Yosemite Valley, Stories from the Bottom
Sunday April 1st, Lescar Hotel, Sheffield
Alas! Alas! Alas! The end of the Sheffield series. (At last! At Last! At Last! you might say). This Sunday, the first of April, sees the final show of this year’s Sheffield Ape Indexes. (The Catholic church asked us to bring it forward one week to make room for Easter) This week, the mediocre climber wishing to pay for his holidays will be me, Niall Grimes, (they don’t come any more mediocre than that) with a Yosemite show based on several trips the Valley. The show takes in many of the great routes, The Rostrum, Astroman, The Prow, Zodiac, Royal Arches amongst them, but also one of the main things about Yosemite, the people. Ex marines, white supremacists, junkies all pop up among the usual parade of mad for it aid merchants, German free-climbing übermensch, and red-hot speed climbers.
We have two videos this week as support. The first is the fabled Hard Grit 2, a home movie by Dan Honneyman featuring thrills and spills from some of the hardest grit routes in the Peak and Yorkshire. Shaky camera angles á la NYPD Blue and authentic acting gives this horror show a sense that these events are actually happening. HOLD ON A MINUTE! THEY ARE!!!!!!
On a much more sedate level, there will also be an excerpt from a forthcoming video from the Slackjaw stable, Bouldering in Britain. The section to be shown will feature climbing action in the beautiful coastlines of North Wales, and is a real treat. (This will not be of final production quality, as it is still in the editing stage, but you’ll get the idea.)
As a final treat we can also present Andy Kirkpatrick, Sheffield’s own Hull person, with his intriguing Commercial Break, where Andy promises to endorse some of his favourite products, namely, himself. (There are people still laughing from his last show, so try to calm down before Sunday).
Anyway, hope to see you there. And to all who have attended the shows throughout the winter, thank you, and I hope you have all enjoyed yourselves seeing them as we have doing them. For more info see the
Ape Index web site. And to all those who enjoy slagging Sheffield off on the web, start now …..