County Climber Summer 2016

County Climber

Summer 2016

Magazine of the Northumbrian Mountaineering Club

MEET REPORTS

AN AFRICAN AMBLE

LOCAL NEWS

CLIMBING IN SOUTH AFRICA

FEAR OF FALLING IS SICILY THE NEW KALYMNOS?

1966 AND ALL THAT OBITUARY - BASIL BUTCHER CAIRNGORM MUNROING

CONTENTS REGULARS About the Northumbrian Mountaineering Club

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EDITORIAL

The NMC is a meeting point for climbers, fell walkers and mountaineers of all abilities.

Our activities centre on rock-climbing and bouldering in summer, snow and ice climbing in winter and hill-walking in both.

Meets are held regularly throughout the year.

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WEEKEND MEETS

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LOCAL NEWS

The NMC is not, however, a commercial organization and does not provide instructional courses directly.

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MEET REPORTS

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OBITUARY- BASIL BUTCHER

John Spencer gives us the background info on all the articles.

A look forward at what’s coming up on our events calendar. Get your diaries ready.

Guidebook update and a dry-tooling incident

Including the New Members’ Meet and the Annual Dinner

Copyright The contents of this magazine are copyright and may not be reproduced without permission of the NMC. The views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the Editor or the NMC.

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Cover Shot: Grace Curtis leading Idiot’s Delight (HS, 4c) at Great Wanney Photo : Conrad Onhuki

Background: The club celebrates another successful meet at Kyloe in the Blubell Hotel Photo : Conrad Ohnuki

FEATURES

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CLIMBING IN SOUTH AFRICA Jo Crossland describes some delectable climbing in the Western Cape area

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THOUGHTS ABOUT FALLING

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AN AFRICAN AMBLE

Martin Cooper attempts to answer a few questions as to why we climb when the stakes are so high

Read how Lewis Preston and pals managed to ‘not-climb’ at several stellar venues on an African road trip

- THE NEW KALYMNOS? 64 SICILY Cliff Robson poses the question.....over to you for an answer.....

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1966 AND ALL THAT John Spencer reflects on half a century of climbing

IS 5.30 TOO EARLY TO WAKE UP? Not apparently if you’re undertaking a Munro marathon, as James Witt explains

‘LATE FINISH AT FAR RAVENSHEUGH’ A poem by Bob Bell

going t i p e ke ne lease nces ‘on i p z a o s g e ie Ma gazin wn exper a m R YOU ut your o s i s i Th abo g n i tails. .ac.uk t l i e c r d n w r e @ by furth n.spencer ’. l r l i o f h r h e the k cov tions to: jo c a b u See ntrib o c d Sen es articl

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Winter Skills Course posse with Andy Ravenhill making their way into Coire an’t’Sneachda

NMC Meets

Join the NMC

The NMC Members’ handbook (available to all members) and the NMC website list the dates and locations of all meets.

This magazine lists the meets arranged for the next few months.

You can now subscribe online which is easier and faster.

More information is available at: thenmc.org.uk

Non-members are always welcome to attend meets.

Payment Payment of fees by GoCardlessDirect Debit is preferred; it’s easy to set up, just click here.

Membership Fees • Full £23 • Prospective £15

Photographs by author of article unless otherwise stated.

You can visit our community : WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/THENMC

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and you can visit our official website : WWW.THENMC.ORG.UK

Wall concessions £1 off the standard entry price at: - Sunderland Wall - Durham Climbing Centre - Climb Newcastle * - Newcastle Climbing Centre

*Wednesday nights only

Guidebooks NORTHUMBERLAND BOULDERING

NO NOBLER COUNTY

The definitive and comprehensive guide to climbing in Northumberland – much more useful than ‘the other one’.

The sandstone of Northumberland offers some of the best bouldering in the Country, often in a remote and beautiful setting.

£12.50 to members (RRP £18.95) £2 P&P

£12.50 to members (RRP £19.95) £2 P&P

Celebrating the sport of rock climbing in Northumberland, from first hand accounts of nail-booted ascents in the 1940s to bouldering in the 1990s.

CONTACT: John Earl 0191 236 5922

CONTACT: John Earl 0191 236 5922

NORTHUMBERLAND CLIMBING

£2 to members (while stocks last CONTACT: Martin Cooper 0191 252 5707

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COMMITTEE

El Presidente Steve Blake

W

ell, after a mixed Spring, I am advised that Summer has arrived. I believe this to be true because the rain is definitely warmer! Despite the very mixed weather we’ve experienced, the Club has had a number of very successful meets which caught some great conditions. The Langdale and Wales meets in particular found the sun and will be mountain days to savour in the depths of winter.

Locally the evening meets have been well attended (Ravensheugh looked spectacular). In particular the numbers at Corby’s were quite startling, I have never so many people at that crag! (Though explained by the coincidental presence of the University club.) With such well attended meets, an increasing membership and a real interest in ‘Trad’ climbing, the Club is enjoying rude health. This active membership and participation is what the Club is about.

Not that long ago it was predicted that climbing walls would be the death of climbing clubs. Clearly for those interested in bouldering, climbing or mountaineering, clubs still have a major role to play; facilitating the activity, being a social hub, providing advice, negotiating local access, and importantly, being the repository of local knowledge and producer of the definitive guides and history.

Regarding access, an issue had developed at The Stell, near Rothbury, where the farmer was asking/telling climbers to leave. This has been resolved to our advantage, with much better parking being made available which leads to a slightly longer, but much drier approach, and the farmer is happy. He will let us know when the local shooting syndicate is active on the moor and these details will be published on the club Facebook pages, County Psyche, UK and the newsletter if they catch the publication dates. These shoots will be few and far between, and my view is that we should voluntarily avoid the crag when they are taking place.

Elsewhere in the County we have had the dry tooling incident at Kyloe Out, which John Spencer will expand on in another article. More worryingly there have been three serious accidents in the County, all of which required helicopter evacuation for the casualties. Two occurred at Peel Crag and the other at Kyloe Out. We wish those involved a speedy and complete recovery. The last two incidents occurred on the same day and with the geographic separation, will have tested both the MR teams’ and Emergency Services’ abilities to respond. They seem to have coped admirably and deserve our ongoing support. As climbers these incidents should remind us that the game is fundamentally dangerous and that it usually bites when you least expect it. Have a great summer, enjoy what the crags and mountains have to offer, but be careful out there!

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Ian Birtwistle

Andrew Shanks

Adrian Wilson

Vice President

General Secretary

Membership Secretary

Eva Diran

John Spencer

Treasurer

Magazine Editor

Committee Members David Angel; Alastair Boardman; Sonia Byers; John Dalyrmple; Radoslaw Florczak; Craig Harrison; Peter Hubbard; Felix Larieu; Dan Leadbitter; Joe McCarty; Joe Rudin

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EDITORIAL

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started writing this editorial during a hut-to-hut walking holiday with my wife in the Maritime Alps.

We hardly knew anything about the range (which lies 40 miles north of Nice, straggling the French and Italian borders) before we started researching the trip. However everything people wrote or said about the area turned out to be the case: spectacular scenery, a great network of paths (including parts of two Grand Randonées and an Alta Via) and huts, and wild flowers in profusion.

What a find!

Several of the high passes we traversed were ancient thoroughfares which, over the centuries, had seen their fair share of migrant traffic, most recently in WW2. The ruins of barracks and lookout posts and the commemorative plaques on their walls were testimony to the human tragedies played out across these borders in a pre-united Europe. Halfway through the trip we arrived as planned (and booked in advance) at a tiny hut owned by the Italian Association of Alpine Troops, the Rifugio Regina Elena, to find a group of friends and family also arriving, for their annual gathering – each year at this time they come to the hut and spend a few days walking, eating and drinking. We weren’t allowed to even contemplate preparing a meal for ourselves (unusually it was a self-catering only hut), we were to join them in the feast celebrating the start of their get-together. No-one spoke English, and we don’t speak Italian, but using a mixture of ‘O Level’ French and Google Translate (miraculously the hut had wifi!) we managed to communicate and enjoyed a splendid evening of fine food (turned out they were ‘foodies’ so everything was of top quality, from the anti-pasti to the dessert wine), hilarity and general bonhomie. Our dismay on waking the next morning to the referendum result (which also perplexed our hosts) seemed the more poignant in the light of this evening of trans-European accord.

So to distract you from the political circus and other horrors being played out presently, what goodies await you in this summer issue?

There’s the customary ‘local news’, including a guidebook update and a report of some dry-tooling at Kyloe – an activity definitely not to be encouraged! Also reports of the successful New Members’ Meet and President’s Meet and Dinner, both held in Langdale.

Jo Crossland describes her climbing experience in the Western Cape of South Africa on a visit at the beginning of the year. This brought back memories for me as I did the same thing as Jo when I attended a conference in Cape Town a few years ago, i.e. tagged a weekend’s climbing with a guide onto the end of the conference. My guide, Ross, was amused to find I’d been climbing longer than he’d been alive, and was also pleased he didn’t have to do much more than tie on and lead to earn his weekend crust. We too climbed ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and ‘Atlantic Wall’, brilliant routes as Jo says. From the top of Table Mountain Ross pointed round 270 degrees in the direction of all the climbing venues within a few hours’ drive of Cape Town, more rock than you could shake a stick at – Jo describes

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visits to some of these locations. She also managed to catch the legendary jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim in concert. This prompted the inclusion of a new feature in County Climber, a musical accompaniment to the reading! Clicking on the link at the start of Jo’s article will take you to Mixcloud and a compilation of South African music, including Abdullah Ibrahim (you won’t have to create a new account or anything, just click and listen!).

Sticking with the African theme, the NMC’s resident stravaiger, Lewis Preston, spins some yarns from his road trip with ex (and much missed) NMC members Sarah ‘Uberschnell’ Follman and Nick Quarta (and others), who covered some 13000km around Southern and Central Africa over the course of 3 months.

When I asked Lewis if he’d pen something for the magazine, he remarked, somewhat gloomily, that he’d not have much to write about since, in the end, despite their best intentions and having visited some stellar climbing and mountaineering locations, they hardly managed any climbing at all, for a host of reasons.

Thankfully he didn’t require much arm-twisting to write his piece about their ambles around the continent ‘not-climbing’.

In March Martin Cooper gave an interesting talk at the Hadrian Centre about ‘falling’, using multiple media - still images, a video clip, music, prose and poetry - having given an earlier version of the talk to the Fell & Rock Climbing Club in London. I was delighted when he accepted the invitation to write it up for this issue, and I think he’s done a great job of capturing the essence of his musings. He poses a number of questions, including what, to me, is the central one: ‘How, if we understand the consequences of falling, do we persuade ourselves to climb? ‘ This is especially poignant at this time as 2016 has so far seen its share of serious accidents to friends and acquaintances as a result of falls, including one tragic death. Yet will this prompt any of us to give up climbing ourselves? I very much doubt it.

Meanwhile I celebrate 50 years of climbing this year and have taken the liberty of reflecting on this in an article about ‘1966 and all that’. I have attempted to put my starting out on the long and (literally) rocky road to half a century of climbing into a broader social and cultural context, and in passing review an iconic publication of that period, ‘Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia’, which has just been re-released having been out of print for over 40 years. There’s also another link to Mixcloud, this time a playlist of some of the sounds of ’66 – I hope this gets your feet tapping, nay causes you to push back the kitchen table and dance!

Sadly the legendary Basil Butcher passed away in February aged 95. He was a founder member and former president of the Club, and a pioneer of County climbing. Steve Blake was able to attend his funeral on behalf of the Club and has written his obituary. Another founder member of the Club, Joan Todd, nee Edwards, died in March aged 93. In this instance John Vaughan attended the funeral to represent the Club.

I am in the process of writing an article about Joan and her lifelong friend and climbing partner (also a founder member), Muriel Sauer, for the next issue of County Climber based on a couple of conversations I had with them, which will also serve as Joan’s obituary.

Cliff Robson poses a challenging question in his article: ‘Is Sicily the new Kalymnos?’ and makes some good points in answer. I’ve only been to the San Vito area of Sicily once, and Kalymnos twice - reckon I need a few visits more to both venues before deciding. What about you?

A late call from the Editor for more material for the magazine brought forth a short piece by new member James Witt describing an impressive Munro-bagging expedition in the southern Cairngorms, summiting a dozen over the course of three days.

Finally, there’s a rather fine short poem by Bob Bell, long-standing member and another former president of the Club (1989-91) forwarded via Martin Cooper with the message ‘I have probably been fiddling with this for the best part of twenty years so will be glad to get rid of it.....do as you will.’ So we have.

So that’s your lot. As ever, thanks to all the authors, and to Ian Birtwistle for his sterling efforts in helping put the magazine together and respond to all my pernickety suggestions and demands. I make the usual plea for material for the next issue, to be published in December, deadline end of November, whether it be prose, poetry, photographs, or all three - take inspiration from Martin Cooper’s article! I’d be happy to discuss ideas and/or to help craft something if that would help.

Enjoy!

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WEEKEND MEETS AND OTHER EVENTS

Friday 22nd-24th July - Peak District | Stoney Middleton - Alastair Boardman Friday 5th-7th August - Galloway | Solway View (camping) - John Dalrymple Friday 26th-29th August - Pembroke | DIY - Check Facebook for more details Friday 23rd-25th September - North Yorks Limestone | Clapham - Felix Larrieu Have we missed an incredible spot? Found a fantastic hut in a stunning location with amazing climbing? Want to run a meet? Let us know!

President@thenmc.org.uk

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WEDNESDAY EVENING MEETS These meets run throughout the summer, just turn up, bring your own gear, find a partner, and climb!

20th July - Crag Lough 27th July - Back Bowden 3rd August - Drakestone 10th August - Bowden Doors 17th August - Crag Lough 24th August - Great Wanney 31st August - East Woodburn 7th September - Corby’s 14th September - Rothley 21st September - Wolf Crag 28th September - Shaftoe

Sympathetic crowds look on as Robin Sillem clocks up some air miles at Kyloe

The NMC Members’ Handbook (available to all members) and the NMC Facebook Page list the dates and locations of all meets. Or check out our Google Calendar.

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LOCAL NEWS

GUIDEBOOK DEVELOPMENTS Steve Blake and John Spencer now have the DTP software installed on their respective computers, and have received a tutorial on the production of guidebooks from Don Sargent, a graphic designer and photographer who has been involved in guidebook design and production, it seems for ever!

We now have enough material to start producing some draft ‘crag’ chapters for both volumes, North and South. These early drafts will shake out the production cobwebs and kick-start the project in earnest. It is a big task, but can be reduced to manageable chunks (hopefully).

We have enlisted the help of a number of local photographers, a big thank you to them! The success of contemporary guides is heavily dependent on good quality photographs of both crags and climbers, so if you have any then please get them to Steve Blake ASAP and we’ll add them to the library for selection.

Steve Blake on ‘Something Old, Something New’ at Back Bowden - described as ‘Rather tricky, about Fo

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ont 7a+ with a nasty drop.’ | Steve Blake collection

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Crampon and ice axe scratches on Flake Crack | John Spencer

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DRY TOOLING IN NORTHUMBERLAND Yes, you read that correctly. As many readers will know, ominous scratches from either crampons or ice axes, or both, were noticed at Kyloe Out, on Flake Crack and around the Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo area earlier in the year.

It transpired that a couple of young local climbers had decided to try out some new toys in apparent ignorance of both the ethics of the situation and the potential for long-lasting damage.

The ‘crime’ first came to light on UKC and generated the usual wideranging discussion, with 50 posts, including the following wise words from El Presidente himself: “Northumberland’s sandstone is a very fragile medium, and in the County we spend a lot of effort spreading the word about best practice and sustainability, issues which underpinned the evolution of bold climbing here. I would like to think that most climbers, (both local and visitors) will know, for example that climbing on wet or drying sandstone is discouraged, along with poorly rigged and executed top roping, and running endless (when often futile) laps on problems. Generally this message is well received and the recommendations adopted by those who climb here.

People ‘get it!’ This makes the discovery of crampon scratches in the Bay right of Australia Crack pretty baffling. I never thought we would need to add ‘ No Dry Tooling’ to the list of bad practices... But to be clear, under no circumstances should Northumberland’s (or anyone else’s) sandstone crags be used as a venue for Dry Tooling, they cannot sustain that kind of activity and damage. I hope the incident will prove to be an isolated, misguided act by someone ignorant of our local ethos. Please spread the word, particularly outside the electronic world, the perpetrators may not use UKC and local social media/forums, and indeed, may have been visitors. If you witness this sort of activity in the County please make sure those engaged in it are made aware that it is wrong.”

Also discussed was the precise definition of ‘an idiot’ and there was outrage about previous similar episodes at Millstone Quarry, and on Middlefell Buttress, Langdale and several crags in Snowdonia, but this thankfully just about steered clear of the perennial, circular (convoluted?), usually tedious and ultimately fruitless debates on UKC about what constitutes a winter ascent, and the ethics of winter climbing. Close call!

The good news is that the guilty parties came forward, expressing remorse at what they had done and recognising that is had been wholly inappropriate.

You can follow the whole discussion at: http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/ item.php?id=70228

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MEET REPORTS

Busy busy busy at the Corby’s Crag meet in April | John Spencer

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T

he official summer meets, both the Wednesday evening outings and the weekend jaunts, have been very popular, helped considerably by the generally excellent weather. Indeed, a couple of the Wednesday meets, to Corby’s in April and Bowden in May, saw literally hordes of club members, their mates and several dogs descend on the respective crags. Whereas in such circumstances, there’s still plenty of room left at Bowden for other adventurers, at Corby’s, where the NMC outing coincided with a University club meet, it was congested to say the least; The Plonka had a more-or-less permanent rope up it all evening!

There has been some grim weather as well, of course, but the NMC Chat page on Facebook rapidly comes to life as people sort out alternative venues, substitute wall trips etc. It’s also great to see the Chat page being used to sort out lifts, partners, kit and suchlike before meets, and to share comments, gossip and photos in their aftermath (in respect of the latter, special mention must be made of Conrad Onhuki’s stellar photographic contributions, some of which have been used in this issue of County Climber.)

The weekend winter meets were also popular, despite the generally poor conditions that prevailed this season. Despite the thaws interspersed with heavy dumps of snow, people made the most of it, even if, as happened on the Feshiebridge meet in January, the main activity was mountain biking! Having said that, the Winter Skills Course on the same meet, run by guide Andy Ravenhill and part-subsidised by the club, was a great success.

The summer weekend programme got off to a great start with the New Members’ Meet in Langdale at the beginning of June (a flying start in the case of Lydia Koelmans who clocked up some air-miles on her very first multi-pitch route, Bowfell Buttress!) – see Olivia Barron’s article on page 18.

Most recently the Annual Club Dinner was held, also in Langdale which saw a good turnout despite a grim weather forecast - see report on page 24.

Having a cracking time at Ravensheugh in June | Russell Lovatt

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Text: Liv Barron Photos: Conrad Ohnuki

NMC New

I had barely touc as a way of meeti already being spr

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(& Old) Members Meet 6-8th May 2016

ched down in the UK from New Zealand and joined the NMC ing new friends before word of the New Members’ Meet was read around.

Chilling at the hut

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A

s soon as the weekend was announced by much loved club organiser/galactic coordinator Adrian Wilson, spaces began filling up, with both new and established members all vying for a bunk bed at the relatively luxurious Barclays Bank Mountaineering Club hut (Raven Cottage) in the Lake District’s Langdale Valley. So anticipated was the event by all club members that there was talk of having to make sure enough bed spots were available to said newbies, with several veteran members piping up with generous offers of relegating themselves to the local camping ground.

Armed with the knowledge of a somewhat warm and dry weekend weather forecast and with such an Chris and Craig at the top of ‘Middlefell Buttress’ , with a rope, as old lag Robin looks on

extensive array of rock to sample, everyone was in great anticipation of that ever desirable weary, achy bod feeling that only comes after extended hours climbing in the hills.

The various Severe to HVS starred routes on Raven Crag behind the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel were popular choices for the lucky majority who managed to escape Newcastle early enough on the Friday to savour the extended evening light. I put flashes of slipping and plunging sideways aside and channelled my inner spider monkey seconding John Armstrong and Robin Sillem up the exceptionally awkward traverse on the second pitch in ‘Pluto’ (HVS, 5a). Several ales rounded off the first evening with fresh arrivals joining in on the plans for the following day.

Come Saturday morning pairs and trios departed left right and centre for the multitude of crags ranging from roadside to high mountain climbing, as close as Raven to as distant as Bowfell. Traditionally the New Members’ Meet has been about pairing NMC faces new to outdoors trad climbing with those more experienced, and with Adrian’s careful overseeing, this year’s meet was no exception, with everyone feeling welcome and included. Thankfully there were enough racks and ropes to go around.

So amped for the full day ahead were all that one pair of keen beans made the discovery of a missing half rope

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Dav Va checks his stocks and shares over a wee dram

whilst racking up at the start of the classic mountaineer’s route up Middlefell Buttress en route to Gimmer Crag. Luckily the additional descent and hike back up the trail after rope retrieval from the hut proved no supersweat for Craig, with Chris drawing the short straw and enjoying a second breakfast.

An almost army style mission in the kitchen on Saturday night with climber-turned-chef Joe Rudin at the helm saw almost two dozen hungry members fed with copious amounts of hearty vegetarian lentil bolognaise – followed by chocolate oven magic and Spenser Gray’s delicious bread and berry pudding concoction. This was especially savoured by Ursula and Camilla, and the trio of Tim, Dav Va and Lydia following epic trips up Bowfell Buttress at the head of the Langdale Valley.

Graham Williams on ‘Moss Wall’ (VS 4c), White Ghyll

Sunday saw numerous crags visited by members, with most ascending to the higher mountain reaches of White Ghyll and Pavey Ark, where we were greeted by a big black toad of the sky circling overhead for much of the morning. I was delighted to second 21

my first ever E1 climb in the UK, although it was touch and go on the start of the second pitch with Robin’s twenty false starts and heavy breathing and cursing on the way to achieving his well-deserved first E1 of the season with ‘Capella’ on Pavey Ark. A quick blinding dip in Stickle Tarn on the way out, with an obligatory pub meal on the route home topped off with a speeding ticket rounded out another successful weekends climbing in the beautiful Lake District.

To all those there, and a special thanks to Adrian for all the terrific work organising: Adrian Wilson, Alex Speirs, Annie, Camilla Mapstone, Chris Haworth, Clare White, Craig Harrison, Craig Smith, Conrad Ohnuki, Dav Va, Felix Larrieu, Gavin Wye, Gareth Dunn, Graham Williams, Ian Birtwistle, Joe Rudin, John Armstrong, John Spencer, Kiara Barrett, Lisa Stockport, Lydia Koelmans, Megan Denman-Cleaver, Maria Stanley, Mark Riley, Olivia Barron, Radek Florczak, Robin Sillem, Spenser Gray, Tim Hakim, Ursula Moore, Patricia Gill.

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Dr Joe getting stuck into ‘Slip Knot’ (VS 4c), White Ghyyll

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The President’s Dinner Meet Langdale, 8-10th July 2016

T meal.

John Spencer Photos by John Spencer and Radek Florczak

he Club returned to Langdale and Raven Cottage for the annual President’s

Some two dozen folk defied threatened rain, wind, low cloud etc and pitched up to enjoy, well, weather exactly as forecast.

Undeterred by the horizontal rain on Saturday morning, Adrian and his mate Steve took a posse of mountain bikers over into Little Langdale to get muddy; Robin Sillem led a human chain up ‘Crescent Slabs’ on Pavey Ark, onto Jack’s Rake then into Stickle Tarn for a not-quite-skinny dip on the way down; the President and family headed for Kendal Wall, his excuse being that they needed toning up a bit in preparation for a trip to the Dolomites in a couple of weeks’ time; and the two Johns were pulled by Adrian’s dog Truda up Oxendale - the humans in a fruitless search for high level crags that were shrouded in thick cloud, the dog in a frantic search of sheep to herd - then were tugged back down The Band.

The annual dinner, held in the posh restaurant annex of the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. was a pleasant affair. El Presidente made a short speech noting the Club is very much ‘alive and well’ that it was great to see how vibrant the Club was at the moment, thanked the Committee for its help and support, and in, light of recent political events and the sometime ugly consequences, extended a warm hand to members of the Club who are from overseas.

Adrian Wilson was presented with a T-shirt and copy of the Pembroke selected guide as a token of thanks for his sterling efforts in organising this and the New Members’ Meet in May (and lots else besides), And Joe McCarty was awarded the 2016 ‘Ginger Joe’ Pants Award for, err, being himself!

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unday’s weather was not quite so grim, and there was further mountain biking for people of that persuasion, and another Sillem human chain, this time tackling Pike O’Stickle’s formidable south face.

Fair to say that, despite the weather, the meet was a great success, and, once again, thanks to Adrian for organising it.

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In December last year I was lucky enough to visit family in Cape Town and whilst over there I had a tiny glimpse of the incredible rock climbing South Africa has on offer.

Text and photos: Jo Crossland

Click here for 55 minutes of quality South African Music

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Climbing in S O U T H AFRICA

The author on ‘Slab and Tickle’, Lakeside Pinnacle

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Cape Town

On my first day climbing in Cape Town I hired a guide as it helps to have someone to climb with! But also, Table Mountain has a phenomenal number of routes (see: http://www. ukclimbing.com/logbook/crag.php?id=3726) and many of the abseil points are very hard to locate so it helped that he knew exactly where to go and get the most out of the day. Our first climb was the well known classic ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ an amazing 3 pitch route graded 16 (South African system, equivalent to VS 4c/5a) overlooking the Twelve Apostles and picturesque Camps Bay below, a route that, although nice and juggy, feels very exposed. After an ice cream at the top we went on to climb ‘Atlantic Crag’ (18, HVS 5a) another multi-pitch route on the other side of the mountain overlooking the city and Robben Island.

Cape Town also has many sport climbing crags and I visited the Mine area (http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/ crag.php?id=11167) and Lakeside Pinnacle (http://www. ukclimbing.com/logbook/crag.php?id=8883). Both are popular sandstone roadside crags with nice short walk-ins and beautiful views over the Indian Ocean and Cape Flats.

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‘Atlantic Crag’, Table Mountain

Underneath the cable car, Table Mountain

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View from the 2nd belay on ‘Quite Something’, Cederberg

Cederberg

We also decided to make the 4 hour drive to the Cederberg Mountains, probably most famous for the bouldering at Rocklands. We went for the amazing sport climbing and trad multi-pitch though and it was well worth the drive. The first place we went was Truitjies Kraal, a semi-desert sport climbing crag, an incredible jumble of huge boulders and a labyrinth of walls and clefts, with a very wild west atmosphere http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crag. php?id=15983). The grades are nicely varied and well bolted, my main fear being placing my hand in holds that looked like a perfect hiding place for something scary! On the second day at Cederberg we went to Wolfberg (http:// www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crag.php?id=12159) and climbed an awesome 5 pitch trad climb called ‘Quite Something’ (17)… well worth the long, steep and sweaty walk in!

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‘Flynhoud’ at Truitjies Kraal

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Us as tiny specks on ‘Sands of Time’, Paarl Rock

Paarl Rock

Once back in Cape Town we also made a day trip through the beautiful vineyards to Paarl Rock, a group of massive granite domes with a number of multi-pitch sport climbs (http://www. ukclimbing.com/logbook/crag.php?id=3725). Although the bolting is quite run out and the slabby, frictional nature of the climbing a bit unnerving, once you learn to trust your feet with nothing to hold onto it becomes quite fun! We did the classic multi-pitch ‘Sands of Time’ (19), reckoned by some to be the best multi-pitch sport route in South Africa.

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Paarl Rock

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South Africa offers so many amazing climbing venues and I only visited a few (see: http:// www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/map/?q=WESTERN+CAPE&x=18.457&y=-33.943&z=10 for details about just the climbing in the Western Cape region). I would definitely recommend it to anyone who fancies a trad and sport climbing destination a little further afield. The wine and avocados are so cheap too!

To add to the delights of the climbing, the amazing landscapes and the people, I also got to see a live, solo performance by the great Abdullah Ibrahim. He’s an 81 year old musician from Cape Town, widely regarded as the ‘Mozart of South Africa’. He’s been playing professionally for nearly 70 years and was part of the free jazz movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and everything he does is pretty much improvised. The concert was in a small park close to the Botanical Gardens. He just kept playing without any music; it was mesmerising and was a very special night!

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‘Waiting for the man’

Thoughts about Falling: ‘Inevitability Charging At You’

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Y

ou are on pitch two of a Lake District VS. You have climbed directly above the belay when you should have traversed left. The route has steepened and you place two nuts. They seem to be solid. Climbing higher feels hard for the grade, which you thought was Severe. The next move is strenuous.

The rock continues steeply above.

Suddenly you realise that the strength in your arms is going. Your hands are sweating. You make another move up. Your arms are screaming. Not far above is a ledge with bigger holds. Your gear is below you. Your heart is pumping. There is no chance of placing any more gear.

Your arms are weakening fast. Only two things can happen now. You will find some extra energy and climb to the ledge.

Or you will fall off.

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Falling off Parthian Shot, Stanage | Photo: Cory Richards

The route was ‘Malediction’ on

Wallowbarrow Crag, in the Duddon Valley. At that time it was graded Severe. The steeper, direct line on pitch two that I took by mistake is now the normal route, VS 4c. From over a hundred feet up on a Lake District climb I fell off.

Falling is part of climbing and mountaineering. You can’t take part in these activities without being aware of the possibility of falling.

The BMC participation statement, adopted by most climbing clubs, makes it clear that the dangers of death and injury have to be accepted by all individuals who participate.

For the general public and for nonclimbers, the question frequently asked is, why take part in climbing and mountaineering if the risk is serious injury or death? Driving on the UK’s roads is dangerous enough.

I want to examine a different set of questions about falling.

• How, if we understand the consequences of falling, do we persuade ourselves to climb?

• How do we operate with two opposing sets of thoughts in our minds at the same time? “If I fall off here I will be seriously injured or I might even die” AND AT THE SAME TIME “I must be completely calm and focused so that I can make the physically demanding moves needed to climb the next part of my route”.

• What is happening physiologically when we become acutely aware of the danger of falling? How is it that there is such an enormous difference between how we feel when we are leading well and how we feel when we think we might fall off?

• What happens psychologically after a fall? Why do some climbers cope with this in different ways to others? What might be the long term effects of falling?

•

Is part of the appeal of climbing the possibility of falling?

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‘Extreme gravity play’ - Philip Petit walking between the Twin Towers, 1974

One common way of dealing with the potential seriousness of a fall while in the mountains is to belittle that experience, to laugh at it. This, it seems, is necessary black humour. The many euphemisms for falling help us to cope: slip, lob off, deck it, take a flier, come off, clocking up air miles, and so on. We name routes to remind us in a macabre way of the possibility of death: ‘The Shroud’, ‘The Mortician’, ‘Cemetery Gates’. In reality, a serious fall is no laughing matter at all. We have all lost friends in the mountains.

I hope what I am writing here is sensitive. But in accepting the possible consequences of falling, climbers resort to humour. I do think we need both approaches.

My first real fall, on ‘Malediction’ twenty seven years ago, did have some psychological aftermath and a profound effect on my climbing for quite a time. I lost the confidence to lead as easily as I had done before. I was much less happy about climbing above my gear. I wanted bomb-proof runners. I developed a low opinion of my ability as a climber. I backed off and downclimbed far more frequently. I have never again, in fact, fallen off while leading on a multi-pitch climb. I have never let myself get into that position again. So I learned from the experience.

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The brain and the limbic system

In the long term I definitely became a safer climber, becoming more careful about choosing routes, placing gear and climbing within myself. Of course there was the odd slip, tight rope and scary moment. I certainly continued to back off when I didn’t fancy a particular move and I give up no pride in admitting that certain pitches found themselves weighed down with most of my rack. That’s what gear is for. Then, in September2011 I watched Ed Sciberras fall from the top of ‘Ridsdale Wall’ (E1, 5b) at East Woodburn Crag. It was an NMC evening meet and as Ed began the route it was getting dark. People were packing things into their sacs below where he was climbing. Everyone gradually became aware that Ed was struggling. Then he fell and appeared to hit the ground. But he wasn’t hurt. A full moon rose over the crag. The next day I wrote a poem about Ed’s tumble, ‘Ground Fall, East Woodburn, September 2011’. (note the quote in the title of the article – ‘Inevitability rushing towards you’ - was Ed’s.) - see page 42.

Stob Coire Easain and Stob a Choire Mheahdoin are two Munros rising above the west side of Loch Treig, on the Loch Laggan road a few miles from Fort William. In April 2006 I slipped and fell on ice while descending from Stob a Choire Mheadhoin. It was a rapid, uncontrolled fall down steep mixed ground, broken only by a vertical drop into deep snow. I was lucky. My wrist was broken, I was suffering from concussion, shock and temporary memory loss and lower down the mountain I badly damaged my knee ligaments. Below the patch of snow where I had landed were long, steep slopes covered in late winter snow. My fall could have been much more serious. As it was I needed an emergency operation at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, weeks off work and I suffered the pain and frustration of getting fit again. I didn’t climb again for a year.

This time the fall had felt more threatening. Despite being out of control and unaware of what exactly was happening to me, there was enough time for me to know how serious this was; that I might die here. In extremity, the mind works at incredible speed.

I was reluctant to commit myself to steep snow slopes for quite a while afterwards. I wanted to go back to see where the fall had taken place, to work out how serious it had actually been. I eventually went back to the slopes of Stob a Choire Mheadhoin on a warm sun-drenched autumn day last September. I went alone.

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The author leading ‘Castle Crack’ (V Diff) at Bowden Doors | Photo: Alex van den Bost

Ground Fall, East Wodburn September 2011 A week of high drama, nine eleven Remembered, New Yorkers said it was those Who had jumped that seared an indelible impression.

Remnant of a hurricane blasted Britain, Hung on defiantly at Kyloe, Crack of Gloom Tonight darkness crept across Woodburn Moor, Chilled fingers, where an hour before warm autumn sun Bathed the crag orange, the last of summer’s light.

High on Ridsdale Wall, a climber peered through the dark, Suddenly sending pulses racing, his route became a fight.

Voices from above in the dark, “Reach high, Get a hold on the right.” From below, “Come on Ed, stretch!” Reaching up for invisible holds, Darkness obscuring, watchers shivering, muscles Straining , reaching again, flight threatening fight.

Silence breaks the tension of night, still there, He holds onto what he has got, reaches One more time, hoping, grasping, losing.

A dark shape falling, gear ripping, Fear as he falls, ground rearing.

Huddling his fallen body. How bad?

He was laughing. One piece of gear, the stretch Of the rope had saved him from earth, full moon Rose over the crag, tension relieved More than mirth, Oh monstrous birth.

Descend through lessening light, Tiny headtorches gleam pitifully bright.

We return, Ed safe, enough for one night.

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I

had tried to write about the events of that day and the feelings my fall had engendered. On the creative writing course I was doing at Newcastle University I tried to write a long poem about the experience of falling. Somehow, the poem just wouldn’t come together. But I was committed to the poem like a climber committed to a long route and I had to finish it. At the end I felt frustration.

I knew it hadn’t been a clean ascent. The comments from my tutor bore that out. “Falling and Other Mountain Journeys’ is an ambitious poem with some powerful moments. It also exhibits difficulties of style and technique discussed in class and not yet wholly resolved.” Ouch!

The poem opens with these lines: I hurtled headlong down a rocky slope, Landing alive.

Stunned and dazed, cartwheeling through deep snow, Reached for my head, blood easing through. “You OK?” Called from above. “Yes,” I quickly lied.

But wasn’t.

Wrist shattered, my head – a painful blow, Thoughts a splintered break, darkness falling now.

Tortuous steep descent, ice axe only brake, Why have I fallen here, reactions came too late.

On Stob a’ Choire Mheadhoin I might have died, A crampon slip on ice, my being now belied On a warm, sunny day last September I climbed Stob a Choire Mheadhoin again and continued along the ridge to Stob Choire Easain. I searched amongst the crags of Meall Cian Dearg, the northern ridge of Stob a Choire Mheadhoin, where I had descended with Mike in 2006 and I easily found the point from which I had fallen. Unknown to us at the time, we were attempting to descend via the ordinary walker’s route off the mountain. I had just overbalanced on thick, gluey ice. It looked to me that the deep snowdrift had saved me from a much more serious fall. Below that point, the slope of the mountain steepened quickly. A week later, with a clearer mind, I could finally write about the experience.

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Stob a Choire Mheadhoin Stob a Choire Mheadhoin | Photo: Martin Cooper

Why do their names reverberate?

Meall Cian Dearg, Stob a Choire Mheadhoin.

What is the meaning of warm wind, dry grass, A view across a loch to an empty moor.

I shoulder the burden of the years, Leading upward to an open ridge.

The derelict sheepfold remains, muddy track, Faint pathway to a crag-ringed steepness I like.

Go back to that day, bright sun, drifted snow.

We climb above the loch to an empty moor, A struggle to the ridge, cold wind, iron grass, View darkening, crampons strapped-on, shivering.

I survey an icy step, a way down.

Tumbling, futile thrashing of axe shaft, Breaking my wrist, head colliding, dropping Into soft snow, below the crags I like.

I touch my head, blood. I flex my wrist, broken.

Darkness is creeping onto the mountain.

We must go down, descend in the dark, Slippery steps, slow, agonisingly, slow.

Still the names reverberate, Meall Cian Dearg, Stob a Choire Mheadhoin.

Warm wind soothes, I touch the broken rock, It touches me, reaches my mind and heals.

So what have I learned about falling? According to Garett Soden in his book, ‘Falling: How our Greatest Fear Became our Greatest Thrill’, what he calls, ‘gravity play’ developed rapidly during the nineteenth century. Trapeze artists, roller coaster designers, parachutists, early bungee jumpers, balloonists, BASE jumpers and climbers were the ‘gravity heroes’. ‘Rebels who rise from the masses to confront nature on behalf of the common man.’ On the gravity game of climbing Soden credits Balmat and Paccard, the first ascentionists of Mont Blanc in 1786, with making a transition from adventurers to mountaineers. These are people who, ‘...instead of avoiding the highest and steepest peaks, would aim directly for mountains and routes that would guarantee the greatest chance of plummeting. It was this goal – to maximize the risk of falling that would come to define modern climbing.’

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Why might climbers do that? In ‘Touching the Void’, Joe Simpson provided one of the most compelling accounts of falling in the mountains and its consequences. But whereas in ‘Touching the Void’ we live with Simpson’s during his fall and its aftermath, in his next book, ‘The Beckoning Silence’, he is more analytical about falling, weighing the risks and backing off. In 1999 Simpson had gone to Switzerland with Ray Delaney. They hoped to do the North Face of the Eiger. After a recce climb Delaney says he is too scared. He doesn’t want to do the climb. Simpson says to him, ‘This Eiger fear is really no more than a phobia, like being scared of flying or scared of heights.’ Delaney’s reply is one we perhaps don’t expect of a seasoned mountaineer: ‘I am scared of bloody heights.’

The history of failed attempts and multiple deaths on the route weigh heavily on them.

Eventually, Delaney overcomes what Simpson calls,”the psychological baggage” of the Eiger and changes his mind. They set off up the route but have to sit out a storm above the “Difficult Crack”. At this point two British climbers fall to their deaths from a few pitches above them. This, and the deteriorating weather, force Simpson and Delaney to abandon the route. They later watch film footage of the British climbers falling and Simpson cannot get the image out of his head. ‘I thought of their endless, frictionless fall......‘ Joe Simpson is a near perfect example of what Soden calls the sensation seeking personality. I am not. Soden’s idea comes from a paper by Marvin Zuckerman (1994) on the behavioural and biosocial basis of sensation seeking. High sensation seekers score highly on: • Thrill and adventure seeking • Experience seeking • Disinhibition • Boredom susceptibility You maybe make a quick exit when one of these people comes up to you in the bar.

However, according to Zuckerman, unlike the stereotypical misconception held by the public, high sensation seekers do not have a ‘death wish’. He argues that they don’t like risk more than anyone else. They are no more prone to injury than low sensation seekers; they actually do what any other rational person would do – they reduce the risk by increasing their skill level.

However, the HSS personality is different and Zuckerman thinks the differences may be inherited. Differences lie in how messages from the limbic system in mid-the brain are processed.

• The experience of a dual mind as we reach the crux of a climb or a particularly exposed place is due to the interplay between our conscious thoughts, which we can control, and our limbic system, which produce our primary emotions, which we cannot so easily control • Awareness of height, the effects of gravity and the potential of falling is built into our limbic system as one of our most basic fears. Higher sensation seekers have a stronger 45

orienting reflex and are better able to process the signals from their senses. They process information faster and can perform tasks more quickly, with fewer errors. ‘A low sensation seeker’s brain skips the processing, freaks out and moves directly to the ‘fight or flight response.’

If all of this true, whether we are able to deal effectively with the threat of gravity hurling us from a rockface or mountain is not to do with some state of inner strength, which we might learn to achieve, but with whether we have an inherited high sensation-seeking personality.

Soden’s book, ‘Falling’, also looks at the neurological reasons for a climber experiencing heightened states of consciousness, feelings of transcendence or the state of mind psychologists have called, ‘flow’, when all that seems to matter is the here and now of making the next move.

Again, it is the interaction with our limbic system which is the key. We feel most aroused by activities in which high levels of excitement are framed by a ‘protective guardrail’. Climbing is most exciting when the fear of falling is at its highest. We can experience states of great elation.

We can feel a sensation of time slowing down. We can feel supernaturally powerful. No wonder it can be such an addictive sport.

‘What a climber does is to intentionally play with the protective frame’ (Soden). ‘Playing with the frame’ can take extreme forms. An article in Climber magazine, 2007 (‘The Art of Falling Gracefully’ by Andi Turner) explores the idea of deliberately practising falling from routes chosen for their suitability for this purpose. Here the ‘protective frame’ is flimsier (e.g. deep water soloing, climbing routes so steep or overhanging that there is nothing to hit on the way down) but it is still there. This is clearly a classic example of ‘gravity play’. I will plan this summer’s climbing around that idea!

Returning to the questions I raised earlier, it would seem that the possibility of falling is one of the attractions of climbing. We seek out experiences which we know may frighten us, but convince ourselves of their relative safety by arranging a protective frame. At a common sense level, it is clear that what we seek in climbing is a challenge that is not only very difficult but also one that holds the potential for great danger. The levels of pleasure and satisfaction we receive from success can be directly proportional to the levels of difficulty and danger.

However, experience also tells me that sometimes you will succeed on a dangerous and difficult route and you will experience no feelings of pleasure at all! For me, some of these questions have exercised my mind for a long time. Not because I have experienced spectacular falls, but maybe simply because I have experienced enough falls to set my mind wondering.

Further Reading Paul Pritchard, The Totem Pole, 1999 Karen Darke, lf You Fall, It’s a New Beginning, 2006 Phillipe Petit, To Reach the Clouds, 2003 Garrett Soden, Falling: How Our Greatest Fear Became Our Greatest Thrill, 2003 Andy Kirkpatrick, Psychovertical, 2009 Joe Simpson, The Beckoning Silence, 2003

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Text and photos: Lewis Preston

An africa

48

an amble

The Spitzkoppe in evening light 49

Having a dream, making it happen The plan for an extended road trip round southern and eastern Africa was hatched while Nick Quarta (South African engineer) was living in Newcastle 2014-2015. I met Nick, a newcomer to the NMC, under Simonside’s North Face on the only Wednesday evening club gathering I managed that season (my 16th year of missing most Wednesday evening meets because of my academic commitments at Northumbria University!). Later that evening, in the Turk’s Head, Rothbury, after not much climbing, we got to know each other over a pint.

In the months that followed Nick kept dangling bait about the great African adventure he had in his head. I had also been dreaming about Africa ever since reading H W Tilman’s ‘Snow On The Equator’ – before Nick was born, as it happens.

Tilman’s description of his 1930 exploration, with Eric Shipton, of Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and the Ruwenzori Mountains, followed by a pedal bike ride across the Congo was adventure in the purest sense. Our trip, as it took shape, was planned for January to April 2016, but in spring 2015, with no chance of time out of teaching, I had to tell Nick there was no way I would be able to join him....

Unless?......

A short time later at my annual appraisal and 5 year goalsetting meeting with my professor I confirmed I had no desire to embark on my delayed PhD and that I had come to the conclusion that it was time to make time to explore further beyond the University library, to the deserts, mountains and rainforests of our beautiful planet.

The Spitzkoppe, Namibia The Spitzkoppe was the first main climbing objective of the trip. To get there we travelled for two weeks through Namibia’s spectacular landscapes: the Fish River Canyon, apparently the largest ‘gash’ in the earth’s crust after the Grand Canyon ; the giant dunes of Sossusvlei and the unearthly dried-up hollows of Hidden and Dead Vleis (‘vlei’ is the Afrikaans word for marsh).

Excitement mounts as we drive across the plains of Damaraland and see, for the first time, the giant granite inselberg (from the German, literally ‘island mountain’) that has earned Spitzkoppe the title ‘The Matterhorn of Africa’. To the east of the main summit are the Pontoks, five lesser peaks surrounded by enormous, house-sized boulders half buried in a tangle of dense and intertwined vegetation.

We set up camp in the ‘Boulder Valley’, prepare a vegetable ‘poitjie’, a three-legged cauldron that cooks our supper over a deadwood fire, while we go off to explore upwards. The last hour of daylight is the most dramatic time of day: low-angled, golden sunlight strikes the eroded granite domes casting weird shadows likened to rhinoceros horns, stranded 50

On the edge of Fish River Canyon

whales, even human fingers and toes. It is also one of only two or so hours during daylight when it is conceivable to attempt any physical activity (the other is immediately after dawn). Having scrambled as far as we dare on the approach to the SW face, we crack open our Windhoek beers and survey the mountain.

The Spitzkoppe was formed ~130 million years ago as the super-continent of Gondwana was slowly separating to form the Atlantic Ocean between what is now Africa and South America.

Volcanic activity thrust Cretaceous intrusions of magma through the lower earth’s crust but not so as to break through the then ground level of older Damara rock layers. Only after the subsequent 130 million years of continuous erosion did the older, softer rocks disappear, 51

revealing the dramatic inselbergs rising 700 metres above the plain.

Sarah Follmann, a.k.a. Uberschnell, has a guide to this complex area and next day we decide on a reconnaissance and warm-up on the 4th Pontok summit. The boulders we saw on arrival are bigger than houses and between a maze of canyons divert and frustrate a direct approach. Fill these canyons with an impenetrable growth of hideously spiky creepers and giant cacti, and reaching a platform at the base of the East wall becomes a minor epic. The sun by then has moved round and now blinds us with an intensity that suggests we could be on another planet. The wall has one car-width crack, not shown in the guide, and is otherwise a featureless convex dome.

With all our hardware and ropes unused we abandon our attempt (practice climb) and circumnavigate the entire Pontok massif, descending into the ‘Bushman’s Paradise’ and thus north into the deserted ‘No Access’ area to enjoy a grand afternoon exploring and checking out the approach to Spitzkoppe’s original route. That evening we find some bolted sports routes on some apartment-sized boulders, and Andre (Portuguese, living in Johannesburg) has his first experience of outdoor rock climbing.

I am up early for a solo pre-dawn explore of the ridge above our camp. I have been reading a translation of Ryszard Kapuściński’s indispensable insights into Africa, ‘The Shadow of the Sun’. In it he describes the moment the sun emerges for the start of a new day: ‘Emerges?

This verb suggests a certain slowness, a leisurely process. In reality, the sun comes out as if it were a ball catapulted into the air. We suddenly see a fiery sphere, so near to us that we can’t help experiencing a frisson of fear.’

I am tempted upwards in a shadowy chimney, soloing ground that becomes more uncomfortable the higher I get; an overhanging pitch with ‘Thank God’ holds brings me to a caving exercise under a wedged chockstone above a rising traverse on the left wall and a mantleshelf move to gain the ridge and a series of short scramble pitches are achieved 52

Mount Kenya from the Shipton Camp

before the extraordinary moment described by Kapuściński above. I sit to catch my breath and watch the fireball rise.

Only Andre is up-and-about on my return to camp and a day of relaxation and silent deliberation ensues. The following morning he joins me for another pre-dawn exploration, this time to the Sugarloaf col, traversing football pitch-sized slabs angled at the very limit of sane soloable friction. In this desert-like environment we marvel at the ingenuity of nature: a sizeable tree has seeded itself and grown from a moisture pocket in a multiple-limbed giant cactus. Almost without discussion the prospect of 700 metres of complex route-finding – the ‘original route’ traverses all four aspects/sides of the tower – and all-day exploration under a near overhead sun has evaporated all ambition to climb the Spitzkoppe. We solo a nearby dome, find a trapped seepage pool and immerse ourselves in rapidly transforming frogspawn amongst the bewildered tadpoles! The open air bush camp showers have halos of rainbow light shielding us from the burning sun.

An encounter with snow on the equator We now jump 44 days, involving several changes of team members, crossing the wildly varied landscapes of Botswana (Okavango Delta and Chobe National Park), rafting the Zambesi Gorge downstream of Victoria Falls, traversing Zambia, swimming in Lake Malawi and a ‘crazy’ road experience in the Nyika Highlands, following a false trail across half of Tanzania, motorcycling round Zanzibar, a thwarted attempt at wild camping in the Masai steppe, and recovery in Nairobi before juggling the logistics and costs of an attempt to climb Mount Kenya.

The second highest mountain on the continent, Mount Kenya, is a 3 million year old strato-volcano, estimated to have once been around 7000m high, buried under a permanent ice cap. It now stands at 5199m, comprising three main summits (Batian 5199m, Nelion 5188m, and Point Lenana 4985m, all named after Maasai chieftains), 53

has 12 rapidly receding remnant glaciers, and twenty glacial tarns, all contained within a complex topography of valley drainage systems from the dome to the surrounding plains.

Our route will take us through five vegetation zones: timberline forest, bamboo forest, heather moorland, afro-alpine, and glacial.

We make a base camp on the western slopes, hire a local guide, Cyrus, and are driven by Patrick, his employer to Nanyuki to raid our bank accounts of sufficient funds to settle the costs (hut bookings, access lift and guiding fees), plus the National Park entry charges. The first day is a back-breaking plod, crossing the Equator, encountering the poo of, but not the actual elephants, ascending through both forest zones in steady rain, to reach the ‘Old Moses’ hut at 3300m. We meet ‘Gap Year’ youngsters tripping down easily with laden local porters bearing their rucsacs. We have chosen to carry our own loads, including a rack of gear and a 70m single rope. The evening heralds a cessation of rain and late sun finds gaps in the cloud cover to cast angled rays onto the plains we have left below.

After a good sleep we progress across heather moorlands cut deeply by radiating valleys.

Cyrus is distracted, trying to sort out mobile money payments to pay hospital fees: his youngest of 3 children has broken his arm, but typing in a wrong digit he has transferred the money to an unintended recipient. Once sorted he explains the dilemmas he faced, leaving his injured son in distress in order to earn a living to support his family. He has climbed Mount Kenya 400 times over 15 years guiding foreign tourists in their pursuit of pleasure. It didn’t feel that pleasurable as my pack soaked up the afternoon downpour, the mists shrouding rock pinnacles on ridges above the valley that lead, eventually, to a steep ascent past Shipton’s Cave and up to a hidden hollow that now houses the Shipton Camp Hut. I am soaked through, exhausted and have numb fingers and an aching back, as I slump onto a bench and throw off my sac. A brew, a snack, an hour of recovery time, during which the rain stops, and I am ready for a solo explore of the corrie and routes upward from it.

At 4200m this hollow is filled with typical Afro-Alpine flora: lobelia, ragwort and the giant groundsel, ‘Senecios Keniodendron’. The rock faces above glissen with seepage streams, and

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Asecnding the North Ridge of Point Lenana

rise dauntingly towards the peaks of Batian and Nelion, the upper slabs of which support the snowfields of the equator.

My mind is racing as I return to the hut. The guardian has been chatting with Cyrus and has lit a tiny stove. It is surrounded by wet boots, socks and layers of clothing which will never dry, and by my forlorn companions in their duvets and sleeping bags, playing a board game to avoid contemplating our prospects for tomorrow. The conditions and my fatigue force me to speak, firstly to Uberschnell, my intended climbing partner, then to Nick and Geoffrey, the trekking team, lastly to Cyrus. I have been thinking through the 23 pitches of rock climbing up Mackinder’s original route on the SE face of Nelion (400m, graded UIAA IV-). The NMC’s Tim Catterall, who climbed Mount Kenya by this route in 1995, had informed me that the required abseils to get back down would not be accomplished in daylight, and a Kenyan ascentionist I had spoken with into the night at the Old Moses Hut told me that 3 years previously his party had barely made the summit in daylight and had spent a miserable night in the summit shelter before descending the next day.

I had resolved to offer my place on the rope with Sarah to a younger, fitter person, but there was no discussion: she already had parallel reservations to mine and there was ‘No way’ she intended to expose herself to the risk of a night in the open at 5000 metres above sea level on the summit of Nelion!

The rope, harnesses, rock shoes and rack that had so weighted our sacs could now be abandoned at the hut before a more lightweight ascent of Point Lenana, at 4985m the third highest summit and a popular trekking peak. A north-to-south traverse over Lenana would bring us to the Austrian Hut where a complete circumnavigation of Batian and Nelion would be possible in another long day. That was the new plan.

Day 3 on the mountain began in chilly 7am sunshine but we rapidly removed layers with the exertion of the rocky northern ridge of Lenana. We met a German-Danish team ascending from an adjacent valley. There were no difficulties on the scramble to the summit. I was higher than at any time in my life and felt young and fit again after the ravages of the three previous days. Across the chasm containing the Lewis Glacier, Nelion’s SE wall reflected sun-scorched ‘Kenyte’ rock (the same that forms Mount Erebus in Antarctica). Elated as I was to have summited Lenana I bite my lip that I had passed up on the chance of lifetime to attempt this great rock route, the original aim of the expedition. The view from (almost) the roof of Africa over the eastern ridges and the Chogoria Valley was some compensation.

Clouds then billow up above the Lewis and obscure Nelion. It is time to descend the south west ridge to where we had spotted the ‘Curling Pond’ tarn and the Austrian Hut; It is a straightforward scramble with occasional rock steps safeguarded, somewhat unnecessarily, by steel cables. Uberschnell meanwhile had decided to return to the Shipton Hut. As we approach the hut the sky dramatically darkens and it begins to rain, and some minutes later, as we reach the hut, thunder and lightning echoes and illuminates a very different environment to that in which we lazed on the summit. The hut is unmanned and unlocked. Nick and Geoffrey crash into their sleeping bags while I get the stove going to make brews. Even after our descent we are still higher than Mont Blanc and the boys complain of headaches and altitude lethargy. Cyrus curls up on the lower bunk, another ‘day at the office’ over for him.

The storm rages on, battering our shelter, when the door flies open and a ‘crazy’ man bursts in, stuttering that he’s lost his companions on the ridge, and thinks they may have been electrocuted as they were using the steel cables to descend. Should we mount a rescue, I ask? The others are all asleep and the ‘survivor’ refuses to leave the shelter of the 55

SE Face of Nelion before and after the storm

Summit party, Point Lenana

hut! If they were not holding the lightning conductor cable, I suggest, they should find their way to the hut? Shortly this proves to be the case, and three others emerge out of the mist, obviously so elated to be alive, they don’t stop to rest but continue down in the direction of the Naru Moro route. Later, the skies clear and the air stills.

While the others slumber, I venture out for a solo explore in the direction of Nelion. The steep SE face rises above the screes dropping to the Lewis Glacier.

On Tilman’s sketch map of 1930 the peak is completely surrounded by merging glaciers. Now most have retreated to the upper slopes and the largest extant glacier, the Lewis, is split by a wide rock band, against which the upper part crashes and, hundreds of metres below, the lower section drops away to meltwater tarn hollow. I am able to scramble down to the glacier and cross the rock band to below a scree slope topped with a needle to the side of the SE face.

The rock is streaming with runoff from the upper glacier which contains ice caves with weirdly distorted melting stalactites. Suddenly enveloped in a pre-dusk mist I feel very alone and retrace my exposed traverse.

At the uppermost glacier’s snout there is a naturally formed vaulted tunnel of ice leading into the glistening blue interior, an invitation to explore the underground world of the glacier. Entering with my headtorch, conscious of the millions of tons of moving ice balanced above my head, is a thrill I had not expected while climbing Mount Kenya. I get back to the hut in last light, relieved for the shelter afforded, and cook a supper for the others who have woken and are watching a Star Wars film on a phone balanced on the upper bank between their sleeping bags!

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The Lewis Glacier snout

Inside the Lewis Glacier

Day 4 begins very early as a consequence of too many rehydrating brews the evening before.

Nick and Geoffrey are up too and we discover why it seems lighter than expected given the hour. The boulder field on which the hut stands is carpeted in a thick layer of fresh snow, and across the Lewis Glacier Nelion is wrapped in a white blanket through which only the most prominent rock features stand out. I need no further persuading that the SE face is not an environment for a summer rock climb.

Instead, after breakfast we descend the snow slopes into the Naru Moro Valley, where

among boulders and giant groundsels we meet a clan of rock hyrax (known locally as ‘dassies’) who assemble to ogle and whistle at the invaders of their territory. We climb steeply back up and over the lip of a hanging valley containing Hut Tarn which reflects the snowfields and rock buttresses above.

We see the remains of the Diamond Couloir with its tiny glacier hanging under the ‘Gate of the Mists’, the notch between Batian and Nelion. We traverse the Eastern terminal with Nanyuki and Emerald Tarns in separate hollows below, and Arthur’s Seat and Point

Piggott towering above.

We climb to the Western terminal, descend again to Oblong and Hausberg Tarns before another steep climb to the top of the Hausberg Col at 4591m. From here we descend 400m to complete our mountain circuit back to the Shipton Hut. We eat a substantial supper and give the guardian and Cyrus the remains of our food, for tomorrow we will meet Sarah back at Old Moses and continue our descent to the park gate, and a lift back to base camp.

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A short walk in the Rwenzori, the ‘Mountains of the Moon’ Mount Kenya left me physically and emotionally drained.

An ambition thwarted, but still a rewarding mountaineering experience. Luckily we were re-welcomed into the home of Bridget and Calder in Nairobi to relax and recuperate. After some days and much deliberation we continue on the road, up the East African Great Rift Valley, camping on the shore of Lake Victoria next to a family of hippos, and at Jinja where the Nile leaves the lake, before a crazy traffic-jam arrival into Kampala, capital of Uganda.

We stay with Nate, a human rights lawyer who had previously helped draft the same-gender marriage legislation in the very conservative state of Utah that heralded the recognition of this status in subsequent states across the US. We explore Kampala, three-on-a-(‘boda boda’)-motorcycle, including a harrowing visit to the Idi Amin Torture Chambers from the terror regime of the 1970s and 80s. (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boda_boda) On Palm Sunday we head west past Ugandans processing with palms to their local churches. A day’s drive brings us to Fort Portal and we find a campground on the very rim of one of the Crater Lakes. Our plan is to attempt an (unguided) walk into the Rwenzori Mountains. We meet some lasses, two of whom decided to join us for a short ‘ramble’. We leave the Toyota by a village police station where we trust it will be safe; there is no lock to the back so we always wonder whether our gear will still be there when we return!

The Rwenzori (previously known as the Ruwenzori) is the largest mountain range on the African continent, forming three million years ago and reaching to 5,109 metres. The Greek geographer Ptolemy, on his map of AD150, named the range Lunae Montis Finis Occidentalis, the Mountains of the Moon, from which twin rivers claim to be the source of the Nile. Speke had been near in 1861, Stanley in 1875, but it was in 1888 that the latter confirmed there was an incredible snow-covered range near the Equator. The main peaks are named after Speke (4890m), Baker (4844m) and Stanley (5109m).

We trek up a beautiful valley, reminiscent of my bushwalking days in Papua New Guinea, until we come to a school perched on a terrace above the river. We’re surrounded by curious children with whom we shake hands and take selfies, which causes howls of laughter when they see themselves on 58

Chilling with the locals

the screen. Two teachers stroll over and one says he is a qualified mountain guide and will abandon his class to take us further. Government wages, if paid at all, are a lesser amount per month than foreigners might be persuaded to pay for a day’s walk up a hill. However we decline the offer and find a way to avoid the Ranger hut and thus venture into the forest unaccompanied.

We picnic in a clearing before the bamboo forest then continue through this beautiful habitat to the col before returning by the same route. I would have liked to have followed in Tilman’s footsteps to explore higher to the border of Uganda and the DRC, and the watershed of two of the greatest rivers on the planet, but such a trip would require permits and guides, could take 10 to 14 days and would cost thousands of dollars!

The last days of the road trip The others have decided to extend the trip beyond my 3 month limit. We have time for a few days in Rwanda, now a beautiful, peaceful nation, but still very conscious of the genocide of 1994. On Easter Day we visit a church in which 11,400 people were massacred while they sought refuge during the 100 days of inhuman craziness. The others then head into the Democratic Republic of the Congo to climb an active volcano.

I fly back to South Africa for my last week, shared in part with Andre from Namibia days, 59

Top: Descending from Point Lenana, Austrian Hut below Bottom: Nick and the author after the storm

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and Natalie, hiking in the Drakensberg Mountains near the Kingdom of Lesotho, and part solo to Cape Town, scrambling up Table Mountain and mingling with penguins on the southernmost point of the continent that has offered me an intimate insight into this part of the great extended family of mankind.

Map of the road trip, courtesy of Nick Quarta

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OBITUARY Basil Aubrey Butcher 1921-2016 Simonside Hills, Northumberland Basil with Anne on Simonside (Butcher collection)

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ost members will be aware that Basil Butcher (Baz), a founder member of the club, died on the 3rd of February, at the grand age of 95. I attended Basil’s funeral on the 18th February, the eulogies reflected a life well lived and loved, and his coffin was appropriately painted (by neighbour artist Sue Brophy) with alpine meadows leading to mountain peaks and blue skies.

The very early details of Basil’s interest in climbing and the mountains are not known, but born in Yorkshire Basil moved as a boy to Newcastle where his father was appointed Station Master.

Educated at the RGS, a school which, even in the early thirties, had produced a number of capable, if not expert climbers. In the absence of any formal clubs in the period, it would not be surprising if his interest was stimulated by outdoor activities at school.

Basil trained as an engineer, (taking the opportunity to make karabiners in the workshop!) and by the outbreak of World War two was employed at the Vickers Armstrong works on the Tyne.

In a reserved occupation he was employed designing revisions to the turret of the Vickers Light Tank. Exempt from military service he had the opportunity to engage himself in his interests of climbing and mountaineering.

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photo: Sue Brophy

There must have been a cadre of like minded folks around at that time, as informal meetings were already being held in a cafe above the News Cinema in Pilgrim Street. Basil and others first formed the Club in 1942. The club’s existence however, was short lived, as members were Called Up for military service reducing the membership to an impractical level.

The Club was reformed at the end of WW2, following a couple of tragic accidents in the local climbing community. At this time Basil had access to a cottage close to Crag Lough, Antic Hay. The lease was taken over to allow for its use as a ‘Club’ hut. Basil was amongst the Club’s 29 founder members, and took the position of Joint Secretary. Given the restrictions that existed; limited transportation, rationing and (by today’s standards) rudimentary equipment they were a driven and successful group who ranged far and wide both in the UK and Alps.

During the war the Cheviots proved a popular venue and with transport lacking. Weekend trips would be made to the hills, getting the bus to Wooler on Friday evening, then hiking across the moors by torchlight to Goldscleugh and Dunsdale, bivouacking in the barn at Mount Hooley. After climbing on the Henhole and Bizzle the return journey would be made on Sunday evening. Zig Zag, Black Adam’s Corner, and Canon Hole Direct date from this period and were all climbed in the style of the time, on sight and with little or no protection. In the post war period Basil was instrumental in the placement of a permanent tent for members use at Mount Hooley.

I n the post war years he travelled overseas, climbing in the Alps, Polish Tatras, Dolomites and Julian Alps. He joined The Fell and Rock in 1956, and climbed extensively in the Lakes, eventually becoming Vice President, 1985 -1987, and hut warden of Beetham Cottage in Brotherswater for 10 years. In 1956 he was elected President of the NMC. He contributed to the production of the County’s early climbing guides. He and his peers provided the shoulders we all stand on, and the ongoing style and approach to ‘Trad’ climbing owes much to their pioneering spirit.

In the mid 80s he developed an interest in Archaeology, became a member of the Northumberland Archaeology Group, and the Society of Antiquities. He conducted much survey work for Newcastle University, and was a contributor to Beyond Stonehenge, a series of essays on the Bronze Age. Probably influenced by his engineering expertise, Basil had a lifelong interest in cars, (and in driving them quite fast). Bob Bell observed that Basil was probably quite unique in, having owned an Aston Martin, a Daimler and several (flipped) mobility scooters! He was the proud grandfather to six grandchildren, one a member of the FRCC.

Steve Blake

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Sicily The New Kalymnos?

Cliff Robson ponders the possibility

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The author making his way up the cave route ‘Solo Mio’ (6a) at Torre Isulidda

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icily had been on our radar for sometime but we had doubts about whether it had enough for a week’s climbing in our grade range. The ultimate test would be did it have enough to match Kalymnos? So while we waited for the evidence to pour in we foraged our way around other European sports climbing venues which looked as though they would have plenty of what we wanted. Paklenica in Croatia for example, polished and stiff but with good multi-pitch routes, and Slovenia, even stiffer grades but nice situation, good local wine and exceptional hospitality. Meanwhile reports began to trickle in from other NMC members who’d been to Sicily and spoken well of the place. It was time to go and check it out.

One problem in getting to Palermo is that flights only go from Gatwick or Stansted so it was the long haul down the East Coast Main line and then a thrash on the Tube with the manic commuters. Amazingly there were no delays so we got there OK apart from one of the party who broke down in his vintage Audi on the M1 on the way to Gatwick and had to come on the next day via Milan. An hour and quarter’s drive from Palermo airport and we rolled into San Vito Lo Capo.

After a plate of fish, a glass of wine and a comfortable night in the apartment we were ready to see what it all looked like in daylight. Our first view of San Vito was of a place half on the up and half on the down. Smart new buildings rubbed shoulders with neglected wrecks. However, our view of the first climbing area we visited was a lot more impressive.

As we headed to Sector Zoo the view of a line of fine looking crags facing the sea was a heartwarming sight. It turned out to be a great warm-up area and being just five minutes drive from the town and five minutes walk along the seafront it’s an easy place to get to and a pleasant place to acclimatise. There’s even access to a small beach if you fancy a swim afterwards.

And this very much turned out to be the shape of things to come. Every area we visited was easy to get to; ten minutes walk at most. One of the most substantial areas which stretches for maybe half a kilometre along the coast is Scogliere di Salinella Centro. It’s easily accessed by walking down a large notch in the cliffs along which many of the main climbing areas such as Bunker, Casa Claudia and Castello are found. We had several trips here and found plenty of interesting and varied climbing. The southern end of the escarpment finishes up behind the El Bahira campsite which gives easy access to some great climbing on shorter routes with colourfully named sectors such as Mad White Rabbit Hatter, Pizzeria and Redhead.

We were all impressed by the number of routes, the quality of the routes and the quality of bolting. Many of the lower-offs are pigtails which are ok when you work out how some of the more obscure designs work. One of the main differences between San Vito and Kalymnos seems to be the nature of the rock. In Kalymnos there’s a lot of climbing on slabs and small edges putting a lot of pressure on the feet. In San Vito you noticed after the first route that upper arms and upper body were being used more to deal with the steeper nature of the rock. The rock seemed to lend itself to more features some even similar to Northumberland. Friction was good even on the few occasions when the rock looked a bit polished.

Access to crags was easy with most walk-ins five or ten minutes. A car would be very useful especially for getting from the airport though the campsite does offer a shuttle service. We didn’t visit any of the areas a bit further afield such as Monte Monaco and Custonaci where there are apparently good multi-pitch routes and clearly quite a bit of development going on.

Of course Massouri creates a concentration of climbers which gives it a unique and friendly flavour. However, the El Bahira campsite provides a good focus for climbers.

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The view from Sector Zoo

It has a dedicated climbers’ social area, a very pleasant cafe/ bar with a nice sea view and even a climbing area at the back of the campsite. It’s impossible not to bump into other climbers as the overall climbing area is pretty small. The number of climbers was less than Kalymnos.

We only met one set of Brits, Poles, Belgians, Austrians, Italians and one Iranian. We stayed in town in a very comfortable apartment which meant we could walk into the town at night and check the gastronomy.

San Vito may seem like an end-of-the-world sort of place but restaurant prices reflect a bouyant clientele. The old fishing village has been turned into a small and appealing little seaside resort with an attractive centre and good beach for those wanting a swim or a holiday as well as a climbing trip. Smart B&Bs and hotels suggest that this is quite a thriving place in the summer. We had some great meals. A starter of caponata was a tasty change from tzatziki. At Ristorantino Crik and Crok it was difficult not to succumb to the huge platter of fresh fish we were tempted - or was it cajoled? - with. Go there with a thick wallet and prepare to swim out. Elsewhere swordfish was good, pyramids of spicy couscous were different, and pizzas were, well, filling.

The highlight of the trip was some immaculately seared tuna which melted in the mouth.

We paid the price when the bill came. That chef talks a good talk but left out a few small details – including the cost! And there were a few beers especially some interesting variants of Moretti which we don’t seem to get in the UK and which was a very acceptable alternative to the usual Mythos or Fix of Massouri. A reliable red wine (and you do need that on a climbing trip don’t you?) was the locally produced Nero D’Avolo.

Our final visit on the airport day was to Redhead to tick off a handful of excellent routes such as ‘Last Orders’ (6a), ‘Two Girls’ (5a). Then it was off to Palermo airport, Gatwick and then an overnight stay in the Travelodge before battling with commuter hell again. We travelled with Easyjet, got our apartment via Wimdu and Sicily for Everyone and a car via Italy Car Rent. That scratch on the wheel cost a whopping 250 euros! Saved by excess insurance.

So overall it was a great trip. San Vito will definitely be on the regular schedule of sports climbing trips for us. So how did it compare with Kalymnos overall? Answer is very well indeed. There is possibly more varied climbing. It’s easier on the feet I think. It’s nice to have footholds. It wasn’t as hot in mid May but it was getting hotter. It was difficult to escape the sun on most crags after midday but everything is near enough to go back at lunchtime and have an early evening session. We didn’t but you could. The campsite offers discounts to climbers between October and March which suggest that you can climb here all year round.

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The lively and jostling Massouri climbing scene is quite addictive but the relative tranquillity of San Vito was also appealing.

I’d say San Vito can hold its own very well. I could quite easily see it becoming a new sort of Kalymnos.

A great time was had by all.

Dave had almost recovered from his chest infection by the end of the Ross Hume on ‘Just for Fun’, a sandbag at 4c at Sector Pietraia trip. Ross didn’t break down on the way back but did get held up on the M25 (moral??) Nobody lost any luggage and there were no delays on the East Coast Main line.

The crew: Gary Brosnan, (The Bionic Blitzer), Dave Hume (The Felton Flyer), Ross Hume (The Derbyshire Devil), Mike Blood (the Lancashire Quarreyman) and myself.

Gary Brosnan enjoying the sun (and a Moretti) at the El Bahira bar 67

1966 and all that John Spencer reflects on half a century on the rocks.....

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I

started climbing fifty years ago. Having said that, it’s quite difficult to say exactly at what point during the then-customary transition from fell walking and scrambling to climbing that one actually became ‘a rock climber’. My mother would tell you I always liked climbing, whether up trees, on rocks or up and around the battlements of ruined castles - ‘Hello Mummy, Hello Daddy, look at me!’ - so maybe the seeds were sown early. This potentially suicidal tendency led me into trouble on my first Scout camp on the West coast of the Isle of Man at the tender age of 11. Me and my mate Nigel were walking along the shingle beach not too far from our campsite, when we decided to climb the cliff beneath the camp. There was a perfectly good path up the steep shaley and vegetated rocks just a little further on, but, well, we simply had to climb that cliff, didn’t we? - ‘Because it’s There’ and all that?

About 30 feet up we ground to a halt. Nigel sat on a ledge and dangled his legs above the void, but I was perched a couple of feet above him hanging onto what felt like very tiny holds but were probably large jugs. ‘Oh bother, that’s torn it’ we exclaimed, ‘what the ‘eck are we going to do now?’ (there may have been the odd expletive in there as well, uncouth Lancashire urchins that we were).

What seemed like an age later a couple walked by on the beach below. ‘Help, we’re stuck!’ we squeaked. We told them where our campsite was and off they jogged to get help. Shortly a man appeared at the bottom of the cliff. ‘Hang on, don’t worry, I’m a mountaineer!” he shouted, as he climbed to save us. However, a few feet below our impasse he also found himself well and truly stuck. Another age later a rope snaked down the cliff towards us. ‘Tie it round your waist with a bowline’ came the cry from above. Nigel and I did as instructed, and also faithfully followed the exhortation to ‘Just lean out and walk up the rock, don’t touch anything’. The rope went tight and we were hauled ignominiously to the top of the cliff by Skip (Scout leader) aided by several stout Manxmen. ‘Mr Mountaineer’, however, knew better, or maybe simply felt so humiliated and embarrassed at having to be rescued that his mind went blank; at any rate, he didn’t lean out, presumably tried to actually climb, and arrived at the top scuffed, bleeding and dejected, and was never seen or heard of again. Meanwhile, as a result of this escapade Nigel and I attained heroic status around the campsite for a day or two. Interestingly, whilst stranded up there I don’t recall feeling scared of either the height or the potential consequences of our predicament; I was clearly hard-wired for sensation seeking even then (see Martin Cooper’s article), and turning to rock climbing was perhaps inevitable.

In my early teens I started hiking and fell-walking, with the Scouts, with the school fellwalking club, but mostly ‘just’ with mates. We scrambled when the opportunity arose.

But during the spring of 1966 we went abseiling with the Scouts at Cadshaw Castle Rocks, a scrappy little gritstone edge near Bolton where we lived. As well as slithering down the rope, we had a go at thrutching our way back up the rocks, and it was fun. I can remember thinking ‘I like this and want to do it again.’ Bait taken. However, although none of us had much of an idea about what to do and how to do it, we returned to Cadshaw for some more and began to work it out for ourselves. So I suppose around about this time you could say we became ‘proper’ rock climbers.

On this voyage of discovery we were helped immensely by what we could glean from the then bible of climbing instruction ‘Mountaineering. From hill walking to Alpine climbing’

by Alan Blackshaw, more commonly referred to simply as ‘Blackshaw’, which happened to be in our school library. Published a year previously, it covered everything from how to mantleshelf to snowholing, crevasse rescue to boot size conversion (British to Continental), technical specification of karabiners to interpreting the weather. There was even a glossary of Gaelic and Welsh place-names!

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Unfortunately I have no written records of the time. However Carl, one of the two friends with whom I started out, is an assiduous chronicler and archivist.

His climbing log for 1966 records visits to the famous Wilton 1 quarry near Belmont, where we top-roped or led, even occasionally soloed, some of the easier climbs, up to Mild Severe in grade. Also noted, somewhat cryptically, was some ‘illicit climbing’ on a school trip to Scotland later in the summer. Here, unbeknownst to our teachers (at least we thought so - more likely they just turned a blind eye), we top-roped easy lines on small crags near where we were based near Arrochar, then later at Loch Morlich. In addition we climbed our first Corbetts and Munros, including the Cairngorm 4000ers.

At this stage we were togged out in woolly sweaters and old trousers, climbing in (bendy) hiking boots or plimsolls and pulling on cotton Blacks anoraks when it rained.

The main item of technical equipment in our possession was a hemp rope. Yes, a hemp rope. Although they had been replaced by nylon ropes a decade previously, a teacher colleague of my father’s, a certain Mr Birtwistle, who had given up climbing, kindly donated his old 80ftlong (~27m) hemp line to our cause. We also had hemp waistlines, made of small diameter line which you wrapped several times round the waist into which the climbing rope was either tied directly or via a karabiner, a kind of proto-harness but probably only a little less lethal than tying the rope round one’s waist. Finally we owneda couple of slings and steel karabiners. And thus equipped we scratched our way up those easy climbs.

Later in the autumn, however, the third person in our trio of neophytes, Phil, met with a serious accident, a life-changer for him, of which more later.

Nineteen sixty six, what a summer. We were between our ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, thus under no pressure from high-stakes exams, and footloose and fancy-free. To slightly misquote Supergrass ‘we were young, we ran free, saw our friends, saw the sights, felt allright’! Anything and everything felt possible.

Meanwhile in the big wide world: the Chinese leader Mao Zedong kick-started the disastrous Cultural Revolution in which, over the next 5 years, some 1.5 million people are thought to have died, with millions of others imprisoned, tortured, starved or ‘merely’ displaced; Indira Ghandi was elected Prime Minister of India; Labour romped home to victory in a General Election (note to younger readers: believe it or not, this kind of thing did used to happen, you know!); Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the infamous Moors Murders, were convicted of the abuse and murder of five children; the space race was 70

Summit, Binnein an Fhidleir, August 1966 (Phil Craven on the right, Carl Dawson first from right)

hotting up, with both the US and Soviet Union marking up ‘firsts’ (e.g. first Moon unmanned moon landing, first spacecraft docking etc); nearly half a million US troops had been deployed in Vietnam, which was already beginning to look like a disaster in the making; ‘Star Trek’ debuted on US TV. Oh, and the England national football team won some trophy or other (note to younger readers: believe it or not this also actually happened!).

And then there was the music. Earlier this year I read a newspaper article entitled ‘Was 1966 pop’s greatest year?’ The arguments posited were, firstly that three albums were released by major artists - ‘Revolver’ by The Beatles, ‘Blonde on Blonde’ by Bob Dylan, and ‘Pet Sounds’ by The Beach Boys - that significantly raised the creative bar. Secondly debut records were released by a variety of artistes who would go on to become major names (e.g. ‘Fresh Cream’ by ‘supergroup’ Cream, ‘Freak Out’ by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, ‘Hey Joe!’ by Jimi Hendrix). Finally, seminal albums were released by established groups (e.g.

‘Aftermath’ by the Rolling Stones).

‘Revolver’, according to the author of the article, was the album on which the Beatles, under the guidance of genius the late Sir George Martin, began to use the studio essentially as an additional instrument as well as a laboratory of ideas (note, illegal substances may have also been involved!). In particular they highlighted the track Tomorrow Never Knows which incorporates circular drumming, guitar played backwards, Indian-sounding drones and 5 separate tape loops and, according to one commentator, ‘...still sounds like music from another universe.’ Remember that such sound manipulation using the equipment of the day was not only visionary but a brilliant technical achievement.

Meanwhile ‘Blonde on Blonde’ is thought by some to be Dylan’s ‘most eclectic, mercurial and indecipherable album’ - even the cover photo is out of focus! It was recorded in Nashville in several epic sessions, some of them all-nighters; Al Kooper, who played organ in Dylan’s backing group, reckoned it ‘captured the sound of 3am like no other album’! Finally ‘Pet Sounds’ was hailed for its liquid harmonies, characteristic of the Beach Boys, but also as a(nother) revolution in production techniques. John Lennon even declared it to be the greatest album ever! It is reckoned to be the first ‘concept album’ i.e. the tracks linked by a theme, in this case falling in and out of love, as opposed to simply a collection of songs.

You can decide for yourself - a track off each of these albums along with a selection of other releases from 1966 can be found at: https://www.mixcloud.com/The_Other_Mad_Professor/1966-and-allthat/ (Note Donovan’s hit song Sunshine Superman after which the climb at Corby’s is named. The song is supposedly an homage to LSD – maybe the route is as well, but only the first ascentionist could tell us that!)

Although Blackshaw, published in 1965, was a fantastic and comprehensive basic resource for we naive and ignorant beginners, as well as an undoubted inspiration, providing, as it did, a window into the magic world of climbing, it was out-of-date even before it was published. In the mid-60s rock 71

climbing was in the middle of a revolution – in standards, in style, in equipment, in attitude, in the sense of what was possible.

Reflecting broader cultural changes – the ‘swinging Sixties’ - climbing was starting to get trendy.

The ‘chaps’ in hairy breeches and bendy boots depicted in Blackshaw’s photographs could have been from any period in the previous 50 years. And although they were numerically still the most common species to be seen on the crags, they were being usurped by a more modern-looking kind of climber, more stylishly dressed (a kind of scruffy chic), wearing proper climbing shoes, with foppish hairstyle, cigarette invariably dangling from lips.

Blackshaw was grounded in what was rapidly becoming a bygone era.

For example, climbs were described as being graded up to Very Severe, although the book conceded that ‘.... some of the Climbers Club guidebooks have used Extremely Severe.’ To put this into context consider some of the major first ascents of 1966, listed with their modern grades: The Skull, Cyrn Las (E4 6a); The Crucifix, Dinas Cromlech (E2 5b); Nazgul, Scafell (E3 5c); Poker Face, Pavey Ark (E1 5b); and East Face Route on the Old Man of Hoy (E1 5b). The esoteric delights of Gogarth had just been revealed to the world and development was apace, first ascents in 1966 including Big Groove and (E3 5c), Red Wall and Mousetrap (both E2 5b), and Dinosaur (E5 6a, and so called because according to one of the first ascentionists, Pete Crew, it needed ‘... a long neck and no brains.’) Further afield, a joint American, UK and German team climbed the Eiger North Face Direct in winter, arguably the hardest route of its kind in the world at the time; there were other notable British achievements in the Alps and Muir Wall on El Capitan was climbed.

Meanwhile Blackshaw was asserting that ‘..outcrop climbing is probably the best training for climbing proper’, instructing the reader in how to place natural chockstones in cracks for protection (though in fairness there was a short section on ‘jammed nut belays’), and exhorting that a leader ‘..must never push a pitch so hard that he risks a fall; it is a basic principle of all climbing that the leader never falls, and everything else must be subordinated to that.’ There was without doubt great wisdom in this mantra; the consequences of even a short leader fall, with rope tied round waist, flaky gear, and using traditional belaying techniques (i.e. no belay plate) were potentially grim. Nonetheless, climbers, certainly the pioneers of the day, were risking and not infrequently taking falls, and surviving, all in the name of progress.

However, 1966 saw the publication of a book that really captured the Zeitgeist, ‘Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia’ (RiAiS) by John Cleare and Tony Smythe. I mentioned the book, so iconic to my generation of climbers, to a group of ‘young’uns’ from the club when we decamped to North Wales following an aborted Mingulay trip in 2011 - no-one had heard of it. Which was both unsurprising, as it had been out of print for 40 years, but also (kind-of) surprising, given its historical and cultural significance. It was the first of an intended series showcasing the photography of John Cleare and the activities of cutting edge climbers in specific areas. As well as Snowdonia, there would be ‘Rock Climbers in Action in...’ the Peak, the Lakes, Scotland and eventually apparently the Alps as well.

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Unfortunately, despite the success of RiAiS the full series was never realised. Although it went to a second print run, it soon became a collector’s item, with copies in good condition changing hands for several hundred pounds! The good news is that, to celebrate its 50th birthday, it has been reprinted, with digitally remastered photographs, three times as many as in the original issue what’s more, although the text remains unchanged.

What was so special about RiAiS? Apart from books, the only sources of information and inspiration for punters like us who were not members of a club with its own journal were two magazines: The Climber and Mountain Craft, the former issuing from a small publishing house in Castle Douglas, the latter owned by the YHA. Though we lapped up the content – what else was there? – like Blackshaw they too were grounded in a disappearing culture. The late, great Ken Wilson would shortly take over editorship of Mountain Craft, giving it a serious kick in the pants by turning attention away from tradition and focussing more on new developments and personalities, with a bit of gossip thrown in for good measure; within a couple of years it had transmogrified into Mountain, which, along with Rocksport, first published in 1968, changed the face of mountaineering journalism forever. For the meantime, however, accounts of the antics of those chaps in hairy breeches dominated the climbing media. Then along came ‘Rock Climbers in Action’ which completely changed the way climbing was portrayed.

As with Blackshaw, the book is inevitably ‘of its time’. Tony Smythe’s text would doubtless seem rather dated to the modern reader. But in 1966 this was a new way of writing about climbing, describing not only the setting and the climbs and a little bit of the history, but also the climbing, the personalities, indeed the whole ‘scene’. It was also recording a particular moment in British climbing, in the words of John Cleare in his foreword to the 2nd edition ‘....an especially interesting era in British climbing history – the final period when the leading activists were still disorganised ‘weekenders’ who trained on beer, smoked twenty-a-day, drove like furies and thought it was all a big laugh.’ And this all seemed pretty exciting, not least to we impressionable newbies.

However, without wanting to downplay the text, it was John Cleare’s black and white photographs that made the book. They captured not only the essence of hard climbing - the tension, the concentration, being ‘out there’ - but also the atmosphere and drama of easier climbing and mountaineering. Nothing quite like this had been seen before. In order to achieve this Cleare broke new ground (in climbing photography at least) in several ways: he abseiled alongside the routes to get closer to the action; he got the climbers to climb specifically for the purpose of the photo-shoot; and he used a wide angle lens to enhance the perspective.

Many of the photos, their captions and some of the text entered popular culture, becoming catchphrases, almost mantras, of that era, and I’d bet there are several County Climber readers ‘of a certain age’ who could quote from the book, or at least would recognise the source. For example ‘You go, you commit yourself and it’s the big effort that counts’ (caption to a silhouette of a climber on ‘The Plum’, Tremadoc); ‘I had this dream, see, and I was falling upwards in a shaft of light.’ (a rather arty photo of Pete Crew on ‘Pellagra’, Tremadoc); or ‘Baillie ‘bombing’ up the Gates’ (Rusty Baillie on ‘Cemetery 73

Gates’, Dinas Cromlech). To sum it up, the writer and mountaineer Al Alvarez wrote the following in an essay celebrating RiAiS’s 40th anniversary: ‘As I indicated earlier, to climbers of a certain age the book is held in huge affection. I once sat around a campfire in the Alps, listening to people who not only knew the order of the photographs but could also recite the captions almost word for word! ‘ In terms of the photos, my personal favourites include shots of Baillie on ‘Cenotaph Corner’ (and how chuffed was I to climb the route on my first visit to Wales as a callow 17 year old!), Dave Alcock making a ‘big effort on ‘Scratch Arete’’ (Tremadoc), adjacent Baz Ingle on the third pitch of ‘Vector’ (Tremadoc), and, most dramatic of all, Pete Crew running it out on ‘Great Wall’ on Cloggy.

Pleasingly for the cognoscenti, the extra images in the anniversary edition fill in some of the gaps, for example showing sequences of shots from which only one may have found its way into the original edition.

Many of the photos, for all their datedness, would be contenders for a UKC ‘Top Ten’ place, and the legacy of Cleare’s approach and style are arguably seen to the present day in the work of most, if not all contemporary climbing photographers. As he himself writes: ‘It is still the moment that matters and A big effort on Scratch Arete’ (John Cleare) the eye of the man (sic) behind the camera that captures it.’ One thing I had never noticed in the first edition was Cleare’s unashamed attitude towards tilting the camera for dramatic effect (something I have done virtually since I started taking climbing photos), articulated thus: ‘..if the picture is to communicate what the climber experiences and what the photographer senses, then print it at 85 degrees [rather than at its actual 75 degs] and make the point!’ I’d say 10 degrees is the absolute maximum you should risk, and don’t forget the horizon!! Whatever, Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia was a ground-breaker in so many ways and a huge source of inspiration for me personally and thousands of others, and it’s a delight to see it back in print. It should really be on your bookshelf too (see flyer at end of article for details about purchase).

Meanwhile, the summer of ’66 gave way to autumn, On Sunday September 25th, the three of us, Carl, Phil and I, went up to Wilton 1. It was a clear, dry, cool autumn day. We tooled around on the familiar Severes and V Diffs around the Ship’s Prow (a distinctive feature of the quarry, a 20 metre high, one metre wide blade of rock with climbs on both sides - see photo opposite, courtesy of Karl and Ali) before moving over the to the more formidable White Slabs Area. We fancied having a go at a longer climb.

Now if anyone was going to be the first in our trio to take the challenge, it would have to be Phil – competitive, an all-round athlete, supremely confident, maybe a bit pushy. I don’t think Carl or I argued with him. However to lead the route he needed to borrow some gear since, at that point, we didn’t own any nuts. The problem is, neither did any of us know how to place them properly.

The chosen route was ‘Dandelion Groove’, a rather grotty Severe. We borrowed some kit from other climbers, Phil tied on and off he went. He made good progress, placing occasional protection, until just below the top when he fell. Unfortunately every piece of gear ripped and he tumbled the entire 20 metres of the route and hit the ground. We watched in horror, everything in slow74

motion. I didn’t wait to see what followed as I must have recognised that Phil would be injured, possibly badly, so I hoofed it down to the road a couple of hundred yards below the quarry entrance. There I managed to flag down a car to take me to the nearest phone box where I phoned for an ambulance, then was kindly driven back to the quarry. Phil, severely winded and in considerable pain, had crawled around a little and found a less uncomfortable position at the base of the climb.

In due course an ambulance arrived. What would now happen, with even the slightest hint of a head or spinal injury, would be that backboards and other special equipment would be deployed and great care taken, in particular no twisting or bending, with the victim’s head held in a fixed position etc. What actually happened was that the ambulance men simply took Phil’s arms and legs, lifted him and hoyed him onto the stretcher. Whether this contributed to the outcome is anyone’s guess. I accompanied him to the hospital, first time in an ambulance with sirens The Ship’s Prow, Wilton 1 quarry and lights wailing for both of us, relieved that he seemed OK, in fact at that point it all seemed a bit of a lark. Then came the fateful words ‘I can’t feel my legs...’

I can’t really remember what happened thereafter. Presumably there was a bustle of activity in A&E, and I must have made my own way home from the hospital as we didn’t have a telephone. Neither can I recall how I heard that Phil had fractured several vertebrae (at T7-9 level), transacting his spinal cord which rendered him paraplegic, paralysed from the waist down. Quite a big call for an athletic 16 year old. An announcement was made in School Assembly the following day. Naturally all discussion with the school about getting climbing on the agenda for sports activities for sixth-formers (they already had sailing and golfing) ended there and then. My parents forbade me to climb again.

Carl and I were taken by Phil’s Mum and Dad to see him in the spinal injuries unit in Southport a few times over the next few months. There he seemed the same old Phil except now he was running the show, bossing the staff around and suchlike, whilst lying on his back. In our presence he never expressed any anger, remorse or despondency about his predicament, though he must have had his bleak moments. However, I’ve often thought that if anyone was going to have to deal with such a life-changer at such a tender age, it would have to be someone with Phil’s no-nonsense, kick-ass personality. For example, when he finally returned to school he caused mayhem by racing down the corridors in his wheelchair (often with me or Carl pushing him!) or Typical scene at Cadshaw (Carl Dawson pointing pretending his wheelchair was about to flip over out that the author no-one is actually holding when talking in a group in the playground. the rope!)

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Over the next year or so Carl and I, along with a few others, including Steve Jones, co-founder of Rockworks, who ended up living in the North East as well, gradually gained experience and skills, toproping then leading our first VS climbs. For much of this time this was carried out under my parents’ radar. Or so I thought - I later discovered they knew all along but recognised that I was hooked.

Carl’s climbing log describes outings to the Lancashire quarries, multi-pitch adventures on the Cobbler in Scotland and on Raven Crag, Langdale, and two visits to the butch gritstone escarpments of the Chew Valley (hell, we must have been gluttons for punishment).

We replaced our hemp rope with nylon and bought some nuts (the legendary MOACs!) and even learnt how to place them properly.

But it wasn’t until we ‘fell in’ with the resident Wilton posse, led

by Hank Pasquill (Jason’s dad, a wonderful person and phenomenal climber, still going strong) and Ian Lonsdale (later to become landlord of the Black Dog Inn in First VS lead, ‘Blackout’ (VS 4b), Wilton 1, February 1968 (note the Belmont, home to the legendary plimsolls and rope tied round waist) Black Pudding Team Dinners), who dragged us screaming up harder climbs, that we seriously upped our game. At the start of 1968 I was nervously thrutching my way up VS’s in plimsolls; by the end of the year I was leading easy(ish) ‘Extremes’ (routes now graded E1 and 2) in a pair of battered, second-hand EB climbing shoes bought for a pie and a pint. On our first visit to North Wales that summer we laid waste to many of the ‘easier’ hard routes, including some of those depicted in RiAiS. We had arrived!

It was inevitable that Phil, having been a competent all-rounder at school (swimming, cricket and tennis) would have to find an outlet for all his energy. Whilst lying on his back in hospital he’d apparently seen people playing wheelchair basketball outside his window and a seed was sown. After leaving school, we corresponded for a year or two, but then gradually lost touch. We next heard of him as a wheelchair basketball player, indeed went to see him playing once at Gateshead Stadium. Have you ever watched wheelchair basketball? It’s fast and physical and pretty scary. He got more and more involved in the game and very soon was winning medals at both national and international levels. He also championed sport as a key component of rehabilitation and therapy for disabled people, and made significant contributions to the administration and organisation of the sport.

In 2001 he became President of the International Paralympic Committee, and was knighted Sir Philip Craven in 2005, having meantime accumulated more honorary doctorates and medals than you could shake a stick at. Quite something. It was fantastic, and not a little moving, to see him up there on the podium with the Queen and later with Boris Johnson at the 2012 London games. He is now an Ambassador for Peace and Sport, part of a Monaco-based international organisation committed to serving peace in the world through sport. Talk about clouds and silver linings!

Meanwhile Carl Dawson, the third member of our trio, is also celebrating the golden anniversary.

In many ways he’s devoted much more of his life to climbing than I have. Living on the fringes of the western Peak, he focussed his attention on grit for a couple of decades, climbing literally thousnads of routes, but later turned his gaze towards Europe and limestone when sport climbing first came to the 76

attention of British climbers. Over the last 30 years he’s climbed on just about every crag in every nook and cranny of Europe, written a few guidebooks (including the delightfully quirky ‘On Peak Rock’), and made a huge contribution to the development of climbing and hiking on Kalymnos where he and his wife Ruth have an apartment (his recent publication ‘The Kalymnos Trail’ is an essential item of luggage for anyone visiting the island) and where he’s still cranking up to 8a on a good day. I’m delighted we’ll be getting together later in the summer to celebrate the 50 years, hopefully with some climbing, and in the autumn are planning to meet up with Phil Craven for more reminiscence.

My original intention in writing this piece was to reflect on 50 years of climbing. So what of it? Clichés abound. Every aspect of the game has changed beyond recognition: gear, standards, popularity, ethics, attitudes, opportunities, language, reportage, institutions, and, not least, the diversity and breadth of activities brought together under the heading ‘climbing’. I’ve climbed all over the world at a relatively modest but fairly consistent standard (which hasn’t changed much one way or another since I was a teenager!). I enjoy everything I do within the broad church, though I’m not much of a boulderer, lacking both the skills and the patience to make much of it. I love the variety of it all, the situations, The author grappling with the polished grit of Cadshaw Rocks, June 2016 the challenges.

When we started out, I had no real idea of where it was all leading - I was only 15 for goodness’ sake!

- and in any case our horizons were failry narrow and the possiblities limited. I would have probably given you a disbelieving look had you said that, fifty years on, I would have the opportunity to climb on sugary snow-ice on Ben Nevis, frozen Italian cascades, golden Moroccan quartzite, crozzly Alpine gneiss, rattly Welsh rhyolite, polished Yorskhire grit, and of course gnarly Northumbrian sandstone, to name a few in the first half of this year so far.

I’ve put up a few new routes, albeit of no great significance, mostly in the Inner Hebrides but have never climbed at the highest altitudes in the ‘Death Zone’, nailed a big wall nor descended from a summit in a winged suit; and am unlikely to get round to doing any of these in my allotted time! I love climbing in Northumberland but just wish the crags were a bit closer to where I live – like many ‘Coonty’ climbers I’ve clocked up a fair number of fruitless 100 mile-plus round-trips, when climbing’s been thwarted by the weather. Nonetheless living within such easy reach of the Lakes, indeed Scotland as well, is a bonus. However, the things that really feed my rat are sea-cliff climbing and mixed-winter climbing, though I’m not averse to the occasional dose of bolt-clipping in the sun and, of course, since it’s where it all started, I have a soft spot for thrutching around the odd dank, overgrown Lancashire quarry.

Being ‘a climber’ is part of my core identity and has been for virtually the whole of that half century.

When I fell and broke my leg a couple of years after Phil’s accident I apparently said to my parents ‘Please don’t ask me to give up climbing – it’s in me’, and to their great credit they never did. I’ve pondered the meaning of it all - why we do it, what’s the point, does it have any broader or nobler purpose? but haven’t found a satsifactory answer. In any case many others have explored the phenomenon 77

and written about it with greater erudition, and similarly not succeeded in nailing it. I like Pat Ament’s pithy sentiment: ‘Climbing, a vast detour up and away from humanity’s main world, becomes another cosmos with rituals, ceremonies, play and a language all its own.’ And the concept of ‘deep play’, described by Diane Ackerman as an intensified form of play ‘that awakens the most creative, sentient, and joyful aspects of our inner selves and reveals our need to seek a special brand of transcendence, with a passion that makes thrill-seeking explicable and creativity possible’ also resonates with me. Ach well, not being able to fathom any deeper meaning is not too much of an impediment; there are more important things to focus on these days such as whether I’ve remembered to pack my climbing shoes in the sac!

I’ve climbed with some wonderful people over the years and forged friendships which have extended well beyond the actual climbing. I’ve had a couple of serious falls, one of them a potential lifechanger, and a few epics and near misses (but have only needed to be rescued once – thank you Johns, Sarah and Steve!!). Like most climbers of my vintage I’ve lost a few friends along the way.

I’ve tried to take comfort from the fact that, in most instances, these friends died doing something they were passionate about and would have had little time to contemplate their demise, though I appreciate this is not necessarily a comfort for those close to them. In this respect I’ve struggled, especially when our children were growing up, with the dilemma of the utter selfishness of pursuing a way of life (it’s more than a mere hobby or pastime) that serves no purpose (‘Conquistadors of the Useless’, as per the title of Lionel Terray’s autobiography) but has potentially such a devastating impact on family and friends when it goes wrong, but have not been able to resolve it. My wife Gail, although not a climber, has been generally very supportive, tolerant and forgiving – thankfully she ‘get’s’ what climbing is all about, indeed she loves being in the mountains and these days we’re doing more walking in the hills together than ever before.

So, I will carry on climbing until I can’t do it anymore, recognising that increasing physical decrepitude, failing faculties and the fickle finger of fate will play their part in determining when that time comes - if I can eke another decade or so of climbing and stravaiging out of what’s left I’ll be a happy bunny!

But until then, to quote the title of Colin Kirkus’ book from the early 1940s.....Let’s Go Climbing!

Fifty Years On !

THE 2016 Edition of ROCK CLIMBERS IN ACTION IN SNOWDONIA

by John Cleare and Tony Smythe To be published early in January 2016 by Mountain Camera.

Similar to the original 1966 edition, if rather fatter, it contains over a hundred of John Cleare’s photographs in a new layout – the original thirty nine plus many others that ‘got away’ in 1966 – together with Tony Smythe’s original text and a few other interesting additions.

The new edition may be purchased on-line (using credit/debit card) after November 15th 2015 direct from the printers at www.francisfrith.com/johncleare in hardback at £25 or paperback at £20 plus £3.50 post and packing.

ROCK CLIMBERS IN ACTION IN SNOWDONIA was originally published in 1966 by Messrs. Secker & Warburg, becoming over the years something of a rare book, both in Britain and America, and much prized by those who recall the ‘sixties scene in Wales or who aspire to repeat the celebrated routes of the period.

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Pete Crew, running it out on Great Wall | John Cleare

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IS 5.30 Too Early To Wake Up? asks James Witt

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I

had travelled up from Newcastle the previous evening, singing along to all manner of music from The Pixies to Pulp. It was Bank Holiday weekend, so the Forth Road Bridge had the inevitable tailback for an hour or so. It was 8.30pm by the time I pitched the tent just south of Glenshee at a nice wee spot by the stream.

5.30?

I had ambitions for the next three days. Twelve Munros, two of which were singles which I had missed off on previous visits, either side of the Glenshee Pass. What was the day like?

Open the tent. RESULT!!! It was one of the most beautiful mornings I could have hoped for not a cloud in the sky, and already getting warm. I quickly packed up the tent and headed to the Glenshee car park.

Objective 1: knock off one of the easy ones before breakfast I left the car at 6am, aiming to summit Creag Leacach on the east side of the road and come back down before 9. I set off at good pace. The hay fever kicked in a little, and I got a bit breathless after a few hundred yards, but soon walked it off. It was a good path up past some of the ski-lifts. I soon passed the top of the lift and had the route in front of me. Still a good pace, and I was impressing myself. I had lost 10kg recently, and could appreciate for the first time the extra baggage I had been carrying for a few years.

The summit lay about a mile to the south of the easier Glas Maol, but I had done this a few years earlier and had no interest in summiting it again, especially when I had a hard day ahead. I skirted around the summit dome, and came to the broad, long bealach between the summits. Looked at the watch - bloddy hell, I had only been going 35 mins. A nice stretch of 81

the legs had me on the easy summit by 7am, and I knew I was in for a decent day. I walked back the way I had come, and was back at the car by 7.50. Wow – let’s keep this energy up.

Porridge time. And while it was cooking I prepped my peanut butter and jam rolls for the next two days. I put three into my already-packed overnight rucksack, as I knew I probably wouldn’t have time to mess about later.

My faithful companion since I started bagging has been a 1992 copy of Cameron McNeish’s Munro Almanac. It’s a basic book, and some of Glenshee car park his times and routes are questionable. That being said, the next objective for the day was a climb of Carn an t-saigirt Mor and Carn a’Coire Boidheach. A ‘7-10 hour’ walk according to Cameron. Right, so if I set of at 9.....let’s say 7 hours, that’s back down by 4, and I can do the next bit straight after that. In theory.

I set off (at 9), again, at a good pace. It was a three mile walk-in to the hills this time, but it was such a lovely day, and still so early, I didn’t mind the solitude. Eventually I reached the lodge where the path starts up hill. Again, a good pace, and I quickly reached some proper height. Coming round a corner I saw the first summit ahead. A typical Cairngorm - round, nondescript, and necessary to complete the list. After a bit of diretissima exertion I was at the top. Quick cuppa then on-on. It was pretty much a mile and a half broad sweep to the next summit, but a lovely little side-track was the stunning views of The Stuic, still holding some Alpine-looking seracs at the end of May!!

The next summit was easy, and it wasn’t even midday. I felt great, so had a quick bite to eat, then a nice easy descent down a short snow patch took me back towards my path down. Still a great day, and good pace. I had some decent earworms too. The kids have recently been getting into Star Wars (Happy Daddy), and I had been playing them a CD of John Williams theme tunes. My friends on the weekend that would NOT leave my head were Star Wars, ET, Superman and Indiana Jones, so not bad, considering I usually getting something annoying like Tellytubbies or Frozen stuck in my head! As I reached the base of the hill and started on the three mile walk back to the car, the first signs of fatigue started to set in. Hardly surprising as I had been pushing myself hard, especially knowing that my day was not yet over.....

I reached the car by 2.30 - that was five and a half hours start to finish - stick that in your pipe and smoke it Cameron! I called the wife to let her know I was down, then headed into Braemar for a couple of Lorne Sausage rolls and some Irn Bru. The final objective for the day began at 4.30pm - the five mile walk in to the ruined Altanour Lodge at the base of An Socach. I set off, with my earworms, and reached the ruin just before 6.30. Pitched the tent, boiled some water, had a delicious pasta bol rehydrated dinner and spicy cup a soup, then into the sleeping bag and asleep by 8, even though it was a stunning evening and still about 18c outside.

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The sleep was good, apart from an hour around midnight when I couldn’t. The legs were just about ok, but I had walked about 21 miles since 6am, and knew that the next day was probably going to be harder. Again, it was a 5.30 start.

Then disaster. I turned my back for 5 seconds and I had cremated my porridge for the first time in years.

I made some tea, and had to take a gulp with each mouthful of the gruel just to make it palatable. I kept telling myself the slow release oat goodness would be worth it, but I wasn’t entirely convinced as I gagged the last few mouthfuls down.

The author in triumphant pose

Today’s objective: the five Munros achievable from here. Randomly I had met the owner of the glen on the way in the previous evening, he had done the mountains many times, but never in one go, and he looked at me as if I was mad. I set off at 7 for the peak of An Socach. I wanted to set another decent pace, and had judged the stages of the hill, guessing it would probably be 2 and a half hours up and down. Wrong. It must have been the weight loss, as well as the nasty porridge, because I was taking a cairn selfie by 8am, and set off back down the way I had come. I was back down by 8.40, and by 9 I had started uphill again for the next slog.

Some Munros are great, I think we can all agree. But some (and the Cairngorms have their fair share) are absolutely bollocks. This next peak, Carn Bhac, was the latter, for sure, but I tried to take some positives. It was one more summit towards the total, after all, and the grouse butts were good to let the attention drift. Speaking of grouse, I think I need to mention numbers. I probabley saw close to 1,000 grouse through the day. They were EVERYWHERE. And oystercatchers, and lapwings. And arctic hares, and deer. I was surrounded and it was bliss.

I made decent time and was on the summit by 10. Just a quick selfie again, then onwards - a two mile walk through heather and (thankfully dry) peat hags to take me to the scree face of Beinn Iutharn Mhor. This was the crux of the day, if such a thing existed, but I continued to make great time up the scree, and was soon on the shoulder, then the summit ridge, then the summit itself. 11.45 and an early and well-deserved lunch. Three Munros down, two to go, plus the walkout. I set off again, south, then a long contour round to a bealach before the next climb up Carn an Righ. By now I was really motoring, and the stretch from the col to the summit only took me 20 minutes. I stopped for a proper rest here - I knew I was making good time, but I was getting tired now. I left enough tea for one more cup on the final summit then picked up the poles and started down.

The last peak, Glas Tulaichan, was probably the most rewarding, if only because this was a long day which I had been looking forward to (or dreading?) for years - the 5 Munros tucked away west of Glenshee. It was getting a little windy now, and the clouds were getting more crammed together, although I was still walking in bright sunshine. As I headed down, I knew it was 5 miles to the tent, then another 5 miles and I was out. That’s still 10 miles to go, and my feet were letting me know they were not happy.

I passed a fisherman on the small mountain loch, and carried on. There were bloody frogs everywhere, which reminded me of the day I was caught in a flash flood in Australia’s 83

Northern Territory. After the rains had passed, all the frogs must have woken up as all I could hear were thousands (possibly millions) of frogs croaking - it was a stunning serenade as we lay on our swags that evening, and to me it sounded like the call of didgeridoos everywhere.

Anyway, by now I just wanted to be done. I eventually reached the tent at 5pm, and stopped for 20 mins while I packed it up, had my last roll then began the yomp on the hard track back to the car. My legs were buggered. I had pulled something in my knee, and I could feel the liquid in my hot-spots on my heals begging to squish around. Not good. Then to top it all it started to rain, but not enough to warrant a jacket so I persevered. I had already decided I would not - could not - be doing any walking the next day after this marathon 48 hour session.

I made it back to the car at 7 pm on the dot - 12 hours of hard yakka. Sorry, 12 REWARDING hours of head yakka. I was broken but happy. I stripped to my pants and sat in the car as the rain began to pour. I couldn’t move. Eight Munros knocked off, including an annoying little bugger that had been evading me for a few years. Sixty four to go now, and I can begin to feel the end approaching. I dressed myself then found some decent fish and chips in Braemar (and some more Irn Bru) before heading home to Northumberland. Hoping to get up again in a couple of weeks to knock off some more Cairngorms, wife/kids permitting.

Late Finish at Far Ravensheugh Bob Bell

Crab clink by loam light Moon glows on quiet aluminium Hand rasped, the jam’s tight Blood and salt a reassuring bond Breath stopped, sounds fade Down there a valley drifting out of sight Last pitch, the move’s made Bracken crooks a landing for your heave Once a skein of troop carriers droned far below aiming for the Redesdale drop site.

The Coquet’s meander was their steer line, while above them on the rocks we were not seen Challenge done, a drawn fight Stars shine, indifference in their gaze Walk out by torchlight Nothing’s gained, a little life is lived (Photo Mark Savage)

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Have you sent us a ‘postcard’ yet?

EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT, WHATEVER THEIR LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE AND ALL CONTRIBUTIONS TO COUNTY CLIMBER ARE WELCOME!

Whether about rock-climbing (trad or sport), bouldering, winter climbing or hill-walking, or indeed anything to do with ‘the great outdoors’, especially Northumberland. Contributions from new members are particularly welcome.

It doesn’t have to be a ‘story’ either, so for example a report about a visit to a new location, or a new take on an old one would fit the bill. Reviews of guides or books, films or festivals are welcome. From time to time people submit mainly photographs (see below) accompanied by only the briefest of text, and these can be published as a ‘photo-essay’. And don’t limit yourself to prose in responding to your inner muse - poems are also welcome.

The Editor would be happy to discuss ideas for articles, comment on rough drafts, or work with you to produce the finished article. You could even send us a real postcard if you wanted!

Regarding photographs, please send as high a resolution as possible, although photos, depending on format, may need to be resized. If you are using other peoples’ photos in your article, please ensure you have sought permission.

Please contact the Editor at and/or send submission to: john.spencer@ncl.ac.uk 85

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