'The Great Climb' TV Program

The cancellation of this weekend's broadcast was a great dissapointment for all 60 plus people involved in what would have been a truly groundbreaking live TV outside broadcast.

Hell's Lum, Location of Dave MacLeod's E10 climbing project (photo copyright Dave MacLeod)

The Hot Aches crew were part of a team of 12 camara crew working on the show. You will probably not be surpised to learn that Paul and I were to be filming the 'finale'; Dave MacLeod attempting to climb his new route on Hell's Lum. So having become well aquainted with that route I can confim that 1) it looks to be a truly superb line 2) it looks to be both very hard and extremely poory protected. 3) It would have been a very tense and dramatic shoot.

Diagram of Dave MacLeod's E10 climbing project (photo copyright Dave MacLeod)

The dissapointment is obvious, however it was tremendous to be involved in such a major broadcast project. Although the broadcast didn't go ahead, it did prove that the logistical challenge of broadcasting live, in high definition and surround sound, from a remote and dangerous envirnment could be achieved, and this bodes well for future broadcast projects.


It was great to work with a team of such motivated and hard working experts. The task of rigging 3 major routes involved many kilometres of fibre optical cabling and many more kilometers ropes. New cutting edge cameras from Sony were quite literally chopped in half - joined by an umbilical cord, so that the camera person would operate the front half whilst a safetly officer would carry the bulk of the weight and tranmistion unit in a hefty backpack. The pictures we were getting were quite astounding.


Equally impressive was the commitment to not damage the wonderful envirnment that exists in the Loch Avon basin and surrounding corries. The 'leave no trace' strategy was very well thought through, monitored and adhered to.

See the official BBC Great Climb website