John Gaskins Profile include "header_root.php

Where did you start climbing and were you immediately hooked?
I started in the Lakes, my school had 2 places on a county outdoor week where you could choose which activity to follow for the week, I got one of the places. I would say that I was quite taken by climbing, partly by the different aspect of the outdoors that it opened up, before then I'd done a lot of hill walking and scrambling so rock climbing was another way of seeing, and being in, the outdoors.

Do you feel you have a natural ability towards climbing or is it something you have really had to work at?
I don't know whether I've got a natural ability or not. I've always been very sport orientated, and was in both county and school teams for a variety of different sports (both team and individual), so I guess I must have some natural aptitude towards sports. Although I generally train quite hard (it varies depending on other commitments) I wouldn't say that I've had to work hard as such, although I suppose it depends on how much you enjoy training as to whether you consider it been hard work or not. I've always enjoyed training so I don't see it as hard work.

What area of climbing would you say is your weakness or the area you have to work at the most? For example power, stamina etc.
I'd say that stamina is now the weak link in my climbing, although I know from past experience that I can get reasonable stamina through just going climbing. It's just that at present the things that I want to do don't require stamina. Power, and power endurance to a lesser extent, are the things I spend the most time training for because they are the aspects that most of my 'projects' require.

You made the third ascent of the Ben Moon desperate 'Hubble', Ravens Tor, Did you have to adopt any specific training methods to complete this route and do you feel that it is at the limit of what you can climb?
I trained on a copy of the crux section that I built on my board to gain the move specific strength that the route required. For me living 2 hours away from Raven Tor being able to train on something very similar to the route was really important.
Although when I did Hubble it was at the limit of what I could climb this is no longer the case. From the things that I can do on my board I know that I can climb much harder than Hubble.

At the moment you are working the line to the right of 'Hubble', that Malcolm Smith originally bolted. How does this line compare in difficulty to its neighbour and can you see yourself redpointing it in the not too distant future?
It's definitely harder, both in terms of the difficulty of the actual moves and also the number of hard moves, although by how much is harder to say. As regards redpointing this line, if I didn't think that I could redpoint it in the near future I wouldn't be investing the time into it that I am at present. Having done it in 2 sections I feel confident that I can link it all together sooner rather than later, although we'll have to wait and see if this happens.