Our Sam and Lu giving some tips on Tradding

Have a look at Katherine Schirrmacher's interviews with Sam and Lu over on www.lovetoclimb.co.uk about how they mentally prepare for hard, bold trad climbs.

In particular Sam is telling us about his Appointment With Death!!!

The crazy pink tufa!! and other stuff

We have just had a strange delivery from our man Steve from Holdz. He brought us an enormous tufa that stretchers the full length of the comp wall. This massive feature will be great for anyone traveling to Spain or Kalymnos to train on and get very strong on tufa's.
The Brown circuit has also been finished, there are now 30 great interesting problem's from 5 to 6a+.

Last Thursday The Climbing Works held our 3rd Annual press event for Cliffhanger 2009. The event was a huge success. Check out some of the photo's taken from the local press photographers .The first one showing members of the council and other people involved with the event.

The second showing Paul Scriven leader of the sheffield council,Philip Smith Vice Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University and Steve McClure super strong climber tackling the Climbing works slab!

Bank Holiday Monday Opening Hours

With the 2nd Bank Holiday upon us once again, we hope you're having an enjoyable one.

This Monday we'll be open our normal hours. That's 12-10pm.

This weekend we're open 10am - 8pm as normal.

Partial Wall Closure in June

We've been open 2 and a half years now and in that time there has been one or two people through our doors...

It's now come to that time that we feel we need to give the walls a little care and attention. A lick of paint, some new panels and some new features to be exact. To do this, we're going to partially close some of the walls over the course of two different weeks. The word to remember is 'partially'. The Works won't be closed, just parts of it.

The first partial closure will be from Monday 15th - Friday 19th June and will involve closure of:

- Skips

- Clinic & Pipes wall

- Middle room (one with bean bag)

- Kids blocs and the walls opposite them.

- Reception pillar and Arch.

This is roughly a third of the wall. At the end of the week you'll have some new, brighter, better walls to play on...and a whole lot of new problems.

The 2nd partial closure won't be till August and we'll let you know exact details closer to the time.

Shop Changes

Today has been a busy day.

Not only has the heavy rain brought the masses in on a friday afternoon, we've been busy doing shop stuff. When I say we, I really mean Lu. She's been hard at and has totally refurbished the shop so you've got plenty of new styles from E9, Blurr and Moon.

In the past, we've had quite a lot of Women say that we don't carry enough female specific clothing. Well no more. We've got 13 different styles of trousers - from hard wearing crag pants to stylish jeans to yoga style comfy trousers - and 8 styles of Women top. If you can't find a climbing top or pant in the shop now....well....

As for the Men. Again, you can find 16 different types of climbing pant. Moon, Blurr & E9 provide the classic cypher pant, stylish jeans and hardwearing cords. You can call into the shop or visit our collection online.

While refurbing the shop, we've also had a clearout. There's now a big sale rail beside reception with most products 50% OFF!! Be quick this weekend as always, they will disappear fast. We'll be getting them onto the web early next week.

With the forecast looking poor, take the chance to checkout the shop when you're in this weekend.

CWIF 2010

The Climbing Works International Festival 09 was an astounding success. It was simply a stunning day showcasing competition climbing at its best. 

Saturday 20th March 2010 will see the fourth installment of this amazing event and the CWIF will be even bigger and better than any previous year. We'll be getting more big names from abroad plus all the homegrown wads. We'll be going all out to make it much more than a competition so keep an eye out on the website for more details as the year progresses. 

View a photo gallery of CWIF 09 on the climbing works website>>

Where art thou summer??

With the rain descending once more from cloudy & cold Sheffield skies, it bodes ill for a decent UK summer. The heady warm, dry spell we received in mid April seems like a long time ago. 

With the weather so poor, what to do? Obviously we've got plenty going on at the Works with a new yellow circuit just completed and of course our new bar at reception. 

For those who have been on it, or those who feel that they don't need to go on it, check out this guy who has obviously spent a bit of time on a bar...possibly even behind some? This is what the youth would call 'sick!'

Enjoy.

Pimp My Ride

The Works van has had a bit of a face lift, courtesy of the main man. Check it out - and give us a honk if you see it out on the road!

Also the topo for the new yellow circuit is up in the wall, it it should be on the website later on today.

New Yellow Circuit

The new yellow circuit is finished. 38 problems, all between the grade of Font 6c to 7b+, with the majority in the 7a region. Its not a circuit for your specialist has it has a bit of everything to contend with - brute force and ignorance won't cut it if you want to do the whole circuit, although obviously it will see you through a few of the more knarly problems! The topo is still in the pipeline, but should be up by tomorrow. In the meanwhile, enjoy!

Plywood Masters

Here's a 'heads up' to any of you who are interested in competing in one of the countries best bouldering competitions. The infamous Plywood Masters competition is scheduled to take place next weekend at BoulderUK in Blackburn - the seniors competition is on Saturday the 16th and Juniors and Veterans compete on Sunday the 17th May. Both days festivities start at 10am with rgistration taking place before hand. For more details give the guys a ring, as they've not updated their website yet (well, it is in Lancashire....!)

Bar Work

So here's the photos of the new bar at the Works. As you can see it's a pretty hefty bar and it's already had some abuse from Andy Earl who was down on the limestone for the day.

The coloured tape on the bar is not for safety / hazard awareness, but actually for training purposes. The tapes are 25cm apart allowing you to be scientific about pull ups, cross overs and the like. We're putting together a list of exercises that you can do on it which will be available from the front reception in the next day or two.

For those who rather just climb, don't worry we haven't forgotten you. Percy has stripped the yellow CWIF circuit and has started setting a new easy yellow....no wait, that's not right. He's setting a completely nails yellow circuit. That's more like it. He'll have that finished by Monday evening.

In the meantime enjoy the new training facilities and have a great weekend.

The Works Finally Has A Bar

That's right, as Percy mentioned earlier in the week, the Works now has a bar. Graeme got very excited when he read Percy's original blog, but unfrotunately for Graeme, it's a pull up bar.

As it's the Works, this is not your normal small, stuck away in a corner bar. Nope. This is a huge 6 person beast of a pull up bar that will allow you to do all type of front levers, one armers or even your first pull up.

I'll stick some photos up tomorrow when i'm back in the office but if you're down tonight, believe me, you won't miss it.

Home is where the crag is

I've now lived in Sheffield for nearly 3 and a half years and with so many crags within driving distance (not just around Sheffield but also Yorkshire, North Wales and Pembroke) it sometimes surprises me why I seem to keep returning home to Ireland to climb.

That surprise changes from 'why here?' to 'why not here more often?' though when I actually get to the selected crag and start climbing. This past bank holiday weekend I took the short flight to Cork and met O'Sullivan guides once again to head north west to the beautiful cliffs of the Burren.

Situated on the west coast below Galway, the Burren is a trad climbers paradise for anyone operating in the low E grades and above. It's a perfect sea cliff with a non-tidal 'lie about and enjoy the sun' and a 'sea under my feet ab in' section so you can pick your level of adventure. The routes are of course superb. Trad climbing with bomber wire placements that make trad as close to sport climbing as it ever can be.

With big swells, showers and a stiff wind we had to work for our routes but there's not many places that can be bone dry 30 mins after a heavy shower. Overall a fantastic weekend that has me thinking about booking another late summer flight back to the Burren. It also has me motivated for my next trip home at the end of the month (this time to the Mournes and Fairhead).

It is true that sometimes you have to leave a place before you realise how much that place has to offer. That's also true for the Guinness...

The Works gets a Bar!

Yep, you read it right. Next week will see the installation of our new bar area. However, before you get all excited, its not going to be that type of bar. Oh no, this one is going to be a great big one for doing pull-ups, muscles up, dips, and performing other medieval forms of torture. With any luck I should have sorted it out and it'll be ready to use towards the end of next week. As you have come to expect from us by now, it isn't going to be a nasty little bar, but a great big, shiny, wide-radius bar with plenty of space around it for all your favourite exercises. Bring on the one-armed front levers.....