Benny

The ledge ended abruptly, dropping straight down into the sea. A black cave was carved out of the cliff before us. I could see steep, slimy rock walls disappearing into the darkness, foaming waves crashing all around, the noise incredible. This, apparently, was where the route called Benny went.

I belayed Luke, who had done it before, as he vanished around a corner into the mouth of the cavern. Slowly paying out rope, I sat on the ledge and wondered what the hell I was doing. Why, I thought, am I going into this hellish place; this miserable, sun-forsaken pit of pitch black hopelessness? Why?

To get back out again. Obviously.

“Safe!” came the shout, and I started dismantling the belay. Here was my chance to escape, to pretend that I had never come to Swanage on this piss wet day, and I could tell the authorities that Luke had been soloing and that I didn’t know who the hell he was anyway. Then the rope came tight. Too late. Attached to a single skinny 8.6 mil half I lay down on my stomach on the soaking ledge and wormed my way lower, feet feeling for footholds on the steep wall. Once established I began traversing into the cave. Into the very jaws of hell itself...

A few tenuous moves later I could see the first of the aid slings hanging off the wall. The rock was far too featureless and slippery to climb conventionally, so instead you had to follow a line of tatty old threads, clipping them directly to your harness using extended slings as foot stirrups. Or something like that. Apparently the person who had placed them was a giant, because I found each one to be just far away enough to necessitate a sort of desperate horizontal stretch, one foot scrabbling and sliding all over the slimy rock in a vain attempt to find some kind of purchase. All the while I could hear the sea crashing just beneath me. If any of the shitty old threads broke under my weight I would get very wet indeed.

And probably very drowned as well.

But as I delved deeper into the cave I developed a steady rhythm of reach, clip, step, unclip, and soon enough made my way to Luke’s belay. He was sitting on a small ledge at the back of the zawn, maybe 20 feet above the sea. Above him was the dark chimney of the second pitch. The one I was going to lead.

After some awkward shuffling on the confined stance, I established myself above Luke and started sorting out the gear for my pitch. It looked genuinely terrifying. The black walls rose up above me, leaning out all the way, towards a tiny circle of light at the top. In the darkness I couldn’t tell whether it was 10 or 10,000 meters away.

“This is perverse,” I muttered, wedging myself into a corner and trying to wriggle higher. There were plenty of good handholds where the walls converged, but not much for the feet. After struggling past a chockstone I finally found a decent foot ledge. With both feet pressed into it, I simply pushed my back and arse into the opposing wall, and got myself into a suspended sitting position. Proper old school chimney climbing, no fancy moves here. Inch by inch I wormed my way upwards, squirming towards the distant light. The sound of water and waves echoed around me, joined by my own grunts of exertion as I climbed higher.

All this in darkness. I could hardly see a thing, didn’t have a clue what my feet were on. I blindly fumbled with my hands to find holds, hoping all the while that I wouldn’t grease off and go plummeting back down into the foaming sea. At least the protection was good. There were several fixed threads, some of which felt almost new, and I realised that somehow, unfathomably, I was enjoying the route. A hard move past another chockstone, and I saw that the roof of the cave was just above my head. The blowhole was in front of me, a vision of salvation, a window into a forgotten world of brightness and life. Still wedged in like a tic I worked towards it, pressed one way then the other, bridging and smearing on the slippery rock, using my own body as a block to prevent me falling.

A last step out to the opposite wall brought me into an open tunnel of light. I walked through the blowhole to a huge ledge covered in bird crap and feathers, actually kind of sad that it was over. I had become almost used to the bizarre contortions and sweaty jams of the chimney.

Luke followed, far quicker than me, and led through the blowhole, across a loose traverse, and back onto the clifftop. This was made only slightly harder for him by the flocks of birds perched on all the holds. I seconded the pitch easily enough, and we made our way back to the ledge where we’d stashed our gear. It was gone 9 by the time we got to the car, we’d been in the cave climbing Benny for hours. I felt like I’d just had the shit kicked out of me. My hands were bleeding, Luke had smashed his knee somewhere; we were both absolutely knackered.

And my conclusion? If Swanage is climbing porn, Benny would be the weird German stuff they keep behind the counter.

Falling off bits of rock...

...is always much easier than climbing them.

I recall saying once that I could never be persuaded to try BASE jumping. My argument was that, as a climber, I’m simply too accustomed to not falling, to doing everything in my power to maintain contact with the rock rather than embrace the void. Only now I’ve sort of changed my mind. Climbing, you see, is very difficult. Falling isn’t.

My first lead fall came during an onsight attempt of a route called Stroof at Swanage. The crux was a steep finger crack and to be honest would have been at my limit on bolts let alone trad gear. I don’t remember much beyond clinging to tiny holds one moment and dangling in my harness at the bottom of the cliff the next. As my belayer lowered me I think I said something along the lines of “I’ll get back on it next time, there’s no excuse now I know the protection’s good.”

I still haven’t though. “It’s too hard,” I say, when what I really mean is “I’m too scared to lob off again.”

Not long ago I screwed up some deeply misguided courage and tried to climb my first Boulder Ruckle E1. This went badly. Despite what had happened on Stroof, I picked a route with a similarly fingery crux section, and only realised after the rock and I had become suddenly and profoundly disconnected that this really was a particularly stupid idea. With my last bit of strength, one hand clawing at a desperately small crimp, I’d clipped a shitty old rusty peg and slumped straight onto it a millisecond later. Not a proper fall as such, but had the peg broken I would have gone a long way indeed. And had the gear below the peg blown as well, you could’ve scraped what was left of me off the boulders below and presented it to my parents in one of those little jam jars you get at breakfast in hotels.

Now fast forward a week to the wind-swept, wave battered expanse of Guillemot Ledge, where I further indulged in my new passion for Ueli Steck-style speed descents of routes that have traditionally taken climbers hours to negotiate in the old-school upward fashion.

I was with my long suffering friend Pat, and neither of us had ever climbed at this part of Swanage before. So, glorious leader that I am, I jumped straight onto a route near the top of my grade limit with the eternal words “It’ll be OK” ringing about the towering grey cliffs.

Basically, it wasn’t.

Most of the first pitch was easy, bridging type climbing, and I got up to the last resting ledge before the crux pretty quick. Above the rock steepened into a thin tapered crack that guarded access to the midway belay. I placed some gear and pulled up. The holds demanded lay-backing technique, something I conveniently happen to be rubbish at. With strength draining from my arms like air from a punctured balloon I stuttered higher, a Quasimodo of the stone, legs shaking like Elvis with Parkinson’s. The last gear placements were getting further and further below me, but the ledge was getting closer, just a few moves away, all I needed was a good hold and everything would be alright...

One last all or nothing lunge, my fingers wrapped around what I urgently hoped was a thank god jug.

Basically, it wasn’t.

With the weak resignation of a man who knows he’s beaten I pawed at some other holds with my right hand, while good old lefty uncurled finger by finger. One good hold, just one, come on, there’s got to be-

My hand slipped off the hold and I was falling. I shot down past the crack a lot faster than I’d climbed up it, tumbling through the air, still wondering where I might find a nice jug. Then my harness jerked, a huge pain shot through my right leg and I was unaccountably hanging and inverted about halfway back down the pitch. My aforementioned right leg was entangled snake-like around the blue rope, foot high above my head, and I swayed merrily in space like some grotesque, misshapen ornament.

“Oh bugger,” I thought, “I seem to have fallen off...”

I probably went about 4m or so; not massively far, but far enough, believe me. At least all the gear had held. After untangling my wayward leg, and a few bemused minutes resting on the rope, I climbed back up, had another go, and folded off the rock like wet paper the moment my weight came onto my arms. Strangely enough, considering the climbing to rope-dogging ratio, I was knackered.

But we had to get out somehow, and since I didn’t want to lower off and sacrifice gear, I decided to aid climb the crack instead, by clipping slings to the runners and using them as foot stirrups. I’d never used aid before, and naively assumed it would be a piece of cake.

Basically, it wasn’t.

It felt awkward and undignified and I eventually reached the belay ledge feeling like I should do the one honourable thing left to me; untie the ropes and fling myself into oblivion, the still sadly hanging slings my only epitaph. Pat followed me up in the solemn silence that befitted the moment. He led through to the top, and it was only when I seconded the pitch that I noticed a distinctly growing pain in my right ankle. By the time I finished it hurt to put any weight on it at all. So that was the end of the day, and possibly of climbing for some time.

So now I’m going to buy a parachute instead, and explore my new found talent for rapid vertical displacement of altitude. It would seem I’m already a natural. What can possibly go wrong?

Vertical Limit Review

There are very few mainstream Hollywood films centred around climbing, and up until recently I had only seen one of them; Sylvester Stallone’s Cliffhanger. The only scene I can still remember from it involves Stallone free-soloing an overhanging mountain face with something like 12 TRILLION KARABINERS hanging off his harness to rescue two climbers stuck on the summit of a neighbouring peak. Exactly why he does this I cannot say, given that there’s a perfectly good helicopter hovering in the sky besides them, but there you go. An elaborate escape is conceived (using shockingly few karabiners, considering the efforts our hero had gone to in order to bring them all), it goes WRONG, one of them PLUMMETS to a dramatic and messy DEATH, and so the film goes on. Audiences everywhere sit back and gasp in amazement at just how dramatic and death-defying climbing really is.

But as bad as I recall Cliffhanger being, it pales in comparison to Vertical Limit. Just thinking about it makes me angry. Take the first scene, for example. We see three intrepid climbers, father, son and daughter, scaling a sandstone tower in the desert. The son reaches a roof on what looks to be a difficult pitch, all the while singing an Eagles song that his sister, dammit, simply DOESN’T RECOGNISE. He cuts loose and hangs there, like a TWAT, saying “You give up?”

And her response? She scowls, does something (I don’t know what) with the ropes, and says;

“On belay.”

WHAT THE LITERAL EVER-LOVING FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?!?

The father was the one who led the pitch, he’s way up on the next stance, surely he’s the one belaying? Or maybe the siblings are so competitive they only allow each other the security of a belay if they succeed in baffling the other as to what song they are singing? But no, look closely and you will see that the son is indeed climbing with a rope from both above and below. What’s more, it’s only after he surmounts the roof, and presumably the crux, that good old Dad decides to strap on a gri-gri and actually safeguard his son’s climbing.

I am not exaggerating, you could sit me in a room with every climber who has ever lived, is living, and will live, for the rest of time, and I could not be made to understand what kind of system they are using in this scene. Fortunately it doesn’t matter, because a few seconds later the team above them fall off, all their bolts EXPLODE, and the trailing ropes floss everyone off the face.

BUT WAIT!!!

A single cam holds them all, and, despite the incalculable force of a 5 person mega whipper, does not break. Surely this is the most bomber gear placement in the world? Well yes, except for the fact that it then starts merrily sliding down the crack, threatening to send them all to their frankly well-deserved DEATHS. How does that work? Is the cam ALIVE???

Whole essays could be written on everything that is wrong with this scene, but suffice it to say there is a lot. And that’s only the opening 10 minutes. Good old Dad, the world’s most haphazard belayer, is CUT FREE in order that his horrible children survive, and so the emotional drama is cunningly set up for the remainder of the film.

It focuses on an egocentric millionaire and his desire to summit K2 at the exact moment his new fleet of planes fly over. Or something like that. I think. Anyway, the daughter is a member of the team, and her brother, who she blames for Dad’s DEATH, just happens to be in the area. They meet up, sparks fly, it becomes quickly apparent that a lot of VERY STUPID PEOPLE are about to set foot on a VERY DANGEROUS MOUNTAIN, and that’s about that. The brother stays behind with a predictable bunch of mismatched idiots, and the sister and the millionaire begin the climb. At one point real life mountaineer Ed Viesturs shows up, with the dazed expression of a man who can’t quite believe what he is witnessing. You’re not alone there, Ed.

They climb. It all goes TITS UP.

Avalanches, blah blah, bad desicions, blah blah blah, “we can’t possibly turn back now”, etc etc, they all end up trapped in a crevasse, injured and cut off, IN THE DEATH ZONE. Now the brother, who hasn’t climbed since Dad’s DEATH, must venture up to save his sister. And maybe the others, but they don’t matter as much. Because, you know.

In a sequence of events that bend over and arse-rape credulity, climbing logic, and even the fundamental laws of reality themselves, our team of chalk ’n’ cheese rescuers inch closer to the crevasse. They take with them NITRO-GLYCERINE, so obviously some of them EXPLODE before they get there. We witness wonders such as dynamic cam placements (for the uninitiated, this is where an un-roped climber escapes from a ledge by jumping, cam first, at what may or may not be a suitable crack placement, sinks the device, and thus is saved). More people DIE, but that’s OK, because none of them are AMERICAN.

I can’t actually be bothered to type anymore, so here’s a quick conclusion. The sister is rescued, with the NITRO-GLYCERINE, of course, but the foolish millionaire PLUNGES TO HIS DEATH in a crevasse. However, this is alright, because prior to that moment there is a lingering shot where he clearly, beyond any reasonable doubt, does THE EVIL EYES. The brother and sister reconcile, new relationships are forged, and no one seems to mind the fact that dozens of people DIED in order to save just one.

So, after much careful consideration, I have decided to award this film a score of 27 hexes out of a pair of 50m half ropes, and now I’m going to KILL MYSELF.

The Black Zawn

I took a deep breath and lowered myself off the edge. The cliff overhung by about 10 feet, and the abseil rope went 25m straight down into the sea. Will, who went in first, had clipped the line into some nuts on the way down to pin it to the rock. However, as the second man, I would have to take them out again, and rely on him to pull me in. The target was a hanging belay stance just above the water line. I slid down the rope, thinking that the battle music from the Lord of the Rings would be a perfect soundtrack to this.

Enter the Nine Riders. I descended into the Black Zawn.

Many months ago, when I first read through a Swanage guidebook, two routes immediately jumped out at me. One, Behemoth of the Boulder Ruckle, I had since done. The other was called Astrid. A HVS, it lies in a deep, gloomy fissure known as the Black Zawn, hemmed in on three sides by vertical cliffs. A difficult and committing free hanging abseil is the only way in. Just a stones’ throw away from the crowded Subluminal area, the Black Zawn is an altogether more serious venue. The sun rarely reaches the dark rock walls, and the routes are often wet and slimy. For some reason, this appealed to me. Now, as I swung in towards the stance, I wondered why.

Will had done a brilliant job of building the belay, even making two loops in the static line to hang the climbing ropes from. I attached myself and studied the route. It followed an obvious crack all the way to the top. A steep bit getting around a flake looked to be the crux. The entire lower section was damp, and droplets of water kept splattering on my helmet. I gazed around at the overhanging walls surrounding me, unable to quite believe where I was. No way out but straight up. Time to get going.

I got established on a good foot-ledge and placed some nuts to prevent a direct fall onto the belay. Above me was the start of the hard climbing. I pulled upwards, aiming for the bottom of the flake. I placed a hex. Then one of my feet greased off a wet hold.

“FUCK!!!” I yelled, fingers digging into the rock, somehow keeping me in place. Lunging higher, I managed to reach a decent hold and bridge out to gain an OK rest position.

“Jesus, you scared me there,” said Will.

“Bloody well nearly shat myself,” I muttered, fumbling around on my harness for some more gear.

I was at the crux now. A thin, damp crack snaked immediately above me, promising protection but few holds. To the right was the bulging flake. I felt around, finding nothing. Fantastic. I gripped a wet undercling, trying to wedge my shoulder under the flake to take some of the strain off my arms. Slick footholds gave me no confidence whatsoever. Shit. I was getting pumped. Shit.

Desperately, I reached above rightwards, hoping to find a thank god jug. No chance. I moved my feet higher, tried to pull through, instead almost fell off again. Eyes bulging, chest heaving, I scuttled back down to the undercling, shouting “Watch me!” with each movement. Will held the ropes and waited for me to peel off. It felt like even if I figured out a sequence I wouldn’t have enough strength to go through with it. The gear was good, there was nothing to hit but air; still I refused to give up. I wanted this route badly, had been dreaming of it for too long to fuck it up now.

“This is it mate,” I said through gritted teeth, bridged out and hauled for glory. The holds were greasy and unhelpful, the angle forced me outwards. I squirmed higher, my arm muscles burning. It was all or nothing climbing. The steepness demanded intricate footwork, I was splayed out X-shaped to use the best possible edges. Then suddenly, wonderfully, my left hand grabbed an uber-jug, and I yanked myself on top of the flake to a decent resting ledge, whimpering with relief.

It wasn’t over yet though. The crack spiralled upwards, still steep. I placed some gear and carried on, as pumped as I’d ever been before. My arms were shagged out so I paid attention to my feet and rested wherever I could. It got progressively easier, the rock drier. Putting in tons of gear, I climbed my way towards the sun.

“Keep it together,” I whispered to myself, “Just keep it together...”

Then at last I reached the point where the route branched off left to easy ground, and I knew it was in the bag. A final undignified belly-flop mantle onto a block, which made Will piss himself laughing, and I was there. A simple scramble brought me up onto the abseil ledge, where I pitched forwards face first and lay there for a few minutes with a mouthful of grass. The passing kayakers must’ve found this particularly amusing.

Both my hands were bleeding and stank of salt, everything hurt, but it was done. The terrifying Black Zawn conquered at last.

North Wales Trip

We started late at nearly 1 in the afternoon, the route was polished to buggery, and Lurch (‘So awesome he can take his coat off and put it in his coat pocket’) fell off the first pitch. It really wasn’t going fantastically well.

“I think we’re off route,” I said to Pat as he struggled up a greasy corner to the belay stance.

Silence.

We were two pitches up the East Face of Tryfan, on what we hoped was a classic route called Grooved Arête. The weather was unpredictable, sunny one minute and cold and windy the next. Heavy traffic had rendered most of the footholds smooth and glassy, hence Lurch’s impromptu test of my belaying abilities. I knew we’d started in the right place, due to the letters ‘GA’ scratched onto the rock, but now it was all beginning to look the same. Maybe they actually meant ‘Go Away’...

“I’m going up there,” I said, pointing upwards at nothing in particular.

“Are you sure?” sighed Pat, showing a justified lack of faith in my route finding skills.

I shrugged and started vaguely climbing up the face. A few moves past a slab led me to a grassy path. Feeling like an utter prat with a full rack and half ropes, I walked up it. There were no gear placements, so I just ran it out. The crux was a slightly more slippery bit of grass.

“Badly protected but the climbing’s easy!” I yelled down to Pat and Lurch. They’d been watching the rope shoot out with alarm, not happy about the prospect of a 50m pitch with no gear. Lurch followed up the path in a daze, probably wondering what the hell was going on. This was his first proper mountain climb. I’d dragged Pat up stuff like this before however, and he simply followed with the weak resignation of a condemned man on his way to the gallows.

A quick scan of the guidebook revealed that we were definitely on route now. I led up the fourth or fifth pitch, a kind of groove/arête thing (funnily enough). It was a bit harder so I actually placed some gear. A tricky step onto the arête brought me to the next stance, a sloping ledge with a boulder to anchor to at the back. By now the weather was decidedly bad, with fine snow billowing all around the crag. It was starting to get properly cold and we still had to do the crux ‘Knight’s Pitch’ and find our way onto the north ridge and down.

The rock was getting harder to grip, and it was with some trepidation that I made my way onto the chessboard-like slab. I clipped an abandoned nut and looked for footholds. Nothing. We didn’t have any time to waste so I just yanked on the gear and hauled myself higher. Oh, the shame! A supposed HVS leader using aid on a VDiff...

I didn’t really give a toss though. You don’t get points for style in the mountains when the weather’s crap and daylight’s running out. Fortunately, the rest of the slab was OK, and I climbed up on jugs to the next belay stance. Which was a horrible, sloping ledge covered with wet snow. Chuffing excellent, I thought, that’s just what we need.

“The stance isn’t big enough for all of us,” I shouted down.

Unbeknownst to me, just moments before Lurch had said to Pat something like “I’ll kill myself if the next stance is rubbish.”

I brought a traumatised Lurch up, then led the final chimney pitch to a thankfully bigger ledge. Lurch then belayed Pat, who’d been hanging around for ages now, up to the cramped stance. Finally, in a full on whiteout, I brought them both up the last pitch. Lurch, Captain Footwork himself, dispatched one bit with a dyno because he couldn’t bridge on the soaking wet rock.

“Bet no one else has done it like that before,” he said proudly as he crawled onto the ledge.

We were all freezing cold, and started yanking off tight rock shoes to massage numb toes. It was a relief to get back into proper boots and start trudging down the north ridge. A further pitch of climbing would have taken us up to the penultimate summit tower of Tryfan, but none of us were particularly bothered about it. We needed to get down as soon as possible, and not just because the pub in Nant Peris would probably stop serving food at 9. I’d been up the peak a few times before, and always found the descent a pain in the arse. You can’t just switch off and follow a definite path, and it seems to take forever to get back to the road. It was about half 8 by the time we eventually staggered into the pub. Never have fish and chips and a pint felt so satisfying. Despite the weather, Grooved Arête was a fantastic experience. It had all the sense of scale and commitment of a proper mountain route, whilst still being manageable, even for a bunch of idiots like us. The snow just made it more interesting.

The next day we hit sunny Holyhead Mountain. I had a go at a harder route, but still felt tired from Tryfan, so duly slumped onto gear and lowered off. Lurch sunbathed and took pictures of lizards. Pat and I soloed up a few slabby VDiffs then called it good. We headed back down south, via both a McDonalds and a KFC, greedy bastards that we are, already planning the next big mountain trip.

Pat briefly claimed ‘The Spanner Award’ for leaving the car door open overnight in the campsite, but given our excellent teamwork on Tryfan, we declared it null and void for now. He’ll get it back again soon, we have faith in him.

Lurch earned the nickname of ‘Penguin’ for his hilarious, stiff-legged, ‘I’ve just shat myself’ walk after the long hike down the north ridge.

I managed to spill half a bottle of coke down my trousers in the car.

Struck by Lightning

Boulder Ruckle always scares the crap out of me. It’s a huge cliff, made up of vertical, crumbling limestone. The top out invariably involves scrambling up unprotected choss held together by dirt. Every time I abseil in (40m, free hanging, fairly committing) I feel humbled by the place. Still, the climbing’s good, the gear's all there, and you’ve got to do something a bit hardcore every now and again, right?

I was partnered with a guy called Mick, who I’d got in touch with via the forums on UKC. He was the perfect person for Boulder Ruckle; wise, steady, seen it all before a million times. Just the match for my wide eyed, enthusiastic ineptitude. I wanted to have a go at a classic HVS called Lightning Wall, so he handed me the rack and in we went.

“How you doing, Boulder Ruckle?” I said as my feet touched the bottom. I hadn’t been here since last August, which, incidentally, involved a rescue epic. Boulder Ruckle didn’t respond. I looked up (and up and up and up), and felt a familiar sense of ‘Oh god, what the hell am I doing here’. Lightning Wall was a pretty intimidating route, climbed in a single long pitch, with a big traverse over the lip of a roof halfway. Nervously, I tied in and got going.

It was easy to the fault line, and I tried to extend my runners to avoid rope drag across the traverse. This didn’t work. I fumbled around on a small ledge before the crux bulge for quite a while. The gear was solid, albeit extended down to my feet, so I went for it. A couple of steep moves later I found myself clinging to a juggy undercut hold. Most relieving, until I gave it a tap and realised it was hollow. Brilliant.

My gear was way below me now, and can you guess where the only placement was? That’s right, behind the block. I wedged in a large nut and decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to fall off. So onwards, to the traverse! I made a committing step around a sort of arête, and found some very small, pinchy holds. And no gear. The rope drag was already hellish. I was making an absolute dogs arse of this, and it wasn’t hard to imagine Mick thinking the same; ‘Who is this idiot? I’ve got to stop climbing with random strangers off the internet...’

I gibbered my way across the traverse, still not finding any placements. For each move I had to balance on tiny holds and yank some slack for the left rope. After each tenuous step across the void, I was greeted with a distinct lack of protection opportunities. Mick belayed, perhaps wondering what he’d tell my mother.

Eventually, I reached the security of an arête, and thank god, some gear. Now it was just a case of keeping my head together and dealing with the rope drag. I clawed my way up, giving myself a stern talking to, until I finally made it to the usual choss and the top of the cliff. Mick followed easily enough.

I was fairly pumped after this, so I happily seconded Mick up a couple of routes, the last of which we only just got up before the sun went down. I’d never seen anyone climb so quickly or smoothly before. By the end he looked just about warmed up, while I was a panting, dribbling mess, dragging my arms weakly along the ground as we walked back to the car park.

Good old Boulder Ruckle, I fucking hate you.