Dartmoor Trip

Taking advantage of coinciding days off and a brilliant weather forecast, minion Lurch and I spontaneously headed over to Dartmoor to spend a few hours bleeding all over the sharp granite tors. I hadn’t been climbing in ages and was desperate to get some routes done and build up a bit of trad momentum. Since a promising start, where I picked up a few soft E points at Fairy Cave Quarry and even managed some Hard Very Swanage thuggery without being killed, 2013 had sort of fizzled out into a blur of crap weather and endless shifts in the Cotswold deathstar. Time to get going again.

So we slept in the car park and got going ridiculously early in the morning, heading round Haytor to find the wild overhang of Outward Bound. It was a route I’d wanted to do for ages, looked awesome, crazy steep moves on massive jugs. What could possibly go wrong? We shivered as mist and wind blew across the moor and racked up. It would’ve been sensible to warm up first but I just couldn’t resist getting on Outward Bound straight away.

This was a terrible mistake.

With freezing numb fingers I clawed my way up the easy lower wall and gazed out in horror at the succession of overhanging blocks leapfrogging each other into space. Chuffing hell, I thought, it didn’t look this steep from the ground. Climbs never bloody do. I plugged in a cam and a pretty decent nut and swung out onto the beckoning jugs. Totally committed, I lunged for the next block and squawked in terror as my feet pinged off and I cut loose onto my arms. Scrabbling and slapping for footholds, instantly pumped, I grabbed at a promising hold with the wrong hand and hung in utter desperation for long moments wondering what to do.

I nearly fell off. I tried to swap my hands around. I nearly fell off some more.

Finally I managed to do something useful with my feet and gibbered into a position of vague balance. No gear. Sobbing quietly I hauled on clumps of heather and grass towards the mid height ledge, and curled into the foetal position as painful hot aches spasmed through my fingers. Fortunately the rest of the route was straightforward. Warmed up/completely fucked already, I seconded Lurch up a couple of easier routes. He even took a fairly decent lob off an old school thrutching crack, getting straight back on it and leaving a trail of blood and muttered obscenities to the summit.

Next we ambled round the other side to check out a ‘3 star classic’ called Vandal and Ann, basically a couple of separate HVS pitches strung together. The first was a steep, sloper ridden slab, the second a moss covered crack groove thing. Lovely.

 The start was a 5b boulder problem, desperate smearing up to the first break. Here I placed an OK nut and made some more tricky moves to the next break. No obvious gear so I scuttled up to another on distressingly un-positive holds. Here I spent several minutes trying to place wires in a flared horizontal crack, ending up with 3 of the buggers in, none of which I would lower off let alone fall onto. This was all a bit full on. Nevermind, a final hard move, small foot edges and hands palming nothing, I eventually reached the belay.

“Scary biscuits, mate”, I told Lurch. “Nails biscuits”, he said seconding. I thought it very hard for HVS, probably E1 without small cams or offsets for the last break.

The second pitch, Ann, was 5a, completely overgrown. I made a tough pull through a bulge to enter the groove and was horrified by what awaited me. A green off-width crack snaked upwards, no discernible holds, sloping everything, moss everywhere. Thankfully there was some alright gear. I teetered and balanced my way higher, gardening for footholds as I went. Midway up I squirmed into a semi-restful thigh jam and tried to figure out what to do next.

“You alright?” said Lurch, perhaps concerned about my lack of progress.

“Well I’m not getting pumped,” I replied, “You need holds to get pumped on. There are none.”

Moving my feet up would’ve pushed me out the crack and off, I just needed something positive, anything. Then I noticed a tiny footledge on the slab to the left. Another bout of moss pruning and it was good to go. I worked my foot onto it, hands doing sod all, and executed an unnervingly tenuous rockover onto the slab. No going back now. I smeared higher, slipping on more bloody moss, aiming for a rounded knob that was the only feature I could see. I lunged for it, not great but good enough, and managed to pull myself beached whale style onto the easy finishing slabs. For some minutes I lay there and wondered how the hell such a monstrosity got 3 stars in the guidebook.

Lurch actually found the pitch alright, the bastard, probably because his freakish height allowed him to reach holds that I had otherwise been forced to grovel for. At least I told myself that.

We spent the rest of the day messing about on easy stuff in the sun, although I still managed to lose most of the skin off my arms in some godforsaken VDiff jamming crack. Nonetheless, it was two very satisfied red raw husks who staggered off into the sunset, leaving behind a legacy of blood splatters and picnicking children traumatised by gratuitous swearing and unearthly death shrieks.

How to Winter Climb

The following guide contains everything you need to know to be as good at winter climbing as I am.

1 – Always catch a nasty bug just before leaving for the mountains. Headache, sore throat, runny nose, feverish nightmares; the more the better. Bonus point if your climbing partner gets it as well.

2 – Head up to Ben Nevis overnight with two of you sharing the driving. Make sure that the passenger still remains awake, and that neither of you gets any sleep on the journey.

3 – Get pulled over by the police 10 seconds before the turning off for the car park. Extra points if you are already wearing all your gear and as a result look fucking stupid. “Do you always drive with a balaclava and headtorch, sir?”

4 – Hike up the steep path towards the north face carrying obscenely heavy rucksacks. This is training, and will get you really fit for the days’ climb.

5 – Pitch the tent miles away from the CIC hut. After all, you don’t want it to be in a convenient position to the climbing. Why else do you think you’re enduring the misery of camping?

6 – Despite being ill and exhausted, start straight up for a big scary route like the North East Buttress, that would be near the limit of your capabilities if you were feeling good. This is mountaineering, not a bloody picnic (if you are carrying a picnic get rid of it right away; make do with a handful of unpleasant cheap muesli bars instead, or nothing).

7 – Make sure you are last in line of the big queue of climbers all going for the same route. This means you get to wait for longer at freezing belays, enjoying the stunning views of cloud and spindrift.

8 – If the first section of the route is very easy snow plodding without much gear, don’t whatever you do move together or solo it. Pitch it. This will ensure it takes four times longer than it has to, and is far more sporting.

9 – When you do finally get to the harder climbing, make sure your partner has just led off from the belay before suddenly discovering an overwhelming need to take a shit. More points according to how long it takes to clear up, how numb your arse gets, and whether you actually remembered to bring bog roll or not.

10 – Always check the security of a bit of fixed tat by hooking your axe round it and yanking hard as you can. If this doesn’t break it then nothing will.

11 – Should you find yourself leading a long run out pitch, and running out of rope, make sure you deliberately ignore any massive belay boulders you pass. These are considered cheating. Instead keep going, that way your second can dismantle the anchor and climb up after you.

12 – When moving together up steep snow and ice, NEVER COMMUNICATE.

13 – Upon finding yourself stuck on a stamped out snow ledge on a dodgy belay, waiting for hours for the people in front of you to get a move on, do not, under any circumstances, abseil off the route. It just isn’t cricket, what?

14 – Also, why not develop stage 1 hypothermia? Just lie back and enjoy that sudden sense of warmth you feel!

15 – If you say “one more pitch then we’ll see”, make sure that one pitch both fully commits you to the rest of the route and uses up all the remaining daylight.

16 – When you have finished belaying, it is always better if your screwgate jams when you try to undo it. This way you can spend many long minutes screaming with impotent frustration and smashing the fucking thing with your ice hammer.

17 – (BONUS POINT!) Try to get your phone out to call a helicopter, then realise you can’t because you’re belaying. Even better, spend ages figuring out some hugely complex and dangerous juggling system that allows you to do both, only to then realise you have no signal/phone.

18 – Make sure the pair in front top ropes you up out the last hard pitch. Mountaineering has nothing to do with self reliance or responsibility whatsoever.

19 –When you finally reach the top of the route, more exhausted than you’ve ever been in your life, realise you are on the featureless summit plateau of Ben Nevis, and therefore still have a very, very long way to go.

20 – And to really finish things off, spend the remainder of the trip shivering inside your dank, cramped tent, having developed your cold into a full on chest infection.

Congratulations, you are now a winter climber! Mind you don’t trip over all those frozen corpses.

Snowfall and Storm

Pat and I headed up to Scotland in the wake of a heavy thaw, hoping for conditions to improve. There seemed to be a lot of snow around on the drive to Fort William, and everyone we passed on the hike up to Ben Nevis said there had been a huge dump of powder on the mountain, subsequently creating a big avalanche risk. We pitched our tent below the north face, shivered, and wondered what to do. Both getting to and exiting a lot of the routes would be very dangerous indeed.

For our first route we swam up unconsolidated snow towards the Douglas Boulder, a lower pinnacle of Tower Ridge separated by a deep gully. We then soloed up easy mixed terrain into the gully itself, hoping to climb the steep wall of the boulder to South West ridge, which would lead us to the summit. Passing the easiest entry point, we climbed a short mixed ramp to a hanging spike belay underneath what looked like a good pitch, and sorted out the gear.

I led the pitch, up a series of steep walls and cracks broken by narrow ledges of snow. It was the first properly technical mixed climbing I’d ever done. Hooking my axes into seams and edges, torquing on blocks and handholds, crampons balancing, teetering, I clawed my way upwards, not finding as much gear as I wanted. The crux was a committing bridge around a protruding block into a thin crack, and the pitch was sustained until the last pull onto the crest of the South West ridge. There was one nut I thought maybe good enough to hold a fall.

I brought Pat up, and we swung leads to the top of the Boulder. Pat did a great job on the final crux, a desperate, grovelling pull up a corner with no feet to reach the summit. All in all we climbed four pitches, and I’d guess the route with our alternative start was around grade IV. In worsening weather and billowing spindrift we abseiled into the gap formed by the gully and downclimbed steep, rubbish snow to get off the face.

It snowed all evening and all through the night, increasing the avalanche risk even higher, so we waited a day before attempting another route, hoping a cold snap would sort it all out again. We then got up really early to try the classic North East Buttress. However, as we climbed steepening snow and rocks to a ramp leading onto the face of the buttress, the snow conditions just got worse and worse. I broke off mini windslabs with every step, and could see fresh slide scars on the slopes around me. We had a quick discussion then turned back for the tent, packed up, and headed off the mountain with the intention of moving over to the Cairngorms. On the hike down we met another climber who luckily avoided injury falling 30m or so off Point Five Gully when the ice he was climbing sheared off.

We got one day of perfect weather on Coire an t’Sneachda, and set off hoping to climb a classic route called Fingers Ridge. However, we started too far right, and ended up on terrain we couldn’t identify in the guidebook. Pat led a rising traverse up a brittle icefall to a belay in a gully. Ignoring the obvious line, I climbed a steep rib just right of the gully, past a very hard move up a wide crack. I committed, was hanging off one tool and crap feet placements when I realised the leash of my other tool had got tangled in the last bit of gear. Thrashing around, fingers uncurling from the axe handle, I tried to uncoil the mess, and only just freed the tool in time to sink it and avoid falling off. Another hard step led to much easier, turfy ground, and finally a good belay ledge at the end of the difficulties. We have since checked, and believe this pitch could be a new variation to the adjacent route, Goat Track Gully.

Two scrappy pitches up snow and turf, a traverse left onto an exposed ridge to avoid the risky exit slope, and a final tricky tower, led us to the summit plateau of the crag. In blue sky, sunshine, and ferocious wind, we walked back down the ski pistes of Cairngorm Mountain. Then a howling blizzard rolled in, raged throughout the night, and the road to the ski station was closed the following morning. We once again had to beat a retreat off the mountain, aware that the avalanche risk was simply too great. I decided against staying up by myself, due to having no definite partner to climb with and not wanting to solo anything in such dangerous conditions (or alternatively go mad with cold alone in a tent). Hopefully I’ll be able to get back up there in a week or so.

(In the extremely unlikely event that the variation we climbed was a first ascent, we will name it Ringer's Fridge (get it?), grade III 4.)

Alps Photos Part 2

 

Hiking through spectacular scenery towards the Rimpfischhorn.

 

 

The view of the Matterhorn (4478m) from our base camp.

 

 

The Rimpfischhorn (4198m). All the main difficulties of the route lie in surmounting the tooth shaped summit buttress.

 

 

Our surprisingly comfy bivy at the start of the route. The big peak in the background is the Weisshorn (4506m).

 

 

Traversing Point 4001m, all the hard stuff still ahead.

 

 

Jordan leading up the final tower to the summit.

 

 

The view from the top.

 

 

After several attempts in 2010, I finally stand on the summit of the Rimpfischhorn.

 

 

Descending the ice couloir, which was in terrible condition, with the Monte Rosa massif in the background.

 

 

An atmospheric Matterhorn the evening before our attempt.

 

 

Me arsing around on one of the numerous fixed ropes on the Hornli Ridge.

 

 

 

Not this time!

 

 

Back down safe as the weather deteriorates. Not exactly sure what I'm doing with my hand...

 

 

And finally, me, in my pants, pointing at the Matterhorn.

North Ridge

We climb in the dark early hours of the morning and lose our way on the glacier. Chossy ice, rotten rock. Crampons skate and grind. Pat trips and breaks a toe, and will not realise until we return home. Cold, we huddle round the map and look for an answer. Turn back or try again. We try. This time no mistake. Steepening snow leads to the lowest point of the ridge. It’s just getting light.

The way is clear. A north ridge, saw-toothed pinnacles, distant snowy summit hidden from sight. We climb. Over spikes and towers, traversing slabs, we move together quickly. If one falls the other will hold firm or die trying. But it will not come to that. Though we don’t yet know it, this day is ours.

Flashback a year. Chamonix, black clouds fill the skies, mountains made inaccessible by snow and by storm. Shut down. Months of training gone to waste. We are trapped in our tent for long hours by a blizzard that kills on the slopes of Mont Blanc. Early return, disappointment. Failure. A hunger unsatisfied. No question of coming back again. Given a chance I know we can accomplish anything.

The ridge is unrelenting. I find the easiest way and worry about time. Perfect weather, little wind, the sun rising fast. Too fast. The way back down off this mountain will be dangerous in the midday heat. A maze of seracs waiting to fall, ever weakening bridges over crevasses without bottom. No matter though. We live for the present, for this winding ridge of golden rock. Concentrating on finding handholds. Feet clumsy in big boots. Hard to trust upon tiny imperfections. And just above, the crux awaits.

A steep tower. Finger cracks and edges. Pat belays and I climb quickly. Smearing on nothing. Muscles tremble as I hang on to place protection. Legs ache. Cold fingers uncurl. I must not fall now. Upwards, ever upwards. If I can reach the next ledge we are halfway there. Old rusty pegs hammered into fissures. They will not hold but I clip them anyway. The ledge within sight, within reach. A final grasp. I catch my breath and bring Pat up. We continue without rest.

Meters pass, the ridge drops away beneath my feet. Pure instinct. Life or death desicions made in a heartbeat. I realise I am experiencing one of the great days of my life. Putting ideal into reality. We forge our dreams of rock and ice. The climbing is getting harder, more intense, each pinnacle a riddle we must solve to carry on. Gatekeepers of the summit. We climb effortlessly as one, each safeguarding the other. Communicating through the ebb and flow of the rope alone.

A final obstacle. The ridge narrows. On either side a terrible void drops away. Incuts hewn into the stone, a stairway to perfection. Beckoning me onward to exponential heights. Tired now. We slow and puff. At last the rock ends and a snow arête climbs up to nothing but sky. The summit. The reason for my being. Pat out in front, a lone figure battling through the wind. His ice axe bites deep, his crampons cutting the steps that I will follow. Lost in the wonder of the moment. Not there yet but soon we will be.

Just a few feet now. The crunch of snow. I can see mountains all around me, challenge enough to last ten lifetimes. Nowhere else I’d rather be. Fuelled by a fire within that burns hot and bright. Time loses meaning, seconds crawl by with the weight of decades. One more step and I can go no higher. An experience that will be mine forever. I step at last into a depthless, rushing blue, where the world ends and the mountain becomes the sky.

Alps Photos

 

 

Approaching the Lagginhorn (4010m) on the Hohsaas cable car. We climbed the obvious left-hand ridge line.

 

 

Looking towards the chossy approach from our bivy spot.

 

 

The view towards the Bernese Alps from the summit, which we reached at first light.

 

 

Me suffering from the altitude, having not fully acclimatised prior to our ascent.

 

 

Pat very happy to be back down again.

 

 

The death trap face we had to traverse underneath to reach the Brittania Hut.

 

 

Panoramic shot from our bivy. The peaks, from left to right, are the Strahlhorn (4190m), the Rimpfischhorn (4198m), and the Allalinhorn (4027m). I returned a couple of weeks later with Jordan and finally succeeded on the Rimpfischhorn after several failed attempts back in 2010.

 

 

Pat on the summit of the Allalinhorn with the Zermatt peaks on the horizon.

 

 

Looking back at the Allalinhorn from the cable car station. We climbed the left-hand snow ridge through the obvious rock band to reach the top.

 

 

The awesome north ridge of the Weissmies (4017m), viewed from the Lagginhorn.

 

 

Me climbing a typical pinnacle on the ridge with the summit still a long way away.

 

 

Best route I've ever done!

 

 

Panoramic of the rock section of the north ridge, with the Lagginhorn in the background.

Putting My Head Back Together

At some point over the summer I lost my trad head. I went from being steady at HVS to gibbering my way up Severes and shouting ‘watch me’ every time I so much as moved a finger. Of course, it was all Swanage’s fault. The loose rock, the steepness, the greasy limestone, the horror, the horror...

I lost all confidence in my ability to climb, found lose holds everywhere, got twatted by a block the size of a melon that Rich broke off on some chossy, god-forsaken VDiff in the depths of Cormorant Ledge. Even when I placed good gear I couldn’t stop questioning the rock I’d put it in. On one route at Cattle Troughs I clung on mid crux, steadily getting more and more pumped and terrified, and placed about 37 nuts before I finally manned up and pulled through. Then it started raining as I inched my way up the easy headwall, which freaked me out so much I seriously considered untying and throwing myself into the sea.

It took a few sport sessions at Winspit and Portland to regain any semblance of the climber I’d once been. Sure I was crap, sure I made grade 5s look like 8as, sure I probably retreated from more routes than I finished. But somewhere along the way I found the spark of confidence I was looking for.

Cue a fairly hopeless attempt with Lurch to climb a route on Lliwedd, a subsidiary buttress of Snowdon, described in the guidebook as the biggest mountain cliff in Wales.

We couldn’t even find the fucking thing.

It was so misty all we could see was the very bottom of something that might’ve been a towering 300m crag, but could’ve just as easily been a boulder. We thrashed around on slimy choss for hours, hoping against hope that the fog would recede, that we might somehow stumble upon the start of the route by accident, that, despite all the basic principles of reality, it might actually be dry and climbable, rather than a piss wet death trap that would brush us off like bothersome gnats into the hell we so richly deserved.

Angry, cold and soaking, we trudged back down the Miner’s Track to Pen y Pass and headed back towards the Llanberis slate quarries, where Luke was already climbing. He said he was on a crag called Australia that was awesome and we should get on it right away.

Once a-fucking-gain, we couldn’t find the fucking thing. I fatally neglected to look at the book, and instead just hiked up to the top of the first quarry I could see. It was steep and took ages. Poor old Lurch fell further and further behind, until I started receiving a string of increasingly worrying text messages from him; Where are you?; I’m bloody knackered; I think I’m lost; My phone’s about to die; Something comes...

And so on. I realised my mistake at the top, turned around, found a somewhat traumatised Lurch (muttering ‘the eyes, the eyes’ over and over again), and we went and climbed a route at the bottom. It was a weird sport/trad hybrid, and I decided that slate was rubbish. Rather than do another, we went back into the Pass and climbed an uber-classic Severe called Crackstone Rib, which was fantastic.

The next day we hit Tremadog. Lurch led most of a cool multipitch VDiff called Hail Bebe, then I had a go at Merlin Direct, a classic HVS. As usual, I faffed about on the hard bits, got pumped, took about three days to build a belay that would hold 18 stone of plummeting Lurch, and climbed the final crux wall at a speed that made tectonic drift look snappy. But I got there. It was brilliantly sustained, with a bit of everything - thuggery, corner bridging, a slab, a jugtastic layback flake, and the techy headwall that almost spat me off the last move when I got my feet all wrong and had to do a desperate belly flop campus for survival off a sloper and a shitty crimp.

Bringing Lurch up and gazing out at the rolling fields and distant hills, I knew I was back in the game. A couple of weeks later I descended into the nightmare that is Boulder Ruckle, and amazingly, despite being weak, scared, and generally lacking in talent, I wasn’t killed.

And with ‘Hard Very Swanage’, that’s about the best I could’ve hoped for.