Rich Heap Profile

Where did you first start climbing and were you immediately hooked?
When I was at Uni. This friend was in the climbing club and every Sunday he'd come back from trips out exhausted, blue in the face and fingers. It was like no way. Then another friend got convinced to go to Scotland for a weeklong winter trip and put pressure on me to join him, so he had a mate to go walking with. In the end I went, plodded up one grade one gully, had
a brilliant time and really enjoyed being with the people, exhausted and blue in the face. Afterwards I went down the Abraham Moss wall (a brick edge place in North Manchester) and got obsessed by a 6a traverse. Before starting to go on trips to Wales. Just because I was light I seemed to be okay at climbing but to turn that 6a traverse in to an 8c sport route ascent took a lot of dedication and dole cheques!

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.
At the moment my major problem is enthusiasm, motivation. Too many injuries over the last three/four years have sapped my energy to climb hard. Also after spending four years climbing full time I'm glad to be into something else. Before that my strength was tenacity and my weakness power.

You have climbed to a very high standard at sport climbing (Fr.8c), was this an area that you had to train a lot to become good at or is it something you developed by just going out cragging?
I never really trained more than the next man, during the winter I'd go down the wall but the summer¹s were spent exclusively cragging, a lot more than the next man. I¹m probably as strong now as ever but I reckon 8c would take me two years to achieve now (injuries permitting) cos. I'm not route fit. I definitely came to climbing hard thru' doing stacks of routes. I've did over fifty routes of 8a or above including 8a+'s in a day.