The Accidental Extreme 1988

We begin with an account of a day that I have to admit shows the author in something of a heroic light. Well if I can’t boost my ego in my own book where can I do it?

The Accidental Extreme.

Most people, when they step up a grade, usually have a particular route in mind and often second it before leading it to give them an idea of what to expect. Well that’s what I’d always done at least until the day I did my first Extreme. On the day in question I didn’t have the slightest notion of trying anything of that grade.

No, my first ever E1 lead happened due to a combination of unforeseen circumstances, in other words it was all a mistake. It wasn’t the kind of mistake that comes from misinterpreting a guidebook. You know the sort of thing. You set out to do “Easy Corner” a Diff. which “starts up the left facing corner” but unaccountably find yourself thirty unprotected feet up the right facing corner of “Coffin Route” HVS 4a. Nor was it the result of the malicious sandbagging of a friend, or the dreaded local who puts you in the same position by saying, “Oh that’s just a diff, you’ll easily solo it”. No, my first E1 was all George’s fault, which was not in itself a surprise as most of the unexpected things that happened to me were his fault. Then there was Chris who…. But I’m starting to get ahead of myself, I’m forgetting that none of you know either George or Chris or even what the route was so perhaps I’d better start again only from the beginning this time.

Fortunately the route wasn’t just any old route. The Red Edge on Esk Buttress in the Lake District will always have a special place in my affections. When I started climbing I never imagined I would ever be able to lead such a route and judging by the way I climb now, it’s a grade that I’ll never reach again. In fact I’m so useless now that if it weren’t for the photographs I doubt I’d believe what I’ve got ticked in my guidebooks. It took me all of nine years to get from Diffs onto Extremes, I’m ashamed to say it took only took a mere two to reverse the process, something which makes for a salutary story in itself. But interesting as that might be, if only to serve as a warning to others, it will have to wait because today I want to tell you a story of happier days.

The Red Edge and me go back a long way. I first saw the route back in the autumn of 1983 on a visit with Robin Saxby, a dynamic young yorkshireman who swept through our little club in the early eighties like a breath of fresh air, or was it a bad smell? We intended to climb either Bower’s or Bridge’s Route, both Hard Severe, but due to the weather it wasn’t to be. The drizzle became heavy rain by the time we reached the crag and it dampened even Robin’s renowned enthusiasm for doing big routes in atrocious conditions. He was usually so keen to climb no matter what the weather, that people who for years had climbed according to the modern formula that states; ”Climbing + Rain = A Long Lie In plus climbing wall” were reduced to disconnecting telephones and hiding in cupboards under the stairs to avoid him.

So we decided to go home but not before I’d noticed the line of what turned out to be The Red Edge. It looked good, an impression reinforced by its position in the graded list, it was at the bottom of the E1s. I marked it down as a route to do once I found someone capable of leading it.

Fortunately for those of us short of the old moral fibre, Robin left the area soon afterwards probably to search for more enthusiastic wet weather climbing partners. I breathed a sigh of relief, removed the armchair and chemical toilet from the stair cupboard, reconnected the telephone and started to lead a more normal climbing life once again.

But I soon ran up against a problem of a different sort. Both of the club members that I used to rely on to take me up hard mountain routes more or less gave up climbing at the same time. Looking around for replacements, I realised with horror that everyone else had become rabid crag rats or worse, boulderers content to spend every hour of every day ferreting around the local outcrops. Only occasionally was it possible to tempt them into the hills, but even then Shepherds Crag or The Grochan was as good as it got.

Over the next five years I waged a sporadic campaign to try and get someone to take me up the route but events always conspired against me. If I did manage to persuade someone to endure the long slog up >>>>>>> to Esk Buttress it would invariably rain or they’d “discover” somewhere stupid like the Bowderstone and spend the day there instead.

Then in the autumn of 1987 things started to fall into place. A date was set although events didn’t pan out in quite the way I’d anticipated, but as I mentioned earlier this was all George’s fault. I enjoyed three years of uneventful, smooth as clockwork climbing before I teamed up with him. Before another three years were out, I’d been benighted in the Verdon, avoided by the skin of my teeth the acute embarrassment of a benightment at Shepherd’s and been engulfed by a monster wave at Chairladder. Add to that two rabbit hole belays that still send shivers down my spine when I think of them and you may begin to see my point. Still, I shouldn’t criticise him too much because he was the one who convinced me that I could lead routes harder than V. Diff. Or then again maybe I can because, come to think of it, that’s when most of the unexpected things started to happen.

Even then there were still transport and partner problems and in the end the trip only happened because Chris got it into his head that he wanted to do a big mountain route on his 50^th birthday. This though was a bit of a mixed blessing, calling to mind as it did, his last birthday route when under the guise of sorting out the ropes, he managed to unclip all four of us from a belay on Tophet Wall. More importantly, Chris had transport, namely a VW caravanette, which it could be argued was yet another mixed blessing.

George, who is Chris’s son, something frequently denied by both parties, decided to come along to celebrate his dad’s birthday. This solved my partner problem, because it was usually impossible to persuade George to go to any crag that involved walking. At the last moment, Scott someone I hadn’t seen for years joined us and kindly offered to bring his car so that Paul and Simon, could also come along. Mark, a relative beginner completed what had suddenly become an unexpectedly large party.

It was a warm sunny day in late October when we set off from Brotherikeld. Ahead of us lay the first obstacle, a walk in that was long, wet and boring which made it, according to a so called humorist in the party “A bit like you Dave”. The bastard. Anyway, the guidebook reckons it should take you an hour and a half to reach the crag but we improved on that and did it in two and a half. We managed this notable achievement by blindly following George, the person with the least experience of map reading, although in our defence it had to be said that he did look as if he knew exactly where he was going. It was this miss-placed confidence that gave us the impression he was taking us on a short cut when he left a well worn path for a very un-trodden looking trod. When we eventually reached the crag he had the nerve to blame us! “Well”, he said, “I thought you would have told me if I was going the wrong way”

Once the recriminations were done with, Paul and Simon went off to do “???????? route. The remainder assembled at the start of the Red Edge. We felt this was no mean accomplishment in itself what with all the vertical grass and soil scrambling it involved. George started to sort out our gear, a ritual which involved discussing which bit of each others gear we would take. It was all rather pointless because he always rejected every bit of mine on the grounds that it was too old. I suppose this was also the reason he’d stopped climbing with his dad who with Scott and Mark had by now joined us on the ledge. We assumed they were going to do some other route or follow us up this one.

We were wrong but was only when Chris asked George if he wanted any of his gear that the truth of the situation dawned on us and we realised there was one leader and four seconds. Coincidentally, four seconds was the amount of time it took for George to lose his temper and tell his dad to pull his finger out and lead the f****** thing himself. Chris said he had a bad ankle thanks to the long walk in and backed this up with a bombproof plea of extreme fear and cowardice. More words were spoken until George, never one to act childishly, struck back by saying he was going back to the car. All hope of a rapprochement ended when George accidentally knocked Chris’s camera off the ledge. This was the last straw for Chris who said he was leaving too. The rest of us sat there watching the unfolding of this domestic drama with open mouths. Mark followed them down and when Scott also began to show signs of packing up and going the realisation that my plans were rapidly unravelling caused me to lose my temper. I heard myself say, “The stupid *****s, the lot of them can **** off, I’ll lead the bloody thing.” If Scott had been anyone else he would have told me to not be so stupid, but as he told me later, he thought that there must be nothing unusual about me leading an extreme.

This anger carried me quickly up the first few feet, an easy chimney. Unfortunately it also carried me across a committing step before I properly realised that it was a committing step. Appreciation of this and a growing awareness that the route was starting to warrant its grade slowed my progress down to a slow creep. Looking down I noticed that George, who had belatedly realised that if he went to the car he’d have to spend the day with his dad, had returned and was preparing to climb with Mark. There was no sign of Chris and hoping he didn’t intend to drive off and leave us, I continued inching slowly upwards

Of the intricacies of the route I remember little but that’s par for the course with me. I remember some bridging and that it was a bit short on runners but at least it wasn’t strenuous. Personally, I’m always suspicious of those who can describe a route move by move and hold by hold and I always suspect one of two things. Either they make it all up, knowing full well that everyone else who does the route, will like me, not remember the details, or they go back and do it at least fifty times, video it and only then write about it. But I do remember that at least for me, the crux was a move over an overhang leading into a groove about half way up the main pitch. I’d had about a dozen “looks” before a suspicion that this move might be beyond me began to take root in my head. I was also beginning to worry for Scott who now fully occupied trying to entertain a growing queue of impatient climbers and apparently, he was getting impatient as well.

“What’s going on up there”

“Not much, it’s just that I can see sod all above me”

“Well tell him to get a bloody move on then”

Spurred on by this wretched attempt at humour I began attempt number thirteen and at full stretch found a huge hold and a place for a great runner. I retired to mull over this apparent miracle. Attempts fourteen to fifteen confirmed the existence of the aforementioned phenomena and sixteen saw the placing of the runner. With the overhang thus reduced to it’s true nature, a small overlap, attempt seventeen, much to the relief of everyone, was successful and soon I was at the belay.

It seemed to me as if only a few minutes had passed but Scott backed up by his watch reckoned differently. As you know this is a perfectly normal occurrence when you are engrossed in something and it probably happens because time is relative. Scott was relatively bored out of his skull whilst I was relatively scared shitless. Anyway I don’t think four hours is a long time for a one hundred and seventy foot climb.

The second pitch, graded 4c was a bit of a doddle but there were some rickety flakes that might have been a worry if I hadn’t still been on a high from the previous pitch. We rested on the top for a while until the sun went in and then made our way back to the bottom where we found Mark and George had decided to provide us with some entertainment. Apparently they’d decided to do a severe but had either got lost on it or just lost interest in it. And now, just as it was beginning to get dark they were preparing to abseil off. This they managed but the rope had sensed, in the way that all abseil ropes do, that night was approaching, and it did what all rappel ropes do in these circumstances, it stuck. George had no option but to climb back up to free it.

We waited for them to finish so it was well and truly dark before we set off for the valley and hopefully Chris and the car. Needless to say, this time we made sure George was well to the rear. Not that it mattered, because much to his satisfaction, we still managed to lose the path and didn’t find it again until we were fifty yards from the road. By now it was quite late in the evening and when we reached the cars we were surprised to find a very unhappy looking Chris waiting for us. We thought he would have been in the pub celebrating his birthday but unfortunately he’d come away without any money. He’d played the Good Samaritan however and pitched our tents for us at a nearby camp-site so we had no worries about standing him a few beers. Well not until the time came to leave the pub that is.

And so it was that just as the day had started with a route finding error so it ended with one. After we’d rolled out of the pub and been walking for a few minutes Chris admitted that he couldn’t remember where the camp-site was. We’d walked over a mile with no sign of our beds when it started to rain. Soon it was raining heavily and a wind was getting up. Already I was imagining the entry in the rescue team’s handbook, “Party of allegedly experienced but ill equipped climbers lost in Eskdale. When located by the team several were incoherent and wandering aimlessly around the La’al Ratty engine sheds”.

Deciding this was getting ridiculous, we went back to the pub, asked about the camp-site and were told, much to our embarrassment that the camp-site was only about fifty yards away in the other direction. Fortunately for his physical well being, Chris did remember where on the camp-site he’d pitched the tents. At least it meant that by the time we reached our tents we were relatively sober and had no hangovers the next morning.

Funnily enough, although it wasn’t a bit funny at the time, my one and only 5C lead also happened because of George, but that, as they say, is another story.