I’ll start with the reason for the title of this post, which is related to an incident during Alan and my indoor boulder session last Wednesday. On the last sequence of the night, and feeling a little tired, I snatched for a small hold. I didn’t catch the hold and my fingers slid over its edge taking the callus from my intermediate phalanges on the third digit clean off. Other than being held on by a bit of skin, hence the flapper. Sorry for getting all technical and also a little gruesome, but fear not there are no images of that fateful incident lurking in this post to surprise or shock you:
I had posted an image of the flapper on the local climbers WhatsApp group, and it was on there that the question was asked if I would be OK to climb outdoors on Sunday. My response it was nothing that a pair of nail clippers would fix and I’d be fine. And the proof is in this post, also I just couldn’t let Dan down as we were to head to a crag he had not climbed at before. Back to this morning and the image above indicates it wasn’t the earliest of starts, and while the sun drew a long shadow of the car as we pulled up, it was still a tad chilly as we walked in:
Smith’s Beach rocks was where we headed. And seeing this place is right on the water’s edge, whenever we intend to climb here I check the tide and swell conditions. After all safety first. However, on arrival some of the walls were seeping and the ocean wasn’t as calm as I had expected. While the image above may indicate we were not putting safety first; having been here many times and observed the conditions I knew that the end of the zawn was protected by a rock shelf. This shelf takes out the brute force of the wave, but won’t stop the white water funnelling in:
We on Harbour Wall as it has the more moderate routes. This was sensible both to allow Dan to get used to the rock and style of climbing, but also to allow both of us to settle into the place. On arrival here the constant roaring of waves and rushing sound of white water streaming in can be unnerving, so it takes a little time to get used to it and allow it to become background noise. That said we still keep a watchful eye on the bay, and it is pretty obvious when a particularly big wave is approaching. If you manage to make it to the end of this post you’ll get an idea of what the atmosphere was like:
I threw Dan on the pointy end from the start. He started OK but then It was fun watching him ponder how to attack the wide crack of The Drunken Sailor. He seemed to be going for an underling approach, keeping his feet on the lower side of the crack and his hands under the upper side. By pushing and pulling you can create the compression needed to keep you in balance, but it makes it impossible to place any gear in the crack. After numerous false starts at this approach I hinted it may be worth wedging himself in and worm his way up, just like any chimney:
He didn’t sound convinced but it works and works well. After this route and numerous other times I offered him the opportunity to lead as many routes as he wanted, seeing I had led them all before plenty of times. But he instated we go lead for lead, so I picked Bulging Pockets which he enjoyed immensely, and more than squirming up the body-width crack of his first route. We checked one of my favourite routes here, up the exposed arête of the Billowing Sails. But today the waves on occasion swept halfway up the route and when it receded the entire wall and arête was a waterfall, and the belay ledge at the base was almost underwater:
This was obviously not going to be possible today, so we went back to Harbour Wall where Dan had his eye on the crag classic Cape to Crack. Not that he knew it was the classic of the area. He made short work of this fine route. He was armed with crack gloves, which provide a lovely rubbery backing to your hand to make jams both more secure and comfortable. This helped him jam his way up in a much more efficient style than he had managed in the body-eating chimney. By now the sun was creeping round in the sky, and the wall was in shade cooling the belay stance off a bit:
The orientation of the zawn is such that the sun hits it early on, and in summer it gets unbearably hot very quickly. But on this lovely crisp start to another fine spring day, when the sun was shining on us it was a bonus. As the morning wore on we started to shed the layers of clothing that had protected us from the cold morning. And yes I am still missing my Buffalo jacket! With the sun now fully on the ocean at the entrance of the zawn it was the perfect time to provide an image of the wild waters, it was not a day you would want to fall in:
For my next lead I wanted to jump on a line that I had not been on for a while. Before we had headed out, and as I usually do, I had already decided on a couple of routes I was keen to lead today. Tacking into the Wind was one of them, just because it doesn’t get a lot of attention. Like Dan who had sailed more smoothly up the rock on his second route I did the same. After which it was time to move across to the main attraction of Smith’s Beach rocks, the impressive face of Camelot Castle. We picked our timing to walk across the zawn, in-between the waves. Then we were stood looking up at the steep and more imposing wall:
I talked through the lines here, and attempted to encourage Dan to hit the first route I had climbed here. But he was strangely drawn to the line that splits the face from top to bottom. Excalibur is mighty fine so I could understand the draw of the route, and it is probably the most climbed route on this wall. That would no doubt be in part due to being visually obvious but also probably due to being the best protected route on the wall. While it was a step up from the previous climbs of the morning Dan didn’t miss a beat, and took a steady pace to systematically work out the moves and place the gear. Needless to say he loved it:
The route I had tried to steer him towards was the second route I had in mind to climb, and my rationale for getting him to lead it was that it scares me. For me King Arthur is a pretty sustained line and keeps you on edge. Today however the conditions were great, so there was no excuse. Despite the seeping walls at the start of the day, and continual sea spray from the crashing waves the rock was remarkably dry. So I set off and worked my way up, slowly and carefully. At the crux section had to dig deep and just trust in myself. Have to say I was happy Dan didn’t succumb to my earlier encouragement, as it was a very satisfying lead:
It was on this lead that the skin that had been growing where the flapper had once resided started to wear thin, so thin that it was cracking. I hadn’t noticed it until I got to the top, but the timing was great as with that lead under my belt I was happy to call it a day. Dan however was keen for one more, and wanted to climb a girdle across the wall of Camelot Castle. Traversing from the bottom right to the top left, making use of what looked from afar to be an entertaining horizontal break that stretched across most of the face:
As he climbed I watched the waves, conscious that due to where he was starting from we were getting close to the splash zone. If a truly big wave hit I would be soaked. He mucked about at the start, trying to avoid using the start of existing lines but was unhappy with the gear. Coming back down he ended up starting up Lady Guinevere to reach the break before making the leftward traverse. At the end I could hear the disappointment in his voice; it had not been as good as he had hoped. So much so that he wasn’t even keen for me to write it up as a new route:
But it’s too late now, as it has been immortalised in this post. So became Dan’s new route which I suggested we name The Flapper. Time had now caught up with us, and my body was saying it had climbed enough for today. So we packed up just as another large group of walkers made their way towards the zawn, and we left them there to enjoy the place. The whole morning people had been coming and going. For those that had stopped to watch the waves crash into the zawn, we had provided them with an unexpected extra bit of entertainment as we scaled the walls. Below are a couple of videos of the waves so you too can experience the amazing atmosphere Dan and I were lucky to have been immersed in all morning:
Sandbagged 