These last few weeks I’ve been pretty busy! We’ve just had our first cloudy day here in Pembrokeshire in what seems like ages so I thought I’d reflect back on what has been a memorable few weeks…
In the week before Easter we ran a 5 day Learn to Lead Climb Course for Jack and Dave, and spent the week climbing loads of classic routes, then came the Bank Holiday, and the start of the properly great weather! 4 days off in a row for some personal climbing and 4 GIANT ice-creams in a row from the amazing Gianni’s in St. Davids – if you’ve not been there check them out – the best and most random flavours of ice-cream! Soph and I did loads of great routes and explored some new areas…
Soph climbing at Keyhole Buttress
Once the Bank Holiday fun was over I met up with Dan for a days climbing, and as he was already an experienced lead climber it was basically just a day out climbing for fun – work should be like that everyday!
Dan leading Red Wall
Beth came out with me for a couple of days, she was mega psyched to climb loads and learn how to keep her son safe on the crags, a really nice person and very keen to learn made for a awesome couple of days and some great routes.
Beth seconding at Caerfai
Next up was a trip to Snowdonia to work on a Mountain Leader Training course with Phill George. Phill and his other instructors are mega experienced and very laid back, so they are always a pleasure to work with. The candidates we had were all very competent, so yet again, a really easy week teaching micro nav, ropework, night navigation, leadership and expedition skills was had! Our final day of exped over the top of Lliwedd and the views to the coast were truly magical…
On top of Lliwedd on an ML training expedition
Back to the sea-side now for a weekend with local climbing instructors teaching them sea-cliff rescue skills to improve their personal climbing. Over the 2 days Dan, Johnny, Matt, Ricky, Ben and Alex learnt all sorts and gained a valuable day of professional development for their Mountain Training log books… It’s great fun teaching these high end skills and I think it’s so important for climbers venturing onto sea-cliffs and multi-pitch climbs to learn them.
Ben picking Matt up on the abseil to rescue him!
Most recently I have just spent 3 days with Andy and his son Igor, on holiday over from the Alps (lucky them!) they were keen to do heaps of climbing and for Andy to learn how to keep Igor safe when they go out climbing together… We did dozens of routes, all of which Igor (11) got up with ease – very impressive climbing from him this week, all by the sea, in glorious weather. On my last day with them I managed to sneak in a few solo climbs afterwards, then an awesome sunset surf!
Andy belaying Igor at Pen Y Cyfwyr
A fantastic few days with these guys has left me feeling really positive and psyched for the summer of climbing! Now I’ve got a bit of time off to catch up on admin and get out climbing for myself, there’s a few cliffs I’ve got my eye on some new lines – so maybe the next update will be some new routes!
This article details loads of the sea cliff climbing skills you’ll need to plan and survive a day out climbing on the sea cliffs!
Sea Cliff Climbing Skills – all you need to know.
Before we get going:
CAN YOU? Prussic up a rope? Tie off your belay plate? Escape the system? Hoist a stuck climber? Ascend and descend past a knot? Lower past a knot? – These skills should be learnt by any Sea Cliff Climber, but there’s loads more to it! So, here’s the basics…
Most people don’t start out sea cliff climbing. For the majority, their introduction to climbing comes in the form of visits to a local indoor wall, before venturing out onto single pitch crags such as Stanage, where you can park your car, saunter the 5 minutes up to the crag (with full view of it at all time), peruse the guide book, do a route and casually wander round back to the bottom. Your weather worries are purely if the rock is dry or not.
It’s amazing and you can get so much done in a day – but what if you fancy having a go at some sea cliff climbing? It’s quite a big step up, with a whole plethora of new skills needing to be learnt, practiced and perfected in order to have a safe, productive day out. Even the smaller ‘single pitch’ sea-cliffs can catch the unwary out.
But given the right conditions, the right knowledge, the correct equipment and skillset, some of the best, most rewarding days of your climbing life can be had on the sea-cliffs.
In this article, I’m going to try to give a rundown of the new skills you need to develop and the things you need to take into account on them there cliffs…
Learning Sea Cliff Climbing skills on a course in Pembrokeshire
Before you go…
Tides, swell, bird bans, bombs, spring, neaps….
You might have come across some of these things before. Certainly, bird bans are rife on the crags – but nesting sea birds mean many crags are out of bounds at certain times of year. This one’s simple, get on the BMC’s amazing RAD (regional access database) and check out where you want to head. The same goes for military firing ranges, especially here in Pembrokeshire. Some are accessible outside of firing times, others you have attend a Range Briefing to be able to enter. Follow the RAD and BMC advice, plus local signs at the car-parks and cliffs themselves – we don’t want to damage our access…
Tides and the whole sea side of things aren’t so easy to get your head around…
The level of the sea goes up and down (tides). There’s a low tide, then 6 hours later there is a high tide. Repeat. The tides progress a little each day, so the times change. Dorset has funny tides, so is an exception to this rule. I’ll tell you where to find this info in a bit..
Every two weeks a full moon brings us Spring tides, and the range (difference between high and low) is at its greatest. In some areas this might be nine metres difference – I still can’t comprehend how the moon does this! When we are not on springs, the tidal range is smaller, and where the range is smallest we are on Neap tides. Having a knowledge of this is of vital importance if you’re going Deep Water Soloing, but to trad climbers it tells us if we can access the routes without having a hanging belay, or where to abseil into, and where the water level will be in relation to our route.
Note where the tide will come up to… Pembrokeshire’s large tidal range…
I don’t want to lose you with all this talk of water when we want to go climbing, but it’s useful to note that the speed the tide comes in and goes out varies as to what stage it’s at. This is important as it tells us “if I belay here now how long have I got till I get wet?”! This is called the rule of twelfths. I won’t go into much detail (Google it for more info), but basically there is a lull in the speed of water coming in and going out in the couple of hours around the peak of high and low tides, and it comes in quicker between these times. Sometimes disturbingly quick! At some point in your sea-cliff climbing career you WILL get wet due to this!
Swell. Sometimes it’s flat as a pancake, but at times the sea around our small island can produce some big old waves… Having a squint at the predicted swell height (or even a relevant surf web-cam) can save you from getting a soaking, or finding the rock wet even though it hasn’t rained…
The distance between the top of each wave’s high point is called the wave period. Wave period is measured in seconds, and can be low – for example, four seconds; or large, even up to twenty seconds or more. The longer the period, the more power in the waves, hence why a 3 foot wave on 4 seconds is a very different beast to a 3 foot wave on 18 seconds… Again, being aware of this can help you avoid a soaking! Even those belay ledges 30 feet up a cliff aren’t immune to getting wet!
Both the tides and the swell can be found on Magic Seaweed, a surf forecast website – just find the nearest relevant surf spot for the crag you want to visit. You may need to make some adjustments to get exactly the right tide times for your crag if it’s some distance from the surf spot. Tide tables can be found on the web or bought locally. An obviously just like the weather – this is only a forecast and things can be different!
Big Swell running near St Govans
Now then, let’s get to the crag….
1. Where is this cliff anyway?!
Well that’s the start of it – you can’t walk to the bottom of the crag (OK sometimes you can!) so you can’t see it until you’re on it. This means reading and interpreting the guidebook to find your route, or abseil line, is a fundamental skill. Guidebooks are getting better and better, but I have, on more than one occasion, wandered around for hours without successfully finding the place I want to be! So, take your time, analyse the book, tick off features as you go, perhaps look at the map and grid reference. And if you get lost or go the wrong way, don’t worry – we’ve all been there!
2. So I’ve found the cliff – what now?
In the ideal world, there would be an easy walk or scramble down, but that’s no fun – so let’s look at how to use the rope to safeguard our descent. To abseil down would be the norm, leaving a fixed static rope down the ‘normal’ descent, which are usually indicated in the guide.
We tend to use static rope as it has less stretch than a lead rope, thus reducing the chance of it rubbing over edges. Using a rope protector and some good anchors is a wise choice! There may however be occasions when you have nothing but a rusty old stake in the ground as an anchor, so developing your own sound judgement is crucial.
What device you use to abseil down is up to you, but it’s imperative that you use a prussic to back yourself up (you may need to go hands free to set up a hanging belay etc). Don’t forget that all important knot in the end of the rope so you avoid the embarrassing situation of abseiling off the end of your rope.
Only use length of rope you need to get to the bottom to avoid tangles, but if you cannot see the bottom you may need to take the whole length down. There’s never any excuse for being sloppy and just chucking all the rope down. At some point in your climbing career this will get you in a spot of bother! Either carefully lower the rope or even better, abseil with it coiled over you or in a bag and drop it down as you go. If you stop to untangle the rope, build a belay or check out that crucial gear placement, be sure to tie a quick overhand knot in the rope below your prussic, as your hands-free back up.
Make sure the excess rope at the bottom is nice and neat, and will pull up from the top cleanly and not get caught. Be aware of the sea coming in and washing the rope away. If the tide is threatening, lay it on a ledge further up the cliff.
We leave the rope in-place should we need to escape back up it, if we can’t climb out for instance, so I often take a gri-gri and jumar with me. This will make your life infinitely easier should you need to ascend back up that rope. Learn how to use them properly, but also how to get back up safely with just a couple of prussics… This is a very important skill, if in any doubt about this or other skills mentioned here – book yourself onto a course run by a member of the AMI. I end up rescuing people on a fairly regular basis whilst I’m out working as they don’t have basic skills like these..
Often you might abseil down and find no ledge to stand around on. The safest thing to do is to stay on the abseil rope until you’ve made a belay (remember that back up overhand knot below your prussic if you go ‘hands free’). Consider using slings, or perhaps even the abseil line, to equalise the belay rather than the climbing rope if you’re doing a hanging belay as it can be handy to have a master point to clip into.. Just make sure your mate can still get down the rope and to your belay. Its much easier for the second to go down first and arrange the belay as that’s where they’ll stay, and for the leader to come down second, tie into the rope, get some gear in then come off the ab rope once they are on belay and hey-presto you’re good to go!
Abseiling into a Pembrokeshire sea-cliff
3. Let’s go sea cliff climbing!
Surrounded by thundering waves and cannon-like booming, or tranquil and azure waters with all sorts of marine life bobbing around, you will have very different experiences depending on the sea and weather conditions – but every experience will stick far more vividly in your mind than any trip to Stanage! A few words of warning here:
– Consider using a bandoleer if you’re moving around at the base of the cliff un-roped. If you fall into the sea with all the metal gear on your harness you will drown – at least you can whip off a bandoleer more easily.
– If un-roped at the bottom, be very aware what the sea is doing. Don’t keep your back to the waves the whole time. The unwary have been caught out by random large waves, never to be seen again.
– When seconding, leave the gear clipped onto the rope until it’s out of the rock when putting it on your harness. Ideally unclip it from the rope only after it’s safely on your harness. Kit dropped into the sea never to be found again can cause a costly day!
– Beware of birds! We’ve mentioned bird bans, but even cliffs outside of these can have resident birds. Hands in guano, projectile vomiting and dive bombing are all things you can look forward to…
– During seal pupping season it’s best to stay away from certain areas – or at least make no noise. Check locally where and when this is.
– Any fixed gear you come across (slings, pegs, old bolts and assorted ironmongery) will have been affected by the salt in the air. This will cause it to corrode much quicker than on an inland crag, so treat all with great respect and don’t assume it’ll hold a fall.
– As you can’t just nip to your bags, it’s worth having some essentials in pockets – maybe some food and a phone, certainly if you’re on a multi-pitch, so you can raise the alarm if needed. People have been known to spend entire nights on sea cliffs because no-one knew they were there and in trouble!
Perfect day for sea cliff climbing! Caerfai – Pembrokeshire
What if?
You’re on a big sea cliff remember? If you can’t get up the route you can’t just lower to the ground and walk away… Hopefully you’ve left your abseil rope in place and you know how to safely get back up it with your tail between your legs? What if your mate falls off and hurts themselves, or if the tide starts coming in quick and you get cut off?
Sea cliff climbing is probably, at least in part, so rewarding due to the increased seriousness of the situation you’re in. The “out there” feeling… But these climbs demand that you develop your skillset to be able to deal with certain situations should things go awry. These skills are best learnt under the watchful eye of an Instructor, as there is very real scope to mess things up and hurt yourself.
# CAN YOU? Prussic up a rope? Tie off your belay plate? Escape the system? Hoist a stuck climber? Ascend and descend past a knot? Lower past a knot? – These are just a few of the important skills to learn. Be honest with yourself and up-skill. It might just save you or your mates life one day…
Many cliffs are less serious, so pick your first forays wisely and you’ll be OK, you’ll have an unforgettable time and climb some truly amazing routes. Who knows, you might even see a pod of dolphins bobbing along as you’re belaying your mate with the sun shining in your face….
Teaching self-rescue skills to a group of climbers in Pembrokeshire
Ascending a rope on a self rescue course in Pembrokeshire
Want to know what 2 days of warm weather and some torrential rain do to the snowpack? Then look on… 1 word – AVALANCHE!
We were heading out to Meggy in the hope of checking out some of the avalanche activity from the last 2 days. Knowing there would be some interesting conditions we had already decided on an easy day out and to avoid going onto any snowy sections. This decision was rightly backed up by the view from the carpark, a huge full depth avalanche on the hill above, almost 300m wide.. Plenty more were visible from the road too.
Large full depth just above the farm
We left the Meggy car park amid glorious sunshine, t-shirts and sunglasses were the order of the day, but not for long! To be fair, the weather was a vast improvement on the last couple of days – in that the winspeeds were under 100mph…. Once up in the Coire conditions got, well, pretty grim. People say the Cairngorms are the windiest place in Scotland, well I reckon it’s here! Windspeeds were definitely stronger than forecast, and I cast my mind back to my last visit to Meggy – having to resort to crawling on all fours following a bearing in a white out, the wind intent on not letting me stand…
Anyway, back to today. There were folk out, someone being overly optimistic with some skiis (ski-touring conditions it aint), 4 guys even coming down having been snow-holing – well, they are certainly “braver” men than me, it must have been dire in the thaw in a snow hole!
Have a look at the picture below of a couple walking into the debris zone of a huge, deep wet snow avalanche, from below you could clearly see the fracture lines and hundreds if not thoushands of tonnes of soaking wet soggy snow ready to go… You can see the couple outlined lower left for scale. Sensible decision?
Spot the people bottom left in the snow…..
It was everywhere, every aspect that had snow on and at most altitudes, there had been significant slides. We had it all, huge full-depth avalanches, massive wet snow avalanches, surface sloughs, monumental cornice collapse, smaller point release avalanches, even what looked like crevasses and seracs!
I like to think the fact we have had so little human involvement with avalanches this year is due to more information, better understanding, more people taking a more serious attitude into the hills, and being better equiped, certainly after the terrible winter we had a couple of years ago. It would be horrific if that happened year after year, and fortunately it does not, but there were definitely some people perhaps stepping over that line into the danger zone today. And why? There was nothing to climb, all slush and rubble, skiing would have been rubbish, and the weather on Meggy was at times awful….
Lots of people have been wondering what conditions for climbing would be at the minute, well the pictures below of the Post Face etc give you a bit of an example of how black it all is, and what the cornice collapses have done. The weather took a nose dive whilst in Coire Adhair, so sorry for the blurryness of the photos!
Each Winter in Scotland seems to have certain characteristics, I remember a few years ago it was the “Windy Winter” a couple of years ago was it the “No Snow Winter”, this year it seems to be the “Winter of Giant Thaws”. Apparently this Saturdays staggering rise in temperatures, is due to a blast of air from the Caribbean coming in on the jet stream… Well it still doesn’t feel Caribbean up here in Aviemore right now!
Walking into the Northern Corries
There has been a big amount of snow fallen, but being Scotland these snow falls have coincided with strong winds, meaning snow cover on the East side is poor, though it is good in the West. That is until this Giant Thaw sets in! Why does the weather never play ball to our plans?! I guess it’s one of the reasons that leads to Scottish Winter Climbing being so rewarding, and being such a great training ground!
The CIC hut on a winter skills week ascent of Ben Nevis
The fluctuating weather aside, we have made the most of the conditions with our Winter Mountaineering courses, as well as plenty of personal climbing and skiing…
Skiing in Scotland
In the month or so we’ve been up, there has literally been 2 properly great days of weather, this has led to some testing conditions for our clients! Fair enough the preceding month was staggeringly great, with no wind, perfect ice, sunshine (what’s that?!), it just so happened that we weren’t here then! (yes we were in the Himalaya so can’t complain too much..)
So, to keep us motivated whilst the weather does what it does up there (how much snow will we be left with on Sunday when the weather improves?!) – here are some pics of the last few weeks to inspire and remember… (and yes the weather IS going to get better – but were soon to depart to sunny Pembrokeshire!)
Winter skills week in Glencoe
Nearly on top a blustery and cold Ben Nevis during a winter skills week
Finishing in the dark after a long day on the CMD Arete, Ben Nevis, the culmination of a great week of winter skills
Great conditions for a winter walk!
On a very bluster Carn Mor Dearg Arete during a winter skills week
Looking in to the Northern Corries, don’t be fooled by the sun – the weather was brutal!
Winter Skills in Glencoe – Snow bollards
Digging emergency shelters on a winter skills week in the Cairngorms
We made an early start to avoid climbing in the heat too much, and the first day went well. It was all pretty straight forward and we found ourselves putting up our protaledge with plenty of daylight left, which was lucky, because it was the first time we had done it! With Chris and I hanging off one bolt battling with this strange camp bed must have provided Masson with much amusement as he was sitting in his eating beef jerky!
We started the next day early as we were keen to press on and get to grips with the route. Once we reached Heart Ledge we had the added complication of having to haul our bags up after each pitch. They were heavy but space hauling made it easier. (space hauling is when someone dangles on the end of a rope and uses their weight to haul the bags up, it involves lots of sliding down the wall and jummarring back up, all pretty tiring). We had heard from some Spanish friends that one of them was soloing a route on the east side of el cap and had just started hauling her bags after the first pitch only to find they were too heavy to lift. She added another pulley in the hauling system to make it easier but they still wouldn’t come. She thought maybe they were caught below a little roof or something so she added a final pulley and they eventually started coming. When the bags were within 10metres of her she realised they were so hard to haul because there was bear on it! She swiftly lowered them back down!!
Climbing Salathe Wall, Yosemite
Now came one of the most daunting pitches of the climb, a monster off width, a type of crack you can either do or you can’t. It turned out on this day that Masson couldn’t. So he used a little bit of aid to bypass this section. Trying the route onsight was a massive undertaking, and he didn’t seriously think he could do it, but if you never try, you never know. At the end of the pitch we decide to see how much we could free but not to worry too much if we had to aid, and so slightly more relaxed we set about the rest of the climb.
Yet another off-width on Salathe Wall, Yosemite
We were aiming to bivvy on El cap spire that night. Before we were to get to this incredible bivvy there were some amazing 5.10 jamming cracks where everything just flowed perfectly and you could really appreciate being on El Capitan. When I was seconding one big chimney pitch I suddenly realised I had to do some tricky bridging or face a big swing. As I was wearing my trainers I wasn’t confident I could second the pitch. I shouted up to Chris for some encouragement, then unclipped the last bit of gear and committed to the 150ft swing. It was all pretty exciting stuff 18 pitches up salathe wall only attached to a centimetre wide bit of rope!
Seconding the Elephants Ear pitch, Salathe Wall, Yosemite
We arrived on top of the spire, a bit of rock we had seen pictures of tents pitched on. Looking forward to this luxury bivvy after hanging in our harnesses for the last 12 hours, we were gutted to see the top of the spire was anything but flat! It was still an amazing place, a 50 meter pillar completely detached from the wall. So we set up our portaledge as it was the flattest ting around and sat on top the pillar chatting and taking in the view.
El Cap Spire, Yosemite
After flaking through the ropes we realise the core on one of them was exposed, possibly from when I took my little swing earlier, so we wrapped it in finger tape to protect it. With 20 pitches of Salathe wall done and over halfway, we slept well that night.
We plan to next bivvy just below the headwall which means a long day ahead. Even though he hasn’t free climbed all of it Masson wants to see how the rest of it is for a future attempt. On one pitch he being pushed to his limits after over 2 days of really hard climbing, he has just enough time to warn us before he takes a massive 50fter. He gets flipped and lands heavily on his back. Chris and I look at each other and my stomach turns, looks like he should have really hurt himself. But just as we are thinking how on earth were gonna get him down, or up, or rescued, he flips himself over and dusts himself off, then proceeds to tell us how ”It’s a good job I like falling!” bloody lucky yank!
Trull belaying on Salathe Wall as Masson takes a big fall…
Masson took a back seat to relax his nerves and we aided up to below the headwall later that day. Because of how we needed to set the 2 ledges up (one above the other) all 3 of us were hanging off one cam and a rusty bong, the bolts backing it up were below us… was an interesting night and the most amazing bivvy I’ve ever had. There we were, on the most famous bit of rock on the planet, the sunset looking like the horizon was on fire. We were a day below the top and maybe a day away from being able to swim in the river, drink beer and get out of our harnesses…Tea was a hefty chilli wrapped in tortilla and lots of gummy bears with our legs dangling 2500ft above the valley floor. By now big blue was empty and we were low on water so it was a thirsty evening. It was a perfect still night so we could hear our friends near Zodiac jamming and wondered how they were getting on with their attempt to free their route. It was a bit surreal when all the climbers all over el cap started making monkey calls to one another! It sounded like there was a troop of baboons on a big wall! God knows what anyone in the valley must have thought was going on up there!
The next morning we climbed the great roof and aided up the headwall, unsurprisingly no one was psyched to try and lead the E8 pitches! Apart from Chris having a bit of a moment seconding the roof it was dreamy climbing in an amazing situation. Early in the afternoon on Friday, with considerably lighter haul bags than when we took them up to Heart ledge on Monday, we topped out on Salathe wall.
After finishing the last of our bagels and sorting gear, we started the painful east ledges descent. Masson and I carried a haul bag each and Chris got the bum deal being lumbered with the two portaledges. With all that gear and 5 or 6 abbs the descent was an ordeal in itself, but all that mattered was getting down and not being in your harness, clean clothes, and a proper toilet. And drinking something other than water!
Arguably Salathe Wall vies with the Nose for the title of one of the best routes in the world. It’s certainly an amazing line but being harder than the nose, we didn’t seriously consider it ourselves, but with Massons experience and confidence, we had a new lease of life. However, stood below a wall that stretches up for a vertical kilometer, with a slightly dull head, we both felt pretty nervous. But we were super psyched to finally get to climb on El Capitan!
We had lots to do to prepare, we needed to check we had the right rack, and we needed food and water. Masson decided he wanted to have a look at freeing it. Now, he was certainly strong enough, but would need time up there to work the route, so we decided we would spent 5 days up there to stand the best chance. 5 days of food and water for 3 people = some very heavy haul sacks!
Sorting Kit in Camp 4
We headed to the supermarket and filled a trolley with: 36 bagels, 6 bags of gummy bears, 30 energy bars, 15 tins of chilli., 5 packets of pop tarts, 6 packets of beef jerkey and enough chocolate to make a stick obese. Luckily a friend had a staff discount card from the valley so we got all this half price! Now came the next problem. Water. We reckoned on needing 50litres for the 5 days. Great, no room for beer then.
We had nowhere near enough water containers for a start. So, we trawled through the big bear proof garbage bins that Yosemite has, for decent bottles…. But find barely any… Sean the Belgium realises the garbage bins are a bit of a treasure trove, all the bottles in there are worth 5c each if you hand them into the recycling. And the bins a pretty big in typical American style. We hear about a couple of Brits a few years back who couldn’t climb because their rope got damaged, but after 2 weeks of this bottle “collecting” they had enough money to buy a new rope!
As if by magic we manage to ‘acquire’ big blue, a big solid blue plastic 35l container that fits nicely in bottom of haul sack, we then ‘acquired’ a hose so we could siphon the water out of it up on the wall! It all seemed like a really good idea, though getting water out of it would prove easier said than done up ont the route!
So we’ve got all our food and equipment together and we begin to hike the 150l of it all to the base. Now this was a very sweaty task in the humid forest, there were times I thought my shoulders were going to implode under the weight of the sack – I was carrying big blue! Good job El Cap is practically roadside!
There is a line of fixed ropes that join the route part way at a point on the wall called heart ledge, you can take your bags up here before starting to climb the route. So we undertake the god-awful task of hauling our bags up the fixed lines, no mean feat sweating profusely with a hangover, knowing it will save us loads of nasty hauling if we were to take them on the first day of Salathe. We then head back down to the valley to sleep the night in camp before starting the route the next day.
Haul Bags up on Salathe Wall
Walking past the queue at the base of the Nose we have a deep sense of satisfaction that we are the only people on our route. When we get to camp we realise we made a schoolboy mistake and had left our sleeping bags up on the wall! It was a cold night in camp, wrapped in borrowed clothes! But at least our food was safe away from bears up there, friends of our were not so lucky on half dome when they left their food at the base. All that was left when they got down was 1 tin of chilli and a tea bag between 4 of them….!
In 2008, at the end of summer I flew out to the States to meet my mate Trull. He’s a proper climbing dirtbag, fully commited for life. He had been working his way from Canada down the West Coast of America. We met up in San Fran to go to Yosemite and see what Big Wall climbing was all about, and with any luck climb the Nose on El Capitan.
Neither of us had climbed a Big Wall before. We had both taken our first steps together Winter and Alpine climbing, when we had no experience. We had made mistakes and learnt from them, often by the skin of our teeth. We were sure we could do the same on the 3000ft granite faces in Yosemite National Park. What was there to loose!
The mighty El Capitan, Yosemite
We had done plenty of aid in the UK and the Alps, but nothing on this scale, so we spent a month getting used to the style of climbing out there and getting our aid systems sorted on some of the smaller big walls. We had some great adventures on some of the ‘smaller’ faces in the Valley, but that’s another story for now…
For anyone that doesn’t know what big wall aiding is, basically its climbing a very big piece of rock using gear you have placed in the rock to get you past sections that you cannot free climb. Depending on how good a climber you are and what style you climb in a wall like El Cap will take anywhere between 1 day and 2 weeks (the current speed record for El Capitan is around 3 3/4hours…!).
When we felt all our preperation and experience meant we were ready to take on the big one we walked upto the base of the nose. It’s as perfect looking line as your ever likely to see in the mountains. It rises from the very toe of the cliff in an almost straight line to the very top. It’s widely considered one of the very best routes in the world, and we felt the Nose was our best chance of experiencing El Capitan. Now, due to this worldwide reputation, and being one of the easier ways up the cliff, meant unfortunately every over climber had the same dream as us. The route was so crowded we would have had to wait a week to even start the route. I was due to fly back to the UK in a 7 days and Chris was heading to Australia to continue his round the world climbing trip. We didn’t have time! Hugely dissapointed we headed back down to the meadow to swim, collect our thoughts, discuss options and have some beers.
Looking at Half Dome from the bivvy ledge on Washington Column
Later that evening back in camp we were sat around a fire, drinking beer and playing music (very badly) chatting to mates. Everyone had big plans. Shaun and Nico were heading up to try and climb a new route on the east side of El Capitan and a couple of the guys were going to try and free Half Dome in a day. Everyone was off doing stuff and we couldn’t do what we had planned. Trull and I were a bit dispondent. We had achieved more than we had hoped in Yosemite, but we just still really wanted to climb the Cap.
We were settling on the idea of spending the last week doing day long free climbs, but in the back of our minds we were hugely dissapointed. A bit later in the evening I helped a American lad to get some more firewood. His name was Masson, it was the first time we had met him that evening, so we didn’t know him at all but we had heard he was strong, real strong. At only 18 he had already climbed 5.14 and had done the Nose in 6 hours. We got on pretty well and decided to go climbing the next day – if our hangovers wernt too bad! However around midnight, after a few too many stong cheap American beers, Masson said he hadnt climbed Salathe wall, and that tomorrow we should have a look at it. Being slightly drunk and not knowing any better we both agreed…………
