island for bouldering and show the main spots and places to try out. Bouldering really is great training for climbing, but it can be frustrating when you can't get higher than one foot off the floor. Yes. Yes, go on. Go on, mate, stick it. Go on. That's it, one more go and you've got it. All of this new exploring of Jersey's coast has really taken me to some great locations. I mean, I've always loved exploring the old Nazi fortifications from when Jersey was occupied in the Second World War. There are heaps of cool bunkers and gun emplacements still on display around the island, but I just discovered that most of the cannons actually ended up here. So yeah, these are the guns. I've never seen this. This is absolutely crazy, I've never seen this. At the bottom of the cliffs here up in Grenade there's a pile of guns here that were thrown over the cliff by the locals at the end of the war when the Nazis were evicted from the island and we were liberated. That's really cool to see though. I can't believe I've lived here my whole life and never seen this. I guess it's a little hard to get to. To get the most out of climbing in Jersey I wanted to get off the boulders and onto the sea cliffs but in order to do that we were going to need some rope and more importantly, some rope skills. I mentioned earlier that climbing in Jersey is especially risky and that the type of climbing on the island requires specific technical skills. That's because here we have traditional climbing known as trap. Normally with sport climbing found around much of the world there are bolts in the rock which a climber can clip into to prevent them from falling too far. In Jersey our sea cliffs are not bolted. Here with the trad climbing we have to use the natural features of the rock the cracks and crevices in our lovely granite to place specialist equipment to stop us from falling. Trad climbing is completely different to me because it's a lot more risk involved so it's a whole different kind of way to climb. I think that's really special about Jersey and also the UK and the States and Australia are places in the world that have held onto their trad traditions of not letting places be bolted and I think it's really important because the argument is if you don't need to bolt a place and there's natural protection that will go in leave it that way because there's that element of adventure and that purest form of you know, it's such a different way to climb something. And also from an environmental point of view I don't think you need to kind of drill bolts into rocks to be able to enjoy climbing them. It takes quite a lot of experience to know exactly how to place the protection in the rock. There is zero room for error. Apparently this tiny piece of metal is enough to catch my fat arse when I fall. It doesn't look possible. You see if I don't put the right piece of equipment in exactly the right position it will rip out when I fall and I will more than likely hit the deck. The consequences are obviously severe injury or death. I think this nut is too small for this crack. It explains why everybody has so much gear around them in those jingly jangly metal mini skirts that everybody's wearing. If I'm going to take this climbing thing seriously I think I'm going to need to gear up. I will need, obviously, my climbing shoes. A helmet's probably a good idea. A harness, yep. Definitely a chalk bag for my sweaty palms. A belay plate and carabiner, okay. A nut key, all right then. Some screw gate carabiners, check. What's this? A giant sling? You're telling me this can hold the weight of an elephant? All right. Two more smaller slings you say? Okay. A big set of metal nuts. Yeah, no kidding. Smaller nuts. And different shaped nuts. You've got to be joking. What are these? Hexes. Damn, they're annoying. Ooh, cams. My inner geek likes these. My wallet, not so much. Quick drawers. Where the heck am I supposed to put all of these? A couple of extendable alpine slings too. You expect me to climb with all of this on? We haven't even taken into account rope. That's better. That's a static rope for top rope anchors. I'll need a climbing rope too. All right, let's go climbing. Climb when ready, if you can. Trad climbing isn't something you can rush into. There are no shortcuts for the experience you need to tackle these climbs. Over the past six months, Connor and I have been out at every available opportunity to learn from the Jersey Rock Climbing Club members. Even attending a course to learn how to safely build top rope anchors. Connor and I are setting up our first top rope anchor on our own. We are going climbing independently for the first time. This is an exciting moment. So we're at our local rock, Gritstone Crag. I think it's quite a fitting place. We feel comfortable here. So it'd be nice to do our first climb. We've got to put together the knowledge that they've taught us in the Jersey Rock Climbing Club. Cheers, guys. And see if we can build ourselves an anchor. I've got to say, considering we had no clue what we were doing at the start, it feels amazing to be progressing with this challenge. To be out here on our own together, responsible for our own adventure and safety. From knowing where to place the equipment and which gear will give us the best protection, to what type of knots to tie and how to equalize the anchor system so that the full loads are distributed between the pieces of protection. It's all part of the challenge. I feel so proud of my brother and for myself, actually, with all of the things that we've learned on this journey. Ready to climb? Ready. Go. The fact that we're able to do this together, watching out for each other, is just so satisfying. Being able to rig our own top rope anchors anywhere means we can now continue to build our strength and skills to progress with climbing and find out exactly where our limits are and how to push past them. The next challenge for us is to attempt our first trad leads where there will no longer be a rope above us to catch us safely. We'll have to free climb up the cliffs and place our own protection as we progress, where the risks and rewards are even greater. This journey so far has shown me that at the beginning, I was indeed a bit scared of heights and especially scared of falling. But one thing I'm scared of even more is letting that fear stop me from living my life to the fullest. So now, I've learned that I can let down and more importantly, onward and upwards. Until next time, happy travels. Might have had a little accident. I only went and managed to crash the drone twice in two minutes. One of the times was onto this tiny little island. I actually filmed the rescue attempt of that and put it onto our Patreon page. So if you want to check out what happened, I'll link it below. Patreon is the way that I'm able to create this kind of content that you've just watched. It's a lot of work putting together hundreds and hundreds of clips over such a long period of time and writing a story which is not only entertaining but hopefully inspirational. I know that it's the best use of my time but there's no way that I could do it with just YouTube alone. It has to be with viewer support. So thank you so much to our Patreons and if you're a regular viewer, please do consider joining the Kombi Crew. We cannot do it without you. Thank you so much for your support and I'll catch you in the next one.