UKC

UKClimbing.com are proud to present our exclusive summer series of 'Climbing with Maya'.

This six episode series follows Bristol based climber Maya Holding as she hits her local crag of Cheddar and makes a couple of trips down to Portland.


This isn't a high-flying, high-budget...

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=64480

Episodes have been put together well and are enjoyable to watch. Also nice to see something at an attainable level (watching Sharma or Ondra climb F9b's is exciting, but 99% of climbers aren't going to ever tick that).

One criticism though would be the pacing/goal... episode 1 says she wants to break into the F7 range, then succeeds in episode 2 with a 7a+ with no lead falls (none shown at least) and no frustration. Unfortunately this make episodes 3 and onwards feel a little anticlimatic.

Perhaps F7b would have been a better goal to state at the start, so the F7a+ in episode 2 would have felt like a strong step towards that, rather than having nailed it too soon.

In reply to UKC News:

Well, someone's got to say it...

These videos are actually quite bad. The script in all of them so far is:

Shaky fast cutting scenes and then Maya saying "Hello i'm Maya holding from Bristol and i'm at XXXX to attempt XXX climb".

Then more fast cutting shaky skits and back to Maya who says "I'm going to try the route top roping it".

Then follows a series of 1 second long badly framed sequences that leave you disoriented without a clue of what's going on, and then back to Maya saying "I did all the moves, and will try to lead it".
Even when it's just Maya talking to the camera, the film maker still feels it's neccesary to keep jumping from angle to angle before your brain has time to readjust to the new frame.

Some more edits and back to Maya who says "I'm back at crag XXX and will try the route now"

Then we get a few more dizzying psychotropic grade fast cutting action from 37 different angles where you can't see more than 2 moves in a row and which makes you reach for the motion sickness pills while you feel last week's hangover suddenly return, and before you know what's happened is back to Maya saying "I did the route".

The End

In reply to TheAvenger: lol

In reply to TheAvenger:

I was trying to work out what I didn't like about it:

"Shaky fast cutting scenes"
"jumping from angle to angle before your brain has time to readjust"

and that's it...

In reply to TheAvenger:

And I don't think I have ever walked past such non-descript uninspiring looking routes in my life.

In reply to turtlespit:

Hi, thanks for your feedback, I'm glad you have enjoyed the episodes so far.

I can see your criticism of me attaining the 7a+ so quickly, maybe we should have changed the goal to 7b. We have left this series as true to the events this summer as possible, and 7a was genuinely the goal at the beginning. It actually came a lot easier than I had expected!

I actually found this climb at Portland a lot harder, although it was a 7a. The last 2 episodes (Thursdays and Fridays episodes) are trying 7bs, we hadn't put this as the aim as I never ever imagined I could be trying this when I first set out my goal, I was worried I wouldn't get a 7a.

I hope this helps to explain everything
Maya

In reply to maya89:

Get yourself up to Yorkshire! None of this Cheddar rubbish.

In reply to maya89: Think you should throw in the Grandes Jorassess in episode 5 for some spice!

In reply to andy kirkpatrick:

Stop trolling Andy - get it ... trolling.... oh suit yourself.