BLIND AMBITION

Jesse Dufton refuses to let the loss of his eyesight end his climbing dreams.

It’s June 2019, and climber Jesse Dufton is on his way to the summit of the Old Man of Hoy – an imposing sea stack off the Orkney coast. As he searches for his next hold, film-maker Alistair Lee’s camera picks up one of his off-hand remarks between grunts of exertion: “This is when I could really do with being able to see…”

It’s a moment that encapsulates two things about Jesse, neither of which you’d expect from someone who makes a habit of clinging on to exposed rock faces for hours at a time. There’s his desert-dry sense of humour, even (or perhaps especially) in moments of adversity. Then, of course, there’s the small matter of him being almost completely blind.

Jesse has rod-cone dystrophy, a genetic disorder that has impaired his eyesight since birth. It’s estimated that, at their best, his eyes were operating at about 20% of ‘normal’ vision. “I could just about read a book,” he explains, speaking from his home in Loughborough, “but I’d have to be really, really peering at it. And I’d probably have to use a massive magnifying glass. So, yeah – pretty crap eyesight, to be honest!”

Even before he’d been diagnosed, Jesse was already well acquainted with the world of climbing. He completed his first rock climb with his dad, a keen mountaineer, at just two years old. By 11, he had led his first route. While his sight continued to deteriorate – today, reading for him is impossible, with only a vague perception of light remaining – his climbing career went from strength to strength. His lead of the Old Man of Hoy, as documented in Lee’s film Climbing Blind , is only one of his many remarkable achievements. He’s also been a fixture in the British para climbing team for six years, and a World Championship bronze medal winner.

Much of what he’s managed to accomplish blind would be well beyond the scope of many a sighted climber. So, what’s his secret? He’s determined, certainly – fitness and day-job permitting, he’ll rarely miss an opportunity to climb, and trains as often as six times a week – but even that would never be enough on its own.

“The problem for people with a visual impairment, and especially those with a severe impairment like mine, is the fact that you need a guide to be able to climb,” he explains. “That’s a one-on-one relationship, so it’s a huge investment of time from someone. I’m incredibly lucky, because my climbing partner and my sight guide is my wife [Molly, who he first met at his university’s climbing club]. She’s able to belay at the same time as sight-guiding.” Without that – without her – any serious attempt at a climbing career would never have got off the ground.

Jesse began climbing with Molly while completing his PhD at the University of Bath. “That’s when my eyesight dropped off a cliff,” he remembers, “and she stepped in to fill that gap.” At indoor facilities, this would involve guiding Jesse towards holds using a laser pointer. As his vision deteriorated further, they switched to using a verbal code that gives him an idea of what to aim for next. It was enough to get him over what he calls his “phobia” of climbing indoors.

Perhaps surprisingly, Jesse has always been more comfortable outdoors, despite the additional challenges that entails for a blind climber. Sometimes, for example, just reaching the starting point of a remote route can be as challenging as the climb itself. The assistance he gets from Molly while ascending doesn’t always translate to real rock faces, either; while she can still guide him to nearby holds (using radio headsets over longer distances), even that’s not an option on routes, including the one on Hoy, where he disappears from her view. In those moments it’s just him, his remaining senses, and a whole lot of unknowns.

“You don’t know when you’re next going to get a piece of gear in. So, when the opportunity arises, you’re definitely putting one in there, because you don’t know if you’re going into a five-, ten-metre unprotected section. You also have to climb slowly, because you can’t look up, spot a massive jug in five moves’ time and just blast on to it, knowing you’re going to get a rest.”

It might be a slog, but it’s certainly got him places. There’s Hoy, of course, which received blanket media coverage and even an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. In 2020 he re-teamed with Lee to document his ascent of Yorkshire’s E2-graded Forked Lightning Crack, and ticked off Internationale, an E3 route at Kilt Rock on the Isle of Skye, in 2021.

Earlier this year, he also became the first blind climber to establish a new multi-pitch rock climb, in Morocco’s Anti-Atlas mountains. With that comes the responsibility of naming the route, for which he went with ‘Eye Disappear’. “I think it’s always good to try and stick to the theme of the crag,” he explains. “For Eye Disappear the theme was ‘Heavy Rock’, so the link to Metallica [whose song ‘I Disappear’ had a video featuring Tom Cruise’s rock-climbing sequence from Mission Impossible 2] is why I chose that name.”

You don’t have to be a pun connoisseur to notice that there’s something else going on in that title. A look at his blog posts, interviews and videos over the years confirms that he’s never far away from a deadpan quip, often at his own expense. Indeed, Climbing Blind boasts more laughs than you might expect – from a fellow paraclimber performing a drive-by chalking on his forehead at a training session, to Molly asking if he can spot a seal in the water during a tricky section on Hoy (“Not the time, Moll!” comes his reply).

Earlier, while the pair are negotiating a rocky path, she warns him of a particularly large stone up ahead. “Found it!” he shouts as he trips over it, and narrowly avoids hitting the deck. His eyes might not work anymore, but there’s clearly nothing wrong with his funny bone. Is it important to him to see the funny side – if you can call it that – in his situation? “Being blind has plenty of slapstick moments!” he says. “There’s no shortage of comedy. Take the funny – because yeah, if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry!”

It’s impossible to know how many others would share Jesse’s philosophical outlook in the same circumstances. Perhaps it is, much like his visual impairment, just something he was born with – but it is at least partly informed by the challenges he sets himself. If you’re prepared to spend over seven hours scaling a column of Orcadian sandstone, often with only your sense of touch to go on, keeping an even keel elsewhere in life will become that much easier. “All my colleagues say I’m really chilled out, and I’m like, ‘Well, obviously this meeting is less stressful than putting your life in danger on a trad route…’” says Jesse. “Some people get really worked up about giving presentations, and stuff like that. Climbing definitely helps to put that into perspective. If you mess up a presentation, you will be fine. If you mess up this route, you might die…”

While Jesse doesn’t currently see a path to becoming a full-time climber, there’s an ever-growing audience that’s waiting to see what he’ll turn his attention to next. He has “lots of medium-term goals” but if there’s another Hoyesque milestone on his agenda, he isn’t letting on. Even the more immediate entries on that to-do list, including a chance to improve on his World Championship bronze, are in doubt after a “microwave-sized” chunk of rock dislodged and landed on his arm during a climb at Range West (“My wrist didn’t really like that large lump of stone landing on it – unsurprisingly.”).

When he does return to full fitness, the crags will be waiting, with many career highlights surely still to come. Not that we are likely to hear about them all: “I think about Hoy, Forked Lightning, I think about Internationale, routes I did where I broke a grade barrier,” he says when asked about his most memorable climbing moments to date. “But equally up there, there’s a route called Kinvig in Pembroke that really sticks in my mind. It was E1, the gear wasn’t great. It’s all in the foot sequence, which when you can’t see where you’re putting [your feet], makes it really hard. I thought I was going to drop every single move. I think that’s probably the hardest I’ve ever had to fight –and I didn’t drop it. It’s not a particularly photogenic route, plenty of people have never heard of it. But for me, it has that extra significance because of the experience that I had on it. It’s right up there.”

So even if none of his future achievements set the world alight in the way that the image of him sat atop the Old Man of Hoy did, that’s unlikely to matter to Jesse; a world of grit to explore, and Molly to share it with –doubtlessly with plenty of laughs along the way – will be enough. In all the ways that really count, the view from where he’s standing looks good.