About Keith

After 35 year of rock climbing you might think that would be time to throw in the towel! Not so, I’m keener than ever – there’s just so much rock out there that needs climbing there’s no time to lose!

Born in Darwen, Lancashire way back in 1957, my earliest climbing proper was in the dark, satanic gritstone quarries of Denham, Anzlezarke and Wilton. Back then, routes like Mohammed the Mad Monk of Moorside Home for Mental Misfits were bread and butter, if more than a little peculiarly named. Escape came courtesy of older friends in the Burnley Caving and Climbing Club. I owe much to two gents in particular (Chris and Steve) and to my early climbing partner (Dave). These guys not only tolerated my thrashings and bleatings but seemed to encourage them – big up guys! Chris was a saviour – his was the car, the veritable Tardis, by which means the young Sharples got to climb at such far away places as Almscliffe, Malham and Gordale. Within those early years we even hit crags on, what seemed like, the dark side of the moon, ie The Lakes, Wales and Scotland!

Eventually, The Metropolis (a.k.a. Sheffield) called and to where, under the guise of acquiring a university education, I moved in 1975. I studied Civil Engineering and climbing in more or less equal proportions. I have lived and climbed there ever since – no imagination you see! Wednesday Climb on North Burbage in the Peak District, the horrors of which are something that you should avoid as a neophyte, cut deep in my psyche, much deeper in fact than the rough gritstone cut into my fists. It was an experience that could have gone either way, but nearly 20 years later, having survived, I edited Froggatt, the British Mountaineering Council’s definitive rock climbing guidebook to that area.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s Kurt Albert, he of Germanic climbing fame, took to painting red circles and dots at the base of German climbs which he and his friends had free-climbed. His sport climbing invention seeped out from Germany and began to grip many of the world’s climbing cognoscenti. Racked with tendonitis from overtraining, hard climbing and never-ending house renovations, I wasn’t amongst the very earliest adaptors of the venerable dark-art of sport climbing here in the UK but I did join the throng once I recovered from said injuries and was amongst the main-stream cohorts that ‘defected’ from the traditionalist camp in the late 80’s.

The shear physicality, technicality and mentally demanding nature of this game has held me in its grip for twenty years or more. During that time I’ve been fortunate to clocked-up a number of (dare I say significant?) first ascents and repeats in my native Pennines.

“FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE”…

Hard sport climbing, by its very nature, is a time consuming and at times arduous and frustrating business that doesn’t suit all tastes. Success on something challenging rarely comes without considerable effort over a period of time; yet success at the very edge of your comfort zone is all the sweeter when it eventually comes. “Obsession”, Michael Caine argued in the film The Prestige, “is for the young…”. He might well be right but the way I see it though is that “fortune favours the brave”.

Only recently, some internet forum wag likened me to the ‘Flying Scotsman’, doubtless a reference to my age, noisy breathing and old skool climbing style (smooth and slow – but hopefully with a dash of understatement or even distinction?). Try as I do to sex-it-up, this style remains doggedly with me as my preferred (a.k.a. only) style. Perhaps though I should take solace in the dividends it has paid over the years; it works for me more often than it fails. The tale of the Hare and the Tortoise springs (well perhaps seeps) into mind. Trying, as I do, to ignore the advancing years I remain resolutely determined to tick as many hard routes as possible – there’s more miles in that old engine block yet!

I have, over the years, been luckily enough to climb with some of the very best, to travel widely to many of the very best climbing venues in Europe, the Americas and the Far East. There’s much left to do though…