This is the last email and covers my five years of fun exploring the amazing playground that the Red Centre has to offer. In previous emails I focused on one area and pulled together snippets of my climbing exploits in each. For this email I am covering a heap of places and I was a bit stumped as to how to start. Then delving through my files I came across a document detailing my time in Alice that I had prepared in 2005, after I had published the guidebook of Rock Climbing in Central Australia. As such this little ditty is based on that write-up combined with other memories brought back while going through our photo albums and typing. This email, unlike the others, has not been driven by the images but the images have been added to the text. While it may read a bit differently to the previous emails, probably jumps about a little bit and is certainly the longest read I hope you will be equally entertained. To get the ball rolling below is the crag location map from the guidebook, I will however not mention all the locations as I didn’t climb at all of them:

In March 2000 all the belongings I thought necessary for my new life in the Red Centre of Australia were crammed into one suitcase and a rucksack. This of course included my boots, harness and a few essential bits of hardware (in truth nearly all of my rack). I was taking a gamble by leaving the life that had provided me free weekends to scour the UK countryside in search of rock; and leaping into a small tour business that had the potential to devour every hour I was awake. To help nail down the coffin lid on my climbing activity I was moving to Alice Springs. A place known by most, including myself at the time, as a one horse town in the middle of a desert. It seems appropriate to include the following non-climbing related image of Lisa and I on horseback in the outback with Bill, the owner of the Ooraminna Homestead. Only 30min drive down a very bumpy dirt track on which we though our old campervan would shake to pieces. Lisa and I used to work at this Homestead on weekends helping by cooking, serving, cleaning and taking wildlife tours when bus groups rocked up for that outback experience:

When I travelled to Alice Springs with my suitcase and rucksack I was travelling the cheap way, and that meant a two day bus journey from Melbourne to the centre.  After passing Adelaide it didn’t take long for the scenery to change to a flat and almost featureless landscape.  This continued for some 1,200km, and the lack of anything of a rocky nature helped conjure up images of my boots gathering plenty of dust.  As we approached Alice Springs, in the last 30km or so, there were signs of land features that were significant and this raised my hopes.  In the last few kilometres we passed through two sets of ranges that were up to 100m high.  The second seemed to stretch east and west as far as the eye could see.  More importantly for me I could see signs of small crags, so there was hope for my boots yet.  So you may be wondering why I was moving here, well back in 1994 when I travelled round Australia for three months I made contact with a guy who owned a tour company.  I kept in touch with him and after my two years in Africa had difficulty adjusting to life in the UK so looked for an alternative, and for better or worse I became a partner in his company.  Yes this is me in jeans and a leather jacket riding one of the most impractical motorbikes on the market:

My first outdoor climbing experience in the Alice, since I travelled through the are during my 94 holiday (mentioned in my write up about Italy), was at a crag known as the Quarry. This wall provided an uncharacteristically steep and clean face, which happens to be located on the side of a road that leads to an old quarry. Even more unusual for the area is the fact that this 15m crag has a significant number of bolted routes. Left Foot Screaming looked for all intent and purposes a doable traditional line, although it did have one carrot at what I guessed would be the crux. Doable it was not and I ended up having to top rope the route, something that was out of character for me. Even with a top rope up I had to step even further into, what I felt to be, the dark side by hang dogging and piece-mealing my way up the climb. While muscle memory built up from many attempts over the years helped me to be able to lead it cleanly, it continued to prove a mental and physical challenge for me. Below is an image of me seconding Mark up the awesome Hyber Berger that is on that same wall at the Quarry, this climb will get mentioned again later as will Mark:

After this initiation of centralian rock I was very keen to step back to my preferred style of climbing, traditional ground up. It didn’t take long to meet up with local climbers and in a town of less than 30,000 people I was amazed to find groups of climbers who knew nothing of the others around. The fragmented climbing scene had also led to an assortment of climbing records floating round. All up there were about 200 routes listed. I was immediately immersed in the local climbing scene and was encouraged to help set up a climbing club, not so much a club really more of a collective voice to tackle the many access issues that I was to find out about. The climbing club never eventuated to anything, in fact after I put together a local newsletter people realised I was serious about it and most of them seemed to lose interest in the idea. Similarly the tour business turned out to be a lemon, it made no money and didn’t keep me that busy other than sitting round waiting for work. This meant that there was time to climb and I soon gained a reputation for being the person who would be available to climb at the drop of a hat, and with all the contacts I had made I was never short of finding a keen partner to get out with. Doug was one of the people that I first started to head out with, he worked at the US base called Pine Gap that has recently hit the news as being a spy base. We had regular trips out to Emily Gap during those early days, when the grass was tall and green:

Alice Springs is a very long way from the nearest major town.  Being so isolated it needs to be, and is, very well serviced.  It is a pleasant surprise to most who venture this way to find that Alice Springs has just about everything they need.  I was amazed to even find a decent sized indoor climbing wall, for which we need to thank a small group of very enthusiastic climbers.  They secured funding and supervised the building of this wall back in 1996, which was run by the local YMCA when I got there and it seems that it is still in use today (according to their website).  It was an amazing wall some 10m high with overhangs, vertical walls, corners and slabs.  To boot there was also a 25m low level boulder wall made up of rocks stuck to a breeze block wall.  It was the perfect place to train and meet potential climbers.  During the first six months of my stay Lisa came out for a four week stint, to see if she liked Alice (and me) enough to move out here.  During that visit she was introduced to the climbing crew and we had a social get together at a local crag called Charles Creek:

Within a month of living here I was invited out to Trephina for a weekend.  Only 80km from town this National Park offers great walks, peaceful camping and not only a pleasant gorge but also a towering 120m bluff.  My memories of this early trip are not so much of the climbing, where we managed to put up about ten new routes, but the stars at night.  It was a dark night and moon was out late, allowing us the chance to see the myriad of stars and impressive Milky Way in a way I had never seen them before.  To be able to drive for less than an hour out of town and camp under such a glorious canopy is something I never tired of and never took for granted.  Below Dan is leading Café Negro, and this image shows the undercut nature of the walls.  The sandy river bed made this a great place to boulder, but the bottom sections tended to be very smooth, made so by the action of water which would come roaring down these places.  Most of the time however they were dry:

On this first trip to Trephina I also remember having the opportunity to climb in weather I was more accustomed to. I had arrived in the centre at an unusual time when the rainfall was three times the annual average. There was a low mist and dampness on the rock, and even more strange for the area there was water flowing through the usually bone dry gorge for an extended period, as shown a couple of images down in which Sam makes the first ascent of Mortal Thoughts. In the first two years of living in Alice Springs we were fortunate to witness two very wet years. I’ve slipped in this image of the usually dry Todd River that runs through Alice Springs, we got to see this kind of sight a heap of times in those early years. Across the water you can see Casa Nostra the Italian where Lisa got her first job, we used to call it the Cosy Nostril:

All of the rain ensured water holes were full of crystal clear water and the usually dry and dusty landscape was transformed into a floral haven (hence the previous image of Doug wading through the high green grass). Birds, reptiles and mammals were all plentiful and it was a great time to see and learn about the hugely diverse flora and fauna of the area. This helped me, seeing I was taking nature tours down at Ooraminna Homestead, and didn’t really want to bluff my way through too many of the questions. On one trip with Jock to Trephina we were walking round a big waterhole and we both sunk to almost waist deep in the sand. It was a pretty scary experience and we were not sure if we would get sucked in any deeper, just managing to get hold of some roots and gently and slowly pull ourselves out:

I went out to Trephina several times and on one occasion with Dan we climbed the mighty bluff all 120 glorious meters, and not just one route but two. The first was a direct line in three glorious 40m equally graded and nicely sustained pitches that we boringly called Direct Crack Line, a route I repeated with Lisa one time. The other route we attempted to climb was a wide chimney, that had been climbed many years back, and after the first pitch I had to get into the chimney proper and found it was littered with humongous teetering boulders. It was very, very scary and I backed off much to Dan’s relief. Instead we went up an easy ramp (in the middle of the picture below) and then another crack line that got a mention in my recount of Swanage. The last pitch looked tricky up the steep curving crack, so Dan sent me up and it was on this route that I have dropped more rock on my belayer than I had in all the routes I have ever climbed collectively. So came to be Boulder Ruckle, a memorable route but probably one that will never have a repeat ascent.

Trephina was a favourite place for Lisa and I to camp at and we would head here to climb, hike, have socials, take foster kids to, and play many a game of scrabble. We would always attempt to get campsite number 6 next to the dry river bed and underneath the bluff, which was on most occasions. The time that Lisa and I climbed Direct Crack Line it was a hot weekend but we were not put off and made our way up this stupendous line. This is all the more impressive as Lisa had never climbed a multi pitch route and was, and still is, afraid of heights:

By the time of this trip Lisa and I had bought our campervan (Kermit), which we happened to be buy of a musician who played at Ooraminna Homestead.  We got Kermit at a steal and had many amazing adventures exploring the area in him, including trips down south to the Flinders Ranges and across to the east coast and Townsville.  He was equipped with a sink and fridge and on this trip friends from town happened to be out at Trephina and asked if they could store some beer in our fridge.  There was room, so I guess we must have drunk all ours the night before.  By the time we got up and down the climb our mates had gone, leaving for us wonderfully chilled beers which we had no issue with necking to celebrate a great climb:

I got ahead of myself a bit above so going back to when Lisa came out to live in October 2000 I had already decided to throw the towel in on the business. So when she came out the first thing we did was move into a one bedroom apartment, then I left the business and was very glad to have that behind me. Alice is an amazing place for work, there were always heaps of jobs and you could diversify into so many different roles. This meant we were both soon employed and could find free time to explore the awesome countryside. Such as the very western end of the ranges where Mount Sonder the highest peak sits (below). We have been here heaps as it is near Glen Helen and 2-Mile another stonking place to set up for outdoor adventures. For our first New Year’s we hiked up this lofty peak leaving at first light and getting down by early afternoon in a stinking 44 degrees heat. When we got down we found a waterhole and immersed ourselves in it. We drank a welcome beer as we also savoured the well-deserved cool soak:

The ranges that stretch both east and west of Alice are called the MacDonald Ranges, and keep going for 200km in both directions. The rock is predominately Heavytree Quartzite, an ancient and very hard rock. With annual and daily variation in temperature of up to 50 and 30 degrees, respectively much of the rock unfortunately had a shattered or broken nature. Still there are some very good quality crags to be found, and quite a few were within 20 minutes’ drive from town. Most of the climbing exists on this Heavytree Quartzite but there is climbing to be found on limestone, Alice Springs granite and Merinee Sandstone. Below on our first trip to Trephina together, Lisa is bouldering on the Heavytree Quartzite as we explored some creek systems, and you may be able to see the polished look of the rock where the water has smoothed the edges and also removed any loose rock:

With plentiful rock near town regular trips out were easy to arrange.  One of the areas we concentrated a lot of time in the first few years was Steager Road.  This small range was the home of the infamous Quarry Wall, the outdoor climbing wall of Alice Springs.  For many years people had climbed on the Quarry Wall, but records indicated that no one had bothered to explore the many other outcrops that were littered along this ridge.  The main crag that we established was called Horseyard Crag.  The climbing on this broken and not very steep wall is fun but certainly not outstanding.  It was a good place to get people out and have a social, many of the people we climbed with didn’t go hard so it was the perfect crag:

I have fond memories of the abundant wildlife we saw during our many visits here, they did not seem to mind our presence.  It would be uncommon for us not to see large flocks of the majestic Red Tailed Black Cockatoo, who would graze in the paddocks behind the Horse Stables that lay directly opposite the crag.  Wedge-tailed Eagles would soar high above with Black and Whistling Kites below them.  We would climb with these large birds above us and have small Dusky Wood Swallows whistling past our heads as they moved in and out of the security of the crag.  Belayers would sit and watch us while they were watched by Variegated Fairy Wrens and the many other small birds hopping around in the trees and shrubs.  Big Red Kangaroos and Euros seemed to show no signs of being intimidated by us or our antics, occasionally they have wandered over to our packs to see what treats we may have for them.  Left Wall was a great place for them with a sandy clear area where they would hide from the beating sun, while literally tem meters away we would be climbing and falling:

Another common visitor to Horseyard Crag was a young and energetic dog, who lived at the Horse Stables. We never did find out his name but due to his at times overly affectionate nature we called him Tongue. The sound of our approaching car would make him spring into action and he would come lopping out onto the road making a bee line for us, happy and full of beans. The owners had an older dog, this one would treat us more cautiously and sit on the side of the road watching us as we would ramble up the hill side with Tongue bounding about scaring any kangaroos and euros that may have been resting or grazing in the foothills. Eventually the owner, not too impressed with our presence, would soon come out and yell blue murder and more often than not give poor Tongue an unnecessary whack. As the years went on Tongue got older and stopped getting so excited by our presence, and no longer came out to play:

While I’m still pondering about Horseyard Crag one climb that will get a mention is Glitter and Gold (see above), a stiff line that we sieged with four people climbing it with different styles (full and partial dynos through to full static moves).  Horseyard was definitely a great place to play.  The frequency of our climbing trips allowed us to become accustomed to the nature of the rock.  The huge variation in temperatures that occurred in this region could transform the hard, brittle Heavy Tree Quartzite from solid rock into crumbling masses of choss.  The rock condition could vary from one extreme to another in the space of a few meters, and having a traditional ground up approach this occasionally provided very exciting times.  We named a good number of climbs taking this into account such as Landing Gear below, from which if you fell you would certainly land:

We also got stronger and more confident, starting to occasionally venture to the Quarry Wall to see just how far we had come. Left Foot Screaming was still an onerous proposition but we started to include the direct finish to add that little bit more of a punch.  However, another climb on this wall that really must get a mention is by no means the hardest but one of the classics.  The brilliant Hyber Berger that I am seconding Mark up early on in this email, comprises a traditional crack that sadly isn’t very long but delivers a challenge on solid rock with gear to boot.  This climb is the favourite of number of local climbers past and present and has without doubt seen more ascents than any other route in Central Australia.  I have led and seconded it myself probably close to 100 times and never ever got bored on it.  It was the traditional way to warm up before trying the more challenging lines on this steep crag.  While we were getting stronger Lisa was also climbing really well (even though to this day I am sure she doesn’t think I meant it) and her ascent of Nowhere Left to Turn below was particularly impressive.  It was also a tad concerning as it was the route that I reckon she place the worse gear I’ve seen, except for the higher gear which is where it got spicy:

The outcrops along Steager Road gave us a great play ground for exploring, in addition to the Quarry Wall and Horseyard Crag we found a heap of small little spots. Some only had one worthy line and others had a great deal more. We managed to build the place up till there were 75 mixed, sports and traditional routes ranging in grade from 10 to 25. Every so often we manage to squeeze yet another line in, some were on short sharp walls others were meandering lines up broken medium height crags. The little buttress below was great and offered a couple of very fine lines such as Jugs Galore (on which there are not too many jugs!) that Wassa is leading below. It is a route that many a person reckons I have sand bagged them on. The crag is called Pyramid Wall and I first came across it with Jock on a hot day when my feet were burning up in my shoes, particularly as I was mounting the roof on the aptly named Hotfoot. Naming the new routes was a lot of fun and nearly all had a good story behind them but it would take way too long to include them all:

One of the most troublesome of routes to finish off for me was one of the early first ascents I did.  UFO typified the way we became accustomed to the changing nature of the routes.  I kept trying the ground up ascent of this fun, steep looking line and it proved problematic.  On each attempt another hold, usually a crimp or foothold, would crumble and send me flying.  There were plenty more options but which one would hold?  It wasn’t dangerous due to having solid protection, but it was very frustrating.  Still with determination we did eventually lead the line and it was as good as I had hoped, UFO standing for Unexpected Flying ‘Olds took some seven or so ground up ascents and after nailing it I repeated a good number of times and no more holds came away:

Another crag we started to visit in the early days was located above the car park at Emily Gap, which is where I used to head with Doug.  According to some government officials this was deemed to be the only place near to town where climbing was sanctioned.  It offers some fun low grade routes but has a tendency to have blank run out sections.  So out of all the rock about this was probably one of the lest protectable and hence more dangerous places to lead climb.  We tried all the feasible lines knowing only too well that they had probably been ascended numerous times before, so not claiming or naming the routes.  It is the corner at the right hand of the slab that I have been back for so many times.  I have sent many a budding new climber up Route 9 for their first lead, including Lisa.  On one such occasion I solo’d up next to the budding leader and stumbled across a bashed and bent old peg in a very dubious crack, it took some working but I did manage to get it out and that is now one of my mementos from my time in Alice.  It has positions, holds and protection that are ideal for beginners and it is also a great climb.  The image I was going to include was of that route but if you google the guide I wrote you can see that image as it is the front cover, instead this is what the crag looks like.  A tad vegetated and broken but worth a visit:

There were other areas that we frequented and this included Blatherskite (Ilparpa) Range, this small range was quite broken and had little scrappy looking buttresses. Again ten minutes from town, how lucky were we! It didn’t take long to bag most of the routes here including some scarily runout ones. There was however one line that alluded us as we had been asked by Jock not to touch it as it was his project, and we respected that. Well we did for a few years and then as time went on and on and on, and he came out less and less and less, we decided that maybe we should just climb it. So after four years of Jock spying Mental Block we climbed it and renamed it A Matter of Time. I guess the motto of the story is that if you leave it… eventually we will climb it and dam it was a storming route (check out Wassa on it below). This area sat above an open plain in which the sewerage plant evaporation ponds sat, why is this relevant . Well it was a haven for many creatures that seemed to attract many other predators and often we would have heaps of kites and eagles circling above us and below us at this crag. Also there was what seemed to be an old tip site near the road and one day I stumbled across an old bottle, that had Alice Springs emboldened into the glass, a second great memento:

My eagerness to ensure there was some cohesion in the climbing community continued, and soon I was getting involved with access issues. Keen to make sure that the scrappy but fun slab at Emily Gap was not the only place that we could legally climb. A new Land Management Plan was being formulated for a stretch of the ranges that went for some 20km west from Heavytree Gap, in Alice Springs. Sure enough the draft indicated the little slab above the Emily Gap car park was earmarked to be the only place where climbing was to be permitted in the specified area. Climbing had occurred in the ranges along this area for over 30 years and access to a great deal of quality lines hung in the balance, such as the great Here Comes the Sun which Wassa is leading below. So a couple of us spent many hours pondering over the best wording for a three page submission to try and open up the areas more than just this one slab. We included the safety issues, quality of rock, non-invasive nature of climbing and everything else we could think of:

Our efforts were all in vain and our submission simply got lost in a bureaucratic process, with not even an acknowledgement being made of its receipt. Fortunately this process dragged out and to this day I’m not sure whether the plan was implemented. From this frustrating experience I came to learn that climbing was seen very much as a minority sport in the area, and one that was viewed by most as an obscure and pointless activity. In later years when I was compiling the guide a government official, who managed the local Crown Lands, reinforced my view. He openly stated to me on the phone that climbers were illiterate so even the placing of signs to specify that no climbing was permitted was pointless. We eventually put all that to one side and simply continued to explore these ranges and find many a new routes such as this first ascent by Pat of Opening me Lunch-Box. When I tried to repeat this climb I did a superman dive from the low crux moves and swung back and forth with my head a mere few inches away from the boulders at the base of the climb. Jason was not too impressed with me and we backed off this route:

The wall above is called M&M wall and is one of the best pieces of rock in the centre, there are some epic and massively classic lines on it.  The first two lines were put up in 1997 and in our time we added another four or so great routes.  Mark is another person who has done much for climbing in this region.  I met Mark within the first few months of arriving in Alice.  He would come to the Alice to work hard for a few months pay off debts and then head back to Tassie to lead expeditions.  Mark is somewhat of a machine and would appear not stop the whole time he was here.  His energy, drive and lack of sympathy for weakness on rock was unyielding.  For these very reasons it was with Mark that most of my early trips to the Quarry Wall happened, he would push me up routes I wouldn’t normally dare attempt.  Due to only being here for short periods the strength and stamina I built up during these sessions never lasted.  We did also get out and simply have fun and one such time sticks in my mind.  Below Mark is following me up the first pitch of A Most Unlikely Journey, yet another first ascent we bagged:

The night before we led the climb above there was no moon and we were late leaving, so when we were dropped off at the road side and began our walk to find what had looked like a good bivvy site somewhere near the base of Mount Gillen there was no light.  Mount Gillen is the highest peak next to Alice Springs and offers great towering orange walls of a mix of good rock to choss.  Walking through long buffle grass in the dark wasn’t easy and we stumbled into unseen ditches and over treacherously unstable rocks and boulders.  Miraculously we found the very site that Mark had seen, and it was in fact a good spot so we settled down to a night under the stars.  In the morning the cold winter air woke us before the sun had risen, so time for some food and drink, before we headed up to the cliff.  Soon the sun tipped over the horizon and bathed everything in sight in a magnificent orange glow (below).  I have yet to witness another morning like this and it is this sight that sticks in my mind.  We had a really good day and put up three fun lines, none of which will probably never be repeated:

While we did a lot of climbing close to town, the place that holds one of the closest concentrations of quality lines is Ormiston Bluff and Glen Helen. Ormiston is also one of the many homes of the true Central Australian rock legends, the Black Footed Rock wallabies. A number of them live in the rocks at the top of Ormiston Bluff, one of the few places out of town where Park Rangers have informally permitted climbing. Before I carry on talking about the Wallabies, I am amazed at how few images I have of Ormiston. Every line was epic and worthy, and Tranquillity is one of the very fine routes which Dave is leading below. Amazingly it was a top rope problem for three years until Mark led it. There was another long term top rope problem called Oedipus Shmoedipus, and on one trip with Lisa and Dave I decided to lead it. The route was great a steep slab followed by a looming roof section. But the gear was sketchy at best and very, very spaced for the first two thirds of the route. I read the description after leading it and sure enough it was all there in black and white that there is no gear for most of the route, no matter we survived and another first ascent was in the bag:

Back to the wallabies… We have spent many hours watching these elegant and graceful animals while lying in the sandy river bed. Watching them jump around high up above the ground seemingly oblivious of their precarious perches and airy antics, this could so easily end in disaster but never seems to. On occasion the roles have swapped, as I have watched the wallabies watching us get engrossed in our own form of rock antics. Are they worried about us or are they simply after new tricks to scare us even more? Who knows, but it is strange how they will watch until the person leading is safely on top, and then slipping away to one of their many hiding places. I remember Lisa taking on one of her early leads. Maybe because she was quite nervous, a wallaby took particular care to keep an eye on her. As Lisa weaved her way up the line she moved in and out of sight of the wallaby. The wallaby would in turn shuffle this way and that to make sure they could watch the whole charade. I would like to think that he simply wanted to make sure she was safe, and once she topped out the wallaby went away:

There are many other creatures here that some people would lead you to believe mean you nothing but harm. I would not agree with them, and would go so far as to say most of these creatures would rather stay out of sight and lead a peaceful life. I actively searched out the many reptiles but never saw a single snake in the wild, plenty of lizards of all sizes including a Perentie (the largest monitor lizard or goanna native to Australia) one of which that was some six foot long. When Jason Geres came to work in town we both felt that work should not take over life, so while he was here we broke up the working week with a Wednesday morning climb. On one occasion we bivvied out the night before, and it was then that he had a less than friendly encounter. We camped at the base of The Unknown, a broken set of crags that had some classics on them such as After a Little Spanking, which Garn in his homemade harness (constructed from an old car seatbelt) made very short work of due to his amazing ability to jam any size or shaped crack:

When Jason and I were camping out (me snug in the campervan and he in his swag next to the fire) it was about midnight and the full moon lit up the land as if we were surrounded by street lights.  It was not the light that woke Jason, but the sound of snarls and growls coming from a dingo only a few meters away.  The dingo obviously didn’t appreciate our presence.  The use of words didn’t deter it, so a few small stones and eventually sticks were thrown in the dingo’s general direction.  Still the dingo stood his ground, then for some reason he must have simply got bored and he turned and trotted off.  Possibly he came to his senses and realised Jason was way too big (and ugly!) to eat.  While Jason didn’t get much sleep after that little encounter, I have to say it was an isolated experience and we have since got pretty close to dingos who have seemed much more relaxed.  The only other similar experience was when in the Flinders Ranges camping at the base of Moonarie Dave had to beat off a dingo as it attempted to steal the remains of dinner that was in a pan next the fire:

It was with Jason that I made many visits to M&M wall near Emily Gap, and bagged a good few lines. This wall has two sections the bottom one has a mix of brilliant to slightly dubious rock, but the top section comprises a magnificent head wall that seems devoid of holds from below. This of course is not the case and the wall provides great holds and protection when you really need them. It is however very steep, exposed and sustained so really isn’t for the faint hearted. The climb named M&M’s was the first recorded route on the wall, it starts with a traverse under a right tending roof, before breaking out right to by-pass the roof. I still have not climbed it this way, and it was on Jason’s birthday that I first got up this route. The last time I had tried it there was a Kestrel nesting above who was very unhappy about our presence and we backed off rather than risk loose our eyes or worse. On this second occasion as I approached the apex of the roof I decided to climb straight over it, so putting up Mee Gwitch:

I felt this fun variant of the original climb was not complete until a new second pitch had been climbed, as the original second pitch was a bit naff in comparison.  Then a few weeks later I was out with Pat, and in his usual casual manner he convinced me to have a bash at a second pitch.  A good sized overhang above the belay stance blocked the path to the main headwall, after that we had no idea what we would find.  So off I went, encouraged by Pat.  I was feeling very nervous when I got to the overhang.  I worked my way out and back again three times before I managed to find a friend placement out on the lip, giving me the courage to mantle onto the steep head wall.  Once there, I found small delicate holds on steep ground, well at least it wasn’t complete blank.  While the headwall did have a couple of ledges that broke up the climbing it was still a very airy and exhilarating line and a good second pitch to Mee Gwitch, so came to be Pear Drop.  It is the only climb where I have seen Mark truly take on a serious tone when leading, later claiming that I had sand bagged him.  I don’t have any images of that route but have included an image of another great line just to the left of Pear Drop that Jason and I put up in the area.  We called this one Lazy Sunday Morning, Mark had his eye on this area but we snuck in first and bagged two great lines:

The most prolific climbing activity while I was in Alice happened from mid-2001 till the end of 2002.  This is when Jason, Mark and Pat were in Alice Springs at the same time.  It was with these three people that I started to train, both at the indoor gym but also at the Quarry Wall.  This time round Mark had an extended stay, opting to hang out for almost a year.  As time moved on we grew much stronger and more confident than before, so the number of harder lines established increased.  I’ve mentioned a few areas above and will touch on some others below but most notably we developed the crag immediately left of the Quarry Wall.  It was a wall that obviously had great potential but the slightly overhung start, seemingly devoid of holds, followed by a steep headwall had scared off any previous would be ascentists (note Jason pouring the hot water as the tradition of a crag brew had followed me from the UK):

Of the routes established here The Fight To Be Free reminds me of why I am such a fan of traditional climbing. Mark had spied it and worked the moves trying ground up and failing, and when we returned some time later there were bolt holes ready to be filled with steel. Mark was a bit put out so with a fire burning inside he bagged the line and the bolts were never placed. It’s an amazing line and has a hard direct finish that we never managed, and I’ve not heard if anyone has done it. Despite my love for trad I have to admit that we did put a few bolts in some other lines here ourselves, Mark got a gullible bunch of (mostly) girls to drag a generator up to this wall which is no mean feat. He then proceeded to fully bolt One for the Girls, while Pat and I established two mixed routes using what I like to think of a more traditional approach of hand drilling. It was hot work but the hard rock yielded quite easily to the drill and hammer. We created Spooked that I have sadly heard has had bolts added to make it completely sport. I heard this in an article about the area, and the author was whinging (quite a lot) about how he couldn’t even get off the ground on that line. I had said in the guide it may be under-graded and maybe that was an understatement. Pat created Come On Face! Which he is inspecting above and on which he placed two hand drilled bolts. Personally I reckon his route is one of the best and most consistently sustained hard lines in the centre:

While I talk about our escapades on Left Wall as we called it, there was one trad line I spied and had to work a bit to get the start down pat. At the time the heavily pregnant Lisa was being kicked and bullied by the baby growing inside her. We affectionately called our baby to be a little git or gitty for being so abusive to her mother, and hence I named this route Git Face. In many ways it was an appropriate name as the start of this climb was pretty tricky, it suited my style but it always amazed me that not even Pat could manage it. After the initial bouldery start and semi dyno to get the first decent sized hold it eased off by a few grades (as per the image below) but was still a fine line. I climbed it a few times to the point I could take exactly the right gear, already on extenders when needed and that included the belay setup. Another route that I have to mention is one that Mark established back on the Quarry wall, he named it On Seas of Desire and while I managed to second it after the first ascent I never led it cleanly. One day I was climbing really well and smashing it, so when I set off up this route Pat gave the rope a little tug to pull me from the small holds. In a way I was relieved as I was not sure I could get it clean:

Now it was around this time Goshen was attempting to develop a website for climbing in the centre. We was an extremely powerful and talented climber and had established the hardest route in the centre, which will get a mention later. His parents lived here and he would come back regularly, but I never climbed with him. He also unfortunately bolted in areas where climbing was banned, which jeopardised some of the great locations to the east, such as Ormiston and Glen Helen. For this reason I was not keen on sharing my records with him, which didn’t go down too well. We did notice that as our records were not widely available that an Australian climbing guru Malcolm Matheson had attempted Mark’s challenging route (On Seas of Desire) and due to no records being out there lay claim to it. So an idea sparked to write a guidebook. While I mention Glen Helen, I have to say that this is an absolute must visit place due to the many very high quality routes. We did a bit of new routing here and of those lines a couple stick out, one being Avoiding A Greek Wedding. On this trip out the back of Glen Helen we didn’t intend to do anything particularly hard. As we rapped down from a couple of new mid-grade lines high above the waterhole I spied a section that looked to have holds and (just enough) gear so I went up it. I returned a few times after that and couldn’t even start the damn climb:

The reason for the following image is that amazingly this is the only one I can find from our visits to Benstead Creek. From a sport climbing perspective this place is the most spectacular cliff, a 50m limestone cliff full of steepness and potential for great quality lines. It had two bolted routes and one trad line when we were there, and below is Mark warming up his toes which are wrapped in my buffalo as I prepare to head up. This crag had the hardest route in the centre (at the time) and we had a bash at it failing miserably not even finishing the first pitch. However, the climbing is not what I remember about this place. One night we were camped out, Lisa and I in our campervan Kermit and Mark and Ellie swaging it by the fire. Late at night Mark was banging on the window yelling get ready to rumble. Soon he and I were stood in the river bed with a shovel and machete in our hands ready to strike. There was a 4WD, two quads and a number of dirt bikes facing us down with full-beams dazzling our sight. Every so often one or more would rush at us and then swerve back at the last minute, I swear I would have hacked at one of them if they got close enough. The girls frantically threw everything in the campervan and once ready we jumped in the back and we drove out. We went to Trephina Gorge and slept out the rest of the night restlessly. The next morning we simply sat in the gorge in a daze, I was the only one to climb, well boulder. With a sift sandy landing I found a fun new line, which I solo’d and so became the route with the longest name I have ever used: If it Wasn’t for the Quads this Would Never Have Happened. We spoke to the land owners on which Benstead Creek resides and found out that they had been having issues with cattle rustlers and we can only assume that it was them who had chased us out:

Towards the end of 2002 Mark, Jason and then finally Pat left town.  Climbing activity slowed down in terms of new routing and going hard but it was kept ticking over by a local crew and a few new faces that came, and left, the area.  Most of the local climbers left in town were new or relatively so to outdoor climbing and as such the pace was much more subdued.  Lisa was due to give birth in early 2003 so for me it was a good time to slow down.  I have to admit also that my body after a year of climbing hard stuff was feeling pretty wrecked, and I’m not sure I could have sustained that pace.  With all the involvement I had had in the local climbing scene with learning about local issues, new routing and trying to get a newsletter up and running the natural progression was to sit down and write a guide for the area.  Just as a quick sideline below Jason is following me up during the first ascent of what I regard as one of the best routes I established, Where’s the Gardener.  This crag was hard to get off with a horrible, long and lose scramble so we made abseil anchors using some old slings held in place by pebbles wedged in a crack.  A very traditional approach that added that bit of extra spice to this already very trad crag.  This great strong line is one of a number of epic routes we put up on the Garden Wall, and Pink Flamingo by Pat was another route that was attacked by the author of the article I mentioned before.  Needless to say the author didn’t manage to climb that route either (what a dag):

I had kept a record of the 150 plus routes I had been involved in putting up, as well as countless new routes by others. In addition there were also many historical records that had been kept by a few motivated individuals over the ages and rather than retype them and miss anything I contacted as many people as I could to get info. There was one key issue with collating the previous records of climbing activities. Not Goshen, he had his website so that was easy. It was Jock, who I had nabbed that route from at Blatherskite (Ilparpa) Range. Views about the need or not and risks associated with publishing a guide were greatly varied. Some people were strongly against it, saying it would bring the sort of attention that would end in access being denied to climbers and Jock was one of those. They had a point as there are a great many local issues and there is also an absence of policies to ensure continued access. Others, including myself, thought the guide would set a bench mark for future discussions on access. Another benefit would be to allow both local and visiting people to learn more of the issues peculiar to the area, and hopefully be respectful of these. I eventually managed to convince Jock to part with his digital record, which meant I didn’t have to retype everything and that was partly helped (I’d like to think) when we gave him the fridge from our campervan. I gutted the van and rebuilt it in a way that was more practical for Lisa and I. When the heat really turned up in the centre the gas fridge couldn’t keep up, so we decided to ditch it. I might add at this point that I also contacted several eastern states climbers who had graced the area but I never got a response from any of them except Glenn Tempest who even provided a few images:

Now I keep on talking about access issues and a big one was related to Aboriginal land and/or heritage sites.  I had decided not publish detailed route information of climbing in these areas but did detail the areas and names, indicating they were off limits, to discourage people from repeating these routes.  Some climbers have lived and worked on Aboriginal land over the years, and in so doing have had the chance to build up trusting relationships with the Traditional Owners.  Subsequently, they have been able to get permission to climb in areas that others can only dream of going to.  Some of the images I have seen of these areas are gob-smacking.  I have also been a bit guilty at times of doing the wrong thing, which I didn’t realise until after the event hence the routes didn’t even get in the guide.  On two such occasions, both with Dave, were out the back of Glen Helen.  Dave was a bush doctor and would often be out in the river bed sharing a handbag (i.e. cask of cheap red wine) with the locals.  He was told about and given permission to go to places and on occasion took us with him.  Below is one place and on arriving we got a good feeling and it seemed to welcome us, it may sound a strange thing to say but I’ll stand by that.  We attempted the route below but failed in cleaning it, an epic line and sooooo good but we never returned to this spot:

Below is the second place that Dave took us and a few others, it was a hike in and there was a huge waterhole and a splattering of broken crags.  We didn’t name the route he is climbing but I can say that he is being belayed by The Object of Dave’s Desire… The Beautiful Ragni (sorry that was an in-crowd joke but I simply couldn’t resist).  When we got there and both Lisa and I felt uneasy.  We stayed the night but didn’t sleep well and were pleased to see the back of that place.  Lisa and I strongly believe a place will let you know when you are not welcome and this place made our skin crawl.  For the guide I spent a lot of effort ensuring I had current and accurate information about access to each location.  I made contact with relevant land managers including station owners; the Department of Lands, Planning and Environment; Parks and Wildlife; Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority and the Central Land Council.  It would seem that no one was prepared to allow open access for any activity, let alone climbing.  There was an obvious risk in publishing the guide, but still I felt it was the right thing to do.  In view of the majority of recorded climbs being in National Parks I offered assistance to Parks and Wildlife to help draft a Northern Territory policy on climbing.  The person in charge of Parks in the Northern Territory had no issues with climbing, in fact said he felt it was a healthy and worthwhile sport.  While we discussed how I could assist it unfortunately never eventuated to anything, but not through lack of trying on my part:

Writing the guide was easy; back then a blank page would usually hold me in apprehension and my fingers would refuse to start the task in hand. Ha ha… not that you would think that with my prolific emails nowadays!  However, back then this was the case but when I sat down to type the guide my thoughts poured through my fingers and into the keyboard.  It probably helped that it had been a passion of mine for so long, the writing was in fact fun and not arduous at all.  While numerous records existed and I had digital copies, they had been written by different people and so styles and the amount of detail varied considerably.  The task of working through route descriptions, to ensure some uniformity and to prevent duplications, was not as easy as I thought it would be.  Some routes such as Blue Thunder at Glen Helen (below) had been recorded as a new climb by three different parties.  I managed to visit most of the climbing areas to check locations and descriptions, but I didn’t get to some of the more remote locations and some of the older climbs alluded me despite attempts to find them:

Elseya was born in February 2003 and so my sights were firmly set on finishing the guide before she came into the world.  The first edition of the guide came out as a CD book in January 2003 just in time.  With Elseya around to distract my attentions I climbed on a very much reduced scale.  I no longer spent days searching out undiscovered gems; instead being content to cram a few routes into the early hours of the day so as not to miss out on the new discoveries to be made at home.  We still got out and Lisa was very tolerant as I played on rock while she was literally left holding the baby!  Trips were mostly confined to the more local crags and we started to, what I call, bumble climb.  Basically just enjoying being out there not climbing as strong, simply repeating the many great climbs we had discovered.  Elseya was initiated to camping from an early age, at the tender age of six weeks old, when we went camping at Trephina.  Below is a quick morning trip out to Emily Gap when she was only two months old, when we headed out there with Steve and Bron:

I had first bumped into Steve and Wazza at the YMCA climbing wall, they were new to the sport and Wassa climbing in volleys while Steve had sneakers.  So one night I offered them an old pair of my climbing shoes.  They were mad enough to make use of them risking all kinds of fungal infections.  From that time I would take them out and introduced them to the true reason we climb, to play on real rock.  They were hooked and soon had gear on order and we had many great times out.  Steve and Bron worked in the hospital in which Elseya was born and as such they were the first of our friends to meet her.  It was Bron who called Elseya a “right missy moo”, and the name Moo has stuck ever since.  We had many trips out with them camping and climbing and on one trip to Trephina they managed to get Lisa to put a harness back on.  So only three months after giving birth she was back on rock.  I’m not convinced that her head was really into it and while she enjoyed Jason’s creation of It Wasn’t Me she didn’t climb much again, and by the way Jason it was you(!):

When Elseya was four months old, we headed out with Steve and Bron on a bit of a trip out towards Boggy Hole and beyond. Now this was a very brave move on their part, as Elseya hated travelling by car and would very noisily contest being strapped into a car seat. But they were keen and we had a three day trip and that went really well, during this trip there was a fair bit of 4WDing to be done and some of it was pretty serious stuff. So on occasion Lisa and I walked sections (with Elseya) and caught them up later down the track. Elseya was also a terrible sleeper, she would wake every few hours and one night I went for a walk with her in the middle of nowhere. As I shone my head torch round the eyes of dingos reflected back way too often and way to closely, but they never got any closer. It was on this trip that we went on to camp at Running Waters and there we found an epic buttress in the middle of nowhere that had a few bolted lines on it. The clean face can be seen in the background and we ran up the easier line, which provided a great two pitch route that we aptly named Rough Ride. The front face proved way too fearsome for me and I couldn’t even blame that on the lack of sleep. I haven’t heard of anyone talking on this awesome face:

Two other climbers who turned up in late 2002 that are worth a mention were Karl and Claire, they hung about for about six’ish months. Just in case this email gets round they were not a couple! They climbed well and were keen, so I made use of their talents and got them to repeat a mob of the new lines that didn’t get too many ascent. This helped refine a few grades and provided a bit more confidence for when I finished the guide. In their short six months they got a great tour of the area including all the main crags and a few other places. Claire wasn’t afraid of air time and she would often push herself to the edge. Karl was more cautious and didn’t go as hard but had a cool head and kept calm in dangerous situations. I have horrible memories of belaying him as he attempted Stitching Time, which will get a mention later. He took his time and it was getting dark, the mossies were coming out and I was standing on an ant infested ledge. One of the most uncomfortable belay spots I’ve ever had but I daren’t fidget too much as he was very focused on this line. I’d sent Garn up it once and he took a massive backward fall. Karl didn’t have as big a fall, and I wonder if it has had a clean second ascent. I hope so as it is a wicked line. Karl loved Glen Helen and we spent a few days there. Below he is belaying me as I did the second ascent of another one of my creations, Long Drop. Guess what I did before this route from the ledge high above the ground:

Two other people to mention are Steve (just to clarify it is not the same Steve as above) and Garn. Steve originally starting climbing in the area when the Yerba’s were going strong, they were responsible for building the YMCA climbing wall way back in the early 1990s. Climbing with Steve was so relaxing, he has to be the calmest person I have had the pleasure of climbing with. That is not to say he was not a good climber as he was and we had some great days out. We also had one shocker when we were attempting a new line at Emily Gap, the route was good but we didn’t finish it. Half way up we came across a ledge and there were three camp dogs stuck on it looking like they hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in weeks. It was a sickly sight and we were not able to get close to them for fear of being attacked, and they seemed to have no way of getting off. It was grim but we ended up leaving them and calling it a day. The next time we did venture that way there was no sign of the dogs either on the ledge or at the base of the cliff. Below Wassa is climbing Cerebral Vortex, which is kind of near the climb that I attempted with Steve. I did end up finishing that line off but will get to that later:

Garn is a seasoned Tasmanian climber who had previously worked in the area for short durations, and then arrived for a longer stay in early 2003. During the next couple of years, with the help of various friends who came to visit, he explored the most remote and in some instances pointless crags. He was never afraid of long walk-ins and unperturbed when all there was at the end was a scrappy little crag. He did however discover and help set up some of the most dramatic routes in the centre, strangely enough at a place I had almost been too. Boggy Hole, which we had been to with Steve and Bron. The hidden gem was a little walk from the campsite and comprised a massive clean 60m high cliff that had striking cracks, corners, roofs and more. I never experienced the climbing here but those who have tell me it is epic. I did get to climb with Gran and it was a very humbling experience, he could jam like no other climber I have met. I’ve seen him turn well established grades 21 routes into a bumbly grade 14 by jamming up inverted V flared cracks. On second and despite me hanging of the rope I was still unable to get any traction in with a jam. On one trip out we headed to the highest point of the range between Simpson Gap and Alice Springs. Here we established two gothic lines called Hammer and Sickle. Watching Garn climb you may consider he was reckless as the gear was spaced alarmingly far apart but he was simply a very confident and secure climber. I hear that he still heads back to Alice and has been seen out in these remote spots still enjoying himself:

When Elseya was six months old we headed back to the UK to show her off to the family.  We flew out via Perth and heard of a quaint and beautiful place just to the south called Albany.  So on the way back from the UK we changed our flights and spent a week in Albany checking it out.  We were pretty serious and checked out rentals, cars and I even had an interview for work.  It looked like we may be moving, but on our return to Alice Springs the dirt was red, the sky was blue it was a wonderful 25 degrees.  Within a week of returning I had several job offers and better still Bron was expecting.  So it was decided we were staying, and soon after Wassa and Margie were also expecting.  I soon secure full time work, the first full time job I had since moving out to Australia.  At this new job I met new people and introduced more newbies to the delights of climbing.  Then a year or so later Warwick an eastern states climber bought a copy of my CD guide and started to build up my enthusiasm for taking the next step of publishing the guide as a book.  I might as well mention the following climb now… Stitching Time, which Garn had epically fallen from.  This was used as the rear cover image, and I had a lot of images to choose from.  I climbed this with Dan and Jock, while Lisa was lounging in a rock armchair below and all three of them had cameras.  From memory there were over 40 images of me on this route and I reckon I could have made an olden day style motion picture of that first ascent:

Seeing I was going to publish a book I thought I’d go a bit harder and contacted the Australian climbing magazine Rock and see what new route info they may have. The miserable buggers wanted me to buy all the back copies and refused to give me any of the information, needless to say I didn’t bother. Updating the guide wasn’t that big a deal really, but I did want to verify some of the older routes that I hadn’t tried too hard to check out or locate before. Most of these were at Emily on the bigger cliffs that provide two and three pitch routes. So with Steve’s help we had regular trips here and try to find the historic routes, most times failing miserably and putting up numerous new lines in the process. We had a lot of fun and at time got into trouble for staying out longer than we had advised our good lady wives. Our excuses were always the same that the route was harder then we realised and so we got caught out, but it was never accepted. Um… maybe taking the tea kit up with us on those routes didn’t help matters (as can be seen below). The temptation to have a brew after finishing a route and take in the magnificent view was always so great. It can’t have been that bad as a few weeks later we would head back out and again fail to find an old route but then find one or maybe two new routes and get back late:

My name and contact details were getting splattered about a bit while we were in Alice and this led to the occasional contact from overseas and interstates climbers. We had a pretty social and friendly crew and would make an effort to take visitors out. It was always interesting to see their reaction to the place, some would walk away whooping and hollering about what an amazing playground we had, and Eric and May were one couple who did that. Below Eric is following me up Life’s Worth Cancer at Horseyard Crag. I’m still in touch with these two and they lead an amazing life filled with travel, climbing, hiking, and now also paragliding (check out www.verticaltrotters.com). Another visitor that sticks in my mind was Sandra from the eastern states of Australia. We took her out to the longer multi-pitch routes of Emily Gap and it was with her that I polished off that route Steve and I had failed to complete. We called it Left for Dead, after the camp dogs but it is also reflective of how, when she followed me up the route her face was white as a ghost. Declining the opportunity to sample any more of our unique centralian rock. I guess we got used to the conditions and loose rock was something we worked round rather than walked away from:

Now as I was starting to finish of the publication Wassa was inspired to attempt to rekindle a newsletter for the climbers. We considered long and hard about a name and came up with the RACK, which stood for Rock and Crag Knowledge. Around the same time a local couple took a brave step and opened up a good quality outdoor shop called Lone Dingo, and they supplied an article about gear for each newsletter. Steve (the one of Yerba fame) wrote a rock tapas article that never did end, I had a section called Krish’s corner in which I would pick a climb or topic and ramble on, and there was a new route section and a heaps of other bits that would fill four pages. The first newsletter came out in April 2015 and Wassa managed to keep it going until late 2016 producing four editions. In addition to this activity another long term Alice climber called Liam, who mostly worked remotely out bush, was also keen to write an article for the Australian climbing magazine Rock (the article can be found here: www.tootable.com/rock-climbing-in-central-australia). I helped by adding info of the more recent activity and also started taking images on slide film for possible use in the magazine, my favourite has to be of Garn on Superfreak at the Unknown (where Jason had his close encounter with a dingo). We got out there early and Sinead (the person who used to say she was climbing like a cabbage, which is where I got that saying from) belayed Garn while I rock hopped about getting some wicked images in the great early morning light:

Eventually in 2005 the guide was published, I couldn’t convince any publishers to take it on and no climbing associations were interested so Lisa and I self-funded it. Only printing 500 copies, of which there are now only a handful left. I have to say I’m still pretty chuffed with that guide, it got a bit slated by some hot-shot eastern states climber who reviewed it for Rock. But considering the remoteness and lack of people that visit the place for climbing, plus the fact that we were unlikely to even make the money that we paid to have it published I reckon it was pretty damned good. That was reinforced when I sent a sample to Glenn Tempest to see if he would sell it on his online shop, Open Spaces (http://osp.com.au/). He sounded dubious to start with but when I sent him a copy he jumped at the chance. After the publication was out I got called to the front desk at work on day to find a couple of guys who were from the eastern states. They were keen to find a particular climb that was in the guide. It is the very first climb in the guide and is call On-sight 29? and given 3¼ stars, in a guide that specifically says it does not include stars. The description is massively and obviously hyped up and yet they didn’t seem to twig that maybe it was a spoof climb. So I gave them direction and sent them on their way, I didn’t hear back from them. That climb was put up by Mark and I when we were feeling like bumbling about and found some low grade lines on a short, obscure crag. I seem to remember this was after we had been smashed attempting the hardest line at Benstead Creek and maybe we were feeling a little bitter. That said all good guides should have a spoof climb shouldn’t they:

So with the guide published, Liam’s article out and Wassa managing the newsletters during the last six or so months of our time in Alice I kicked back and did a bit of climbing here and there.  Nothing amazing but still finding the occasional new gem.  We headed out with Ben, one of the guys from work that I convinced to get into climbing, a few times and Elseya was obsessed with being allowed to drive in his big red truck hence the image above.  That was during a trip out to a local crag that we would normally cycle to called Wallaby Crag.  There were some fun lines here but most of the routes were pretty easy, my zest for bagging those harder lines was failing me although one route I did end up top roping and subsequently called it Too Hard For Me.  It was a pretty bold but a great line, another one that I wonder if anyone has got round to leading.  It was with Ben in those last few months that we put up on the only route at Gravestone Crag, the route was aptly named Almost One More Carcass.  It was next to a watering hole in which there were many dead kangaroos and it wasn’t a pleasant place.  Ben led the one and only route and at the crux managed to dislodge some microwave sized blocks that missed my head by feet.  Fortunately the blocks also missed him but he did stuff his knee up in the process and he had a progressively more painful walk out as the effects of the adrenaline eased:

My last climb in Alice was with Wassa and that was appropriately a new route that we called Old Man of the Crag, in late November 2005. Another little line that we snuck in at a place we had spent so much of our time due to being so close to town, Horseyard Crag. So with a handful of new climbs, including a few that Gran had out up out at Boggy Hole I decided to write a quick addendum to the guide. It hardly seemed worth it for a few low’ish grade routes but Central Australia is the sort of place where egos and numbers go out the window and you simply get out and have fun. So I guess I wrote the addendum just because we climbed these routes and it seemed a shame to lose that little bit of extra history. Then in early December 2005 Lisa, Elseya and I left Alice and headed to the south west of Western Australia. We have often said that we should return to Alice for a visit, but as yet it hasn’t happened. I have to say I do miss those early morning jaunts out to Horseyard Crag and the Quarry Wall, just ten minutes’ drive from town and with a view that makes it feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. As Mark wrote even where you are getting smashed, it’s a great place to put a brew on and to watch the world wake up from:

Well if you made it to the end of this one I have to say I’m impressed, so will end with a big thank you for reading.

With all the great trad climbing right on my doorstep in the UK and Ireland there was little that appealed to me in making the trip across the channel into Europe. I must admit the idea of climbing somewhere like the high peaks of the Dolomites and possible the Alps did draw my attention but it never happened. I’d heard plenty about cragging in Europe and while sport climbing just wasn’t on my radar when an opportunity came up I took it with an open mind to see what all the fuss was about. This occurred through keeping in contact with Matthaeus, a Bavarian, who I met in Alice Springs when I had a three month holiday in Australia. We did a little bouldering and climbing together at one of the nearby crags for a day. He asked sometime after my return to the UK if I fancied meeting him and a couple of others in Italy for a week. So before I knew it my bag was packed and I was flying to Nice in the south of France, from there I caught a train that took me along the scenic coast across into Italy and to a small coastal town called Finale:

Finale is well known for climbing, mountain biking and many other outdoor pursuits. It’s a beautiful place that has the ocean setting with valleys that stretch inland with steep sides and the occasional brilliant white limestone outcrops. Limestone was the order of the week, it was all we climbed on. The pocket limestone climbing in Europe is quite renowned, it is usually steep and fingery and much of the climbing we did was exactly that. There were some other features such as this flake and crack roof that Fred is tackling, a route called Polvere Di Sole (Dust In The Sun) at Caprazoppa. Fred was French and Matthaeus had like me met him while travelling. The fourth partner in crime was Kashi another Bavarian who got a mention in my tale of the Wye Valley. Before any exploring or climbing started, and after being picked up from the station, the four of us crammed into the car and headed out to the hills to set up camp:

Matthaeus and Kashi has been here before, numerous times was my guess.  They knew the area well and Fred and myself were happy to be led round to the best spots.  They also had a prime camp spot, we drove round hairpin bends high up one of the valley sides and parked opposite a ramshackle house.  A farmer, bent with age and hard work, came out to greet us and there was an exchange of handshakes, words and wine bottles.  He smiled and waved as he went back in.  He owned the land either side of the road and the deal was done.  We wandered down the bank to a wide clear ledge surrounding by trees to set up tent city, our home for the next week.  Through the trees was an amazing sight down the valley and across from where we were, on terraced slopes, was an old church.  We heard the bells toll on the hour every hour and during our stay here it became a soothing sound.  We arrived in cloudy weather and within a day snow started to fall, one morning the valley had turned white and in the short week we stayed here we had all sorts of weather:

The boys were prepared for this and I had my trusty buffalo and beanie. On really cold days when it also threatened to rain we would find caves to climb in. The steep walls were mostly dry but the rock could be bitterly cold, we’d seek a place that was also out of the wind. Despite all these considerations to avoid getting cold we also at times had to light a fire at the base of the crag to huddle around to keep warm (like below). I was amazed at how many people were out in these wintery conditions, the majority didn’t climb in fact I don’t recall seeing many people on rock other than us in all the places we went. But I did see lots of people outdoors, and a good number would stop when they saw us and sit for a while to chat and watch. The climbing was hard, it felt like all the lines we jumped on were overhung. Below Fred is climbing Blob at Il Vascello, I belayed Kashi on this line and high up at the crux he jumped for it, missed and as he came down I went up and we met half way up the crag swinging about. While the climbing was hard we also had a lot of fun, none of us we’re super serious about what we climbed which was good:

At tent city we had three sleeping tents and one large cooking tent. Being winter there was no use in trying to cook outside and so the big tent was set up for us to all cram in have a feast and then before bed each night we would put on a pot of Gluhwein. This is a German/Austrian winter-holiday drink that is supposed to make you glow with warmth, and literally translates into glow wine. One particular night the wind ripped through the valley and howled above us. I didn’t have my Wendy tent anymore and instead had a small lightweight hiking tent (second from the back) and this was the first real test for it, which it passed with flying colours. The kitchen tent didn’t fare so well and the poles snapped, so we picked the biggest of the three remaining tents and made that our new kitchen tent. It was pretty important as on those cold bitter nights the tent would heat up a treat as we cooked, ate and of course drank our Gluhwein:

The intense climbing was hard on our bodies and fingers, and on this trip I was thankful for a rest day. Unlike my trip to Cornwall with Gareth, when our rest day included climbing. It also happen to coincide with New Year’s Eve, it is only as I write this that I remembered that. As we walked through Finale on this special night the town was quiet and still, and even the bars and restaurants closed early. This night in Italy and more so in these regional towns was a family night, not one to go out partying on. That didn’t bother us too much as during the day we feasted in bakeries and other delights and by night time were ready to head off. I have to admit to having felt quite ignorant on this trip, the other three not only spoke their own language and Italian but also English. I’d always known from my experiences in Holland that the Europeans tend to learn several languages and learn them well, that was not so much the case in England. During our day off we also explored the coastline walking about the limestone cliffs finding caves and beautiful formations. At one cave Fred for some strange reason decided that he wanted to climb over the arch. So he pulled his shoes on and started. When he got to the apex some 5m plus above the water, he got into trouble faltered and slipped. In the sink he went, and no one was offering to jump in after him. It was freezing cold and besides he popped back up and swam quickly to the rocks, shivering and keen to warm up:

We visited a good number of crags, most were chosen based on conditions and this meant usually steep short powerful climbing.  However, on one day the sky looked to be clearing and we headed to the area of Monte Cluco, which is a more open and exposed vertical crag that can be seen below.  This was very much steep pocket limestone climbing, finger holds that would stretch your joints, tendons and ligaments one finger at a time.  It felt good to be on steep stuff rather than the overhanging climbing that pulled your back and shoulders into an arch and made you walk like a humpback at the end of the day.  I preferred this steep stuff, it was more my style, technical hand and foot work was required.  There really was very little easy stuff around, it was almost as if the easy stuff was not worth equipping with bolts.  I still wonder how people ever got started, as they surely couldn’t jump on these sort of routes from day one:

At this crag the sun did come out and it was a huge transformation. The rock felt more inviting and you didn’t come down shivering cold and thrusting your hands under your armpits. The white rock reflected the sun back at us and helped keep us warm, resulting in a few layers being shed. Below Matthaeus is leading Panino Al Prosciutto (Ham sandwich) at Setture Della Torre. No one followed him as this line was way beyond any of us at a lofty 8a+. He was a hard climber, having established up a number of routes at this grade and harder at his local Black Forrest crags. But he was also equally happy to have a bash at any climb and encouraged us to have a go, when he could see we were keen to push it a bit. When I climbed with him in Alice there was one boulder that we played on that required us to crank hard on a sharp finger lock, I backed off wincing while he pushed through the pain barrier and made it up. He told me he had met and did a little climbing with Wolfgang Güllich, and it was him who had instilled this approach of blocking out the pain and pushing through. At the time I had no idea of who he was talking about:

I reckon I was the weak link on this trip but kept a steady grade, knowing when to say no and when to have a crack (just like the gambler!). I have to admit to having had fun even though it wasn’t the usual type of climbing I had done, so for a change it was good. I reckon I would have got bored with the same rock type if that was all I had in close proximity, despite the angles and some features giving it variability. That said we were restricted on this trip by the time of year and weather. The one thing I loved about climbing in the UK was the massive variation in climbing styles required to tackle the many, many different rock types available. Below I found a more trad style rest on Mantra of Casualness at Settore Della Torre. My fingers (and shoulders) were starting to feel the daily hammering, but it was Fred’s last day with us so we soldiered on until he too said he could take no more:

To end this day we walked up through gully’s at the back of the limestone cliffs and popped out in Grotta dei Balconi (just in case you didn’t get that this translates into balconies cave). The sun was going down and the light was specky, as we lounged in this impress low cave. There are a number of long hard roof boulder problems here but I was happy, as was Kashi in the back ground to laze about and soak the views in. Fred however like a wind-up toy jumped on and had a bash at a number of problems. From this cave we watched the sun set and made our way down in darkness back to the tents. Next morning Matthaeus took Fred to the station and Kashi and I packed up the camp, we still had one day left as my train back to Nice didn’t leave till late that night:

For the last climb we went to Placconata Settore Sinistro, a short pumpy crag in amongst the trees. Despite being January it was full blue sky and the sun turned up the heat, so much so that the shirts also came off. It really had been a trip of four seasons, with snow, hail, rain, high winds and of course blazing sun. There wasn’t much gas left in my tank so after a few climbs including Aldo Avanzini, below, I sat and watched the others and occasionally jumped on second dogging my way up the lines. Eventually it was time for me to be dropped off at the station and Matthaeus and Kashi drove north back to Bavaria. So my first real taste of sport climbing hadn’t completely put me off, although unlike my approach to trad climbing it was far more punishing and demanding and I got home pretty stuffed. I kept in touch with Kashi more than Matthaeus and Fred, and later that year I had a chance for a second trip out:

At a more settled time of the year I returned, flying this time into Munich where Kashi’s lived.  For a day at least we stayed in Munich, not to climb but to experience the Oktoberfest.  It was pretty incredible, a whole great long street with massive marquees.  Inside each there were rows upon rows of wooden benches and tables and the noise was deafening.  Beer flowed everywhere and that included the floors and tables.  Kashi had worked in these crazy places and took me behind the scenes to where the litre sized glasses were, once washed, placed on a conveyor belt and drawn under a system that continuously flowed beer.  We stayed for a awhile but I only managed one litre sized glass of strong beer before I had had enough.  As we left the halls later that evening people in a drunken stupor were trying to walk, many crashed out on the side and some were vomiting uncontrollably.  Not a sight I would want to see again and I was a bit amazed that it was so popular and considered OK.  The next day we were on our way south back to Italy on a road that would take us through Innsbruck in Austria and the amazing Alpine views:

We got to Italy in the evening and found a lonely road up on a hillside to camp. In the morning we woke to a blue sky and amazing vista across the valley. The mist was lifting and the sound of the town below indicated that many had woken well before us, so we went down to find some breakfast but not before Kasi had struck the stove to make a coffee. We had stopped in a place called Lumignano. I didn’t know it at the time but Lumignano is regarded as one of the most important crags in northern Italy, and the first recorded routes here date back to the 1920s. It is claimed that at the start of modern sports climbing (the 1980s) the red and orange streaked “Lumignano classica” was the focal point for many of the best climbers in the world. As such many of the lines on this particular crag hold historical value. We however didn’t climb on that particular crag:

Our first destination was instead Rocca Pendice, a fine grained granite (yes not limestone) outcrop that stands proudly on a hilltop that is high relative the local landscape.  The granite provided a different style of climbing and one I wasn’t excepting, smoother holds, smearing and good friction.  We started slowly and built up momentum, and the route that sticks in my mind the most was La Libidine Dell Irrazionale (The Lust Dell Irrational) but not for the right reason.  Below I have tackled the easy ramp to the base of the steep wall, from here it got pretty tough and I managed to get established above but the sight of homemade bolts, created from angle iron with rough holes drilled in them put me on edge.  I clipped a couple and made my way up but they just didn’t look good enough to hold a fall and so I faltered and we backed off this line.  Kashi had said from the start he didn’t fancy it because of the bolts, I guess I should have listened to him:

We didn’t stay there long and moved to another area this time returning to limestone. Vaccarese is a long crag set on a hillside with the base nestled in the trees and as you get up the routes the views out across the valley hit you. It’s a very beautiful setting and proved good fun in many ways. The walk in was calm and tranquil, making our way through the forest and crossing creeks on long bridges. The crag was steep and clean, long fun climbs a bit different to the pocket limestone and more featured with flakes and cracks. On occasion the holds ran out and this is where I first came across manufactured routes. On a number of lines the holds were far from natural and were formed by gluing on small rocks onto the blank face. It was literally like an outdoor climbing wall, but if you wanted to finish the climb you had to use the holds! One day here was enough and Kashi had kinda planned where we would head each day, it involved a fair bit of driving but he didn’t mind that. In fact at night he would race along the narrow mountain roads at a fair pace, confident that he could tell by the lights if anything was coming. Often with a steep drop by the side of the road and nothing but a rock wall to stop us going over it. At times the journeys felt a tad unnerving:

This did however mean that we jumped from one epic landscape to another and this included the Alps proper.  I’d been to the Alps a number of times before, always on hiking holidays and I loved them.  This time we may have seen them but we didn’t get to ascend any of the big peaks and stayed in the valleys.  Not equipped for those lofty spires we did climb a few big boulders that towered several stories high.  Much as I was itching to hike up at least one there was no time in our schedule, so we kept rolling.  The striking view below was at Val De Mello:

While it felt like a crazy rat race round the northern crags of Italy we did stay in one spot for several days and that was the magnificent Arco.  High above the town is a very prominent spur of limestone, it’s the last peak at the back of the image below.  Atop this spur sits Arco Castle that is steeped in history and intrigue, built over a thousand years ago and inhabited by various groups during the many feuds and battles of the area.  Climbing on that spur is not surprisingly forbidden, but there are plenty of other crags not far off and better still some providing fine multi-pitch routes such as the one we are on below called Tredicesima Luna (Thirteen Moon).  Being spring time the weather was perfect and we happily ascended a few of the bigger lines in this area.  With hanging belays, great long pitches and awesome exposure I almost forgot that I was clipping bolts:

There were also many great long single pitch lines too, so when the day was closing to an end it was easy to find a route or two to bag before we headed back to our campsite. Kashi is climbing in the evening light on the fine Il Poeta a Il Contadino (The Poet at The Farmer). At many of these single pitch crags we found lots and lots of other people. Sport climbing is a national sport in Italy and we would see whole families out, this included babies in strollers and prams. The more popular cliffs were well equipped with good bolts, metal plaques at the base of each climb with their name engraved, and well maintained access paths. However, on the bigger multi-pitch walls there were far fewer people and it was easy to get away:

I took the image below of another party as they climbed a route I led earlier that day.  Vento Caldo Del Sud (Warm South Wind) was a fun direct line with a great steep finish over the bulge and headwall above the climber.  As I got my hands established on the bulge not surprisingly there was a bolt just above.  I found the bolting was relatively well done and safe, it didn’t feel like the bolting broke the flow of the climbs and at times they even added some spice by giving a good runout.  At this point on the climb however I noticed that the nut holding the plate on was almost at the end of the threaded bolt, so I had to gingerly tighten the bolt up while hanging off one hand.  I then clipped it and moved through quickly to top out.  It was at one of the crags here that the local walking guidebook, who had climbed everything and knew every route watched us.  I had just led a fun route that was close to the top of my grade, he came over to have a chat and said we were climbing well and with good style.  Nice I thought, and then he added but you used that hold out left and by using that hold the grade of the route drops (noting the hold is right on line with the bolts).  The cheeky bugger:

I couldn’t resist this image of Arco from above, we stopped in a small but cosy campsite just out of town and each night would wander to a local’s bar to drink some wine. The local’s bar had wine straight out of the barrel, no preservatives or added nasties and I was amazed that it never once gave me a fuzzy head in the morning. In the town bars, for the tourists, the wine was bottled and as such I reckon that stuff would have given me a sore head. It was a good spot to stay and we climbed on a number of quality crags, big and small and I really started to enjoy it. I spied plenty of climbs that it would have been fun to play on but time caught up with us and eventually we needed to head back:

Kashi had in mind for one last crag, and that was on the road home so we left the campsite early (after he had made and drank his coffee) and drove to Placche Zebrate.  This monstrous eight hundred meter buttress was stunning, the lower portions was slabby and the higher you looked the steeper it got.  We however only had today to play, as I had a plane to catch the next morning and it was still a long drive to get back.  So we picked a 300m line up the lower slab where the best quality rock was supposed to be.  We had a topo but as we got closer to the base it became very hard to determine which line was which, there were no plaques here.  Eventually we found the route and set off, it felt harder than we expected but that may have been from all the climbing we had done.  Then on a pitch that Kashi was leading the bolts got closer and closer and he shouted out in joy.  I couldn’t catch what he said but soon found out:

He got to the top of the, quite literally, bolt ladder and then asked to be lowered down.  He then started to pendulum by running along the rock and when he had enough momentum made a lunge for a hold way out to the left, and into the next line of bolts.  On following up I tried as best I could to free climb the section but despite my love for slabs and a rope above me I failed.  At least with the pendulum we knew exactly which climb we were on and it was not the one we were aiming for.  No problem Via Gabri Camila at a staggering 300m of slab climbing was brilliant and we loved it, some nine pitches later we were on the horizontal rock band and not even half way up the entire crag.  From here we accessed a Vie Ferrate out left and then back down to the base, what a great way to end my second trip to Italy:

So ends the recount of my climbing days in the UK, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the places and hearing some of my tales.  It’s been good fun for me and as I have sat here going through images, researching areas, and writing up what I could remember there have been lots of aspects that came to mind bringing back great memories.  So much so that I’m contemplating documenting at least some of my Alice Springs adventures in a similar fashion…

During my stint in the Lakes, Finton came to visit and we hatched a plan to have a bit of a climbing trip to Ireland.  I don’t recall all the thinking behind it other than it seemed like a good idea.  So one day I picked Finton and Tim up from the railway station, after they had come up from London, and we headed northwards to Cairnryan in Scotland.  There we caught the ferry across to Belfast in Northern Ireland.  From memory we planned an eight day trip including travel, and decided to start where we landed and then work our way north and round the west coast.  We arrived in Belfast late in the day and were not sure where we would camp, the streets were barren, dark, grim and scary.  As we drove past the police station it didn’t fill us with confidence, the place was surrounded by cyclone wire fencing topped with coils of razor wire, and to boot spotlights and cameras were placed at every corner.  Not sure what to do or where to go we parked up on the street popped into a pub to ask someone and the landlord said we could camp in the pub courtyard.  This was located behind two heavy wooden doors in which we could also park the car.  The pub wasn’t too busy and we had a few beers to ease our nerves.  There was a good crew to chat to, and we soon hit the sack sleeping in what felt like a barn.  The next morning we thanked the landlord and headed out:

Our first destination was a bit south of Belfast to Newcastle, which is the closest town to the Mourne Mountains. The name Mourne originates from a Gaelic clann or sept called the Múghdhorna, and the mountains comprise tall granite monoliths with craggy outcrops. They are the highest mountains in Northern Ireland and have been made famous in numerous songs including The Mountains of Mourne by Percy French in 1896, but also more recently in songs by Don McLean (who did a cover version of the 1896 song), Thin Lizzy’s (Roisin Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend) and John Lennon (The Luck of the Irish). It was also the place that inspired Clive Staples Lewis to write The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and in the last decade has been used for backdrops in Game of Thrones. There is also another reason you may have known of this area, which I will mention soon. For our first taste of Irish rock we walked steeply up to Eagle Rock, a strenuous one hour walk in due to the slope. The approach puts some people off from coming to this relatively short crag, but it may also be the reputation it has for looseness. I don’t recall any poor rock on the lines we did and they were steep, technical and worthy. The granite on this crag had a weird flow like feature that looked like folds. For our climbs at least this made for a different style of granite climbing to what I have done before needing to use underclings and layaways. The climb of the visit has to be Thieving Magpie, a good 30m climb that was pretty stiff. Finton spied it and jumped on first but backed off due to the, at times, shallow gear placements. It was a team assault on this feisty number and this set the scene for a number of locations on the trip, when we would pick the occasional tacking climb that with our combined strengths managed to work out:

That night we camped in Newcastle. We felt more comfortable being away from Belfast, it really didn’t feel an inviting place and being in this small town felt so much better. We stayed next to a brook in which we washed that evening. It was freezing cold and that was the last wash we attempted in the creeks of Ireland. The next day we packed up our tents and headed back into the Mourne Mountains. It was another one hour walk in but this time up gentle valley sides, with amazing scenes back down to the coast line. Our destination was Lower Cove, but on the way we passed another crag by the name of Buzzard’s Roost. On the central buttress back in 1994, which was only a year before our visit John Dunn had finally managed his project on a massive 55m tall overhanging prow, a single pitch going at what he claimed to be E10 7a. It was regarded as one of the UK’s most striking and famous hard trad routes. Since this time there have been a few repeats and the grade has been the subject of discussion, some saying E8, while the UK online guide gives in E9 6c. Dave MacLeod made the third ascent of this mighty route in 2006 a significant twelve years after the first ascent. He placed the gear after top roping it, and then afterwards said “If I had been sure the route was only 8a and so safe I would have tried it ground up, but I was still looking at a potential E10 and 8b/+ which I could never on-sight”. Regardless of grade we stopped here for a while looking up in awe, needless to say we then carried on walking:

Our chosen place to climb was much more sedate and we picked a beauty, the lines we climbed stretched the rope and provided fabulous sustained routes.  The immaculate rounded granite here was layered like a cake with each horizontal providing great smear holds.  We bagged a good number of routes and were all climbing well, below Tim is leading Dot’s Delight which was the first line of the day.  A beautifully arching climb that got steeper the higher he went and provided great exposure despite being mostly slabby.  For me the first climb I did was the best, Gynocrat followed an impressive steep crack line.  Jamming, smearing and trusting the holds all the way up a wonderful sustained system that split the crag.  Belaying atop provided great views and I can see why this place has inspired songs, books and films.  This day we were all climbing with style and no mob tactics were required:

Tim was a bit of a character, I hadn’t met him before but Finton swore he was a good guy. He was right and Tim was fun, safe and at times quirky. He spied a line up one of the gully walls and for the sheer hell of it carried all the gear up and asked me to get up the gully to take an image, as below. It was nothing too hard but fun, better still there was no record of any routes on this wall so he got naming rights and called it Thuggery, Buggery and Beer. It was worthy of writing up but I am not sure if he ever submitted the description to anyone and I can’t find any record of it online. There was still time for one last line so we warmed down on the fun First Corner, which was in fact an arête. Then it was time to hit the road again and this time we headed north up to the Bally Castle, ripping through Belfast and not daring to stop:

This next spot looked stunning and we simply had to make a stop in here before we moved along the west coast.  Fairhead is considered by many as one of the best crags in Britain and Ireland providing both a big cliff and a big atmosphere.  It sits high on a steep hillside above the ocean and provides awesome views to Rathlin Island and Scotland.  The 5km long cliff has routes at every grade up to a maximum height of 100m.  The dolerite provides a mixture of steep cracked walls and corners.  In many places, including the one we plumped for, the rock resembled organ-pipes.  Despite how much I talk this place up it seems that it doesn’t get the attention it deserves, some say it is due to its relative remote location while others say it is the powerful nature of many of the climbs.  Being so long there are extensive areas where there is still plenty of first ascent opportunities, what I would do to spend a weekend or longer here!  We drove in and parked on a low hill (if you can spy it in the image below) and then tackled the huge blocky scree slope.  Well over an hour for the walk-in today and even more due to our constant stopping to check the guide and look up in awe.  We had a fairly big drive ahead of us so we only really had time for one line and we wanted to pick a rated route that offered three pitches and found Burn Up with three pitches of 5a, perfect:

We climbed in rotation from day one so it was Finton who got to touch the rock on lead first.  The route followed a 80m crack and corner that was direct and sustained.  The first pitch was mega with the need to layback past tricky sections, do technical bridging and also jam.  I took the second pitch which was equally good, and Finton is following up after me in the image below.  Climbing with three did slow things down but that didn’t worry us and having three proved to be a good thing towards the end of this trip.  Tim took the glory pitch at the end taking us to the top where we sat for a good while to take in the view across the ocean and to Scotland.  We scrambled down a gully back to the pack but not before finding a tenuous bridge created by one of the dolerite pillars that had fallen and was now wedged across the gully walls.  We of course had to do the tourist thing and get image of us standing on it, I look very nervous in the image of me standing there and can remember wondering whether this was in fact a good idea.  I was very relieved to get off the thing.  We hoicked out to the car and drove off along the northern coast to another famous piece of Irish rock:

We simply couldn’t drive past the Giant’s Causeway, an incredible sight of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns. For those interested, these columns are a result of an ancient volcanic eruption. The highest of these columns was 12 metres high and despite the place being a World Heritage Site and National Nature Reserve how could we not climb them, so we did when no one was looking. The place felt old and sitting there was quite an amazing experience and as such I can’t avoid getting stuck into a bit of history about this formation. I have unashamedly lifted the following text from Wikipedia: According to legend, the columns are the remains of a causeway built by a giant. The story goes that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool), from the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic mythology, was challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. Fionn accepted the challenge and built the causeway across the North Channel so that the two giants could meet. In one version of the story, Fionn defeats Benandonner. In another, Fionn hides from Benandonner when he realises that his foe is much bigger than he. Fionn’s wife, Oonagh, disguises Fionn as a baby and tucks him in a cradle. When Benandonner sees the size of the ‘baby’, he reckons that its father, Fionn, must be a giant among giants. He flees back to Scotland in fright, destroying the causeway behind him so that Fionn could not follow. Across the sea, there are identical basalt columns (a part of the same ancient lava flow) at Fingal’s Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa:

We now had a couple of hour’s drive which was to take us out of Northern Ireland and into Ireland, and that meant crossing the border.  Like our first experience in Belfast this was equally disturbing, and I probably was not supposed to take the image below.  Once through the border check point we didn’t look back, strangely also once on the other side things seemed to change.  Kids were sat on the stone walls, that lined the roads, waving at the cars and smiling.  The place seemed to have a more relaxed, and dare I say it, happy feel to it.  The roads narrowed up and were lined with stunning rock walls made from round rocks, so you could see daylight through them.  All of these things made it feel like we had stepped back in time.  Our destination was a town called Donegal and we got there as the light was fading, parking up in the centre of town and going for a wander.  The streets were alive, people were milling about and from every pub (and there were quite a few) music blared out and there was the sound of laughter an merry making.  Such a stark contrasts to the towns we had been to in Northern Ireland.  We listened out for the music that most appealed and went in, even better live music.  We had a beer and got chatting to people, so we had another and then a third:

The place was catching and made us feel very welcome. After a feed and another beer, or was it two we headed back to the car. There was no way I could drive anywhere so we took our tents out and pitched them on the verge, just as a police car rolled past and came to a stop right next to us. A cheery police officer leant out and said sleep well lads and just make sure you don’t leave a mess when you pack up. Not what we expected but it was very welcome. The morning started slowly as we had breakfast chatting to the locals, we then gave an elderly man a lift to his favourite church (i.e. pub), and then helped a lady with bags fully of grocery shopping who happened to be hitchhiking her way home. It seemed that here everyone liked a chat and everyone helped each other out, and the world simply slowed down. Eventually we made it to our chosen playground, Muckros Head. The steep layered sandstone crag oozed personality with daunting overhanging lines intersperse with corners and cracks. It sat atop a huge rock shelf with salt crusts in the pools, and it was only a five minute walk-in! Despite the fearful sight there were many lines in the mid-grades and the formations gave no end of opportunities to place gear:

We spent the rest of the day here and hit some brilliant lines, the steepness wasn’t as bad as it first appeared. Helped by the mob of great holds and solid gear. Below Tim is topping out on Primula, and as all the climbs had been it was a nicely balanced route. Great corners weaving through the overhangs and providing airy positions and exposure. The rock was solid, we didn’t come across any loose stuff, and on occasion the smaller holds on the face climbs gave us the odd nervous moment, but it all held. We had the place to ourselves so packed in the climbs, starting at one end of the crag and picking of the lines that appealed to us. We didn’t really take much note of the guidebook and even struggled to identify a few in the guide we had so maybe we did a few first ascents here too:

With the steepness this place offered it was hard to not get caught up in photography, and worse still the sort that was a bit posed.  Below Tim doing an impressive but completely unnecessary no feet hang before mounting The Nose Climb.  There was a route that we had to use mob tactics for and that was The Importance of Being Elvis, and coincidently as I type this email today is the 40^th anniversary of that great man passing (for those keen you will be able to work how long ago I typed this email).  On this particular climb there was an overhung start that required some technical climbing and bit of grunting to get onto the main face.  There a small series of flakes led up to a good horizontal.  This part was delicate and you had to place full trust in the flakes for holds and gear, Finton didn’t like them thinking if he took a fall they would pop.  When I went up I replaced his cams behind the flakes with wires and made the moves past them.  A cool line and he picked another beauty.  That night we drove further south and camped near a kind of working man’s club just outside of Sligo.  We were in the club having a beer and discussing the day and Finton and I got into a bit of a debate about gear placements.  In particular I was convinced that the flakes were more likely to pop with cams than wires, but my engineering logic was lost due to the effects of alcohol and it had the ability to get heated.  Tim stepped in, all calm and collected, and defused the situation by diverting us onto another topic:

The morning came and we had decided on another relatively high inland crag, again with ocean views in the distance.  This meant we were back to the bigger walk-ins with just over an hour.  These crags were giving our all-round fitness a bit of a boost, but I feel that we may have been reducing the benefit a tad with the evening beers.  The crag was about 30m high comprising a vertical south facing grey reef limestone wall, which featured mostly cracks, flakes and faces.  The rock was generally compact and had both finger pockets and a rough texture that gave great friction.  That said the climbing here was pretty technical in nature and the holds were described as often sharp, which could also be said about the grades of the climbs.  On this day I only took a couple of images, we were mainly using Tim’s SLR and he was using slide film.  Unfortunately this film got lost in the post when he sent it off to be processed, so there are no images of the climbing here which is a real shame, and I was particularly gutted about this.  Finton started the proceedings and went for Sparrow which looked inviting with its solid flake and crack system.  Nice climbing never too tricky and plenty of gear, which was both a great way to warm up and also fitting for the grade.  I was next up and bumped it up a bit liking the look of Leda not only because of the line but the description that indicated it had an acrobatic crux.  The holds were much smaller and the forearms could tell, and the crux really did require some contortionist moves a bit above the gear making for an exciting climb.  Tim then wandered along and looked up and was drawn towards Last Of The Summer Wine.  This route started up a slick corner to reach a horizontal and then continued up a vertical crack, it looked awesome but also hard.  The grade indicated likewise but Tim was smitten and wanted to try it, he started well up the corner with great bridging that was sustained and made him work to stay on.  At the horizontal he placed a piece at the base of the crack and then try as he did, he just couldn’t mount the break to get established in the crack:

He tried numerous times and eventually looked down and asked if anyone fancied finishing it off. So I went up, the wire he placed above was only half in but the crack was too shallow to take anything else. The crack above was parallel and both inside it and on the face were tiny ribs. This made for excruciatingly painful jamming or face climbing on tiny forearm pumping crimps. I made the hard move to get my feet on the horizontal and tried the crack for size. After ripping the back of my hands I went for face climbing. It was slow going and felt steep, sustained and tricky. One cam went in but the ribs concerned me so I sat on it very slowly and the ribs slowly crumbled allowing the lobs to settle on the rock and the cam to take my full weight. I repeated this with three cams up the crack, all the same size. At the top of the crack it was slopey and smeary, and my arms were burning up, then a foot slipped and I fell. Due to my position I did a superman dive, the rope tensioned and went slack and Tim’s face started to get closer. The rope again tensioned and went slack as I hit the horizontal with my ankle and spun back up, the rope again tensioned and went slack and finally tensioned and held. Tim lowered me the final five or so meters left and it seemed I had fallen 20m and in the process ripped out all three cams, with the half wire having saved me from decking out. My right hand and ankle had hit the horizontal and were cut and sore. As I lay on the ground the boys set up a rap rope to retrieve the gear, and at each cam position they found four groves in the rock where the lobs had sliced thought the limestone. Needless to say we packed up and headed down slowly. The images that we had taken of climbing here had been from a pillar from which we could get a bird’s eye view of the route, as can be seen by Tim lazing in the perfect rock armchair, adding to the frustration of having lost them. The ankle was getting sore but nothing felt broken, and we headed to Galway hospital. After a check-up and being patched up with sutures we decided that tonight we would stay in a hostel:

Galway was a big place and lively as, it felt like Donegal on steroids with music and people all over the main street. We found a bar and had a drink before retiring to the comfort of a real bed and in the morning a cooked breakfast. We had two days left and decided to head a bit further south along the coast to the Burren. Here we could camp above the cliff next to the road, there were a few tents already there and people were on the crag. A wide rock shelf protected the face that comprised a grey limestone, which was way more compact and solid. It was the shortest crag of the trip but looked to have a mob of quality lines. I had to however be content with being a spectator and taking images, and occasionally siting down looking out to sea watching the waves. Below Fin was making a song and dance on Nutrocker, as his legs were doing some serious disco moves. This was the way the climbing went here short, sharp and testing. Most routes were pretty constant but a couple seemed to be one move wonders (usually the faces). The cracks and corners looked great fun with technical bridging on good sustained lines and the boys ate up line after line. They did have to accept that when they climbed in the shady corners and under rooves the midges would attack. I never experienced that and had to use all of my self-control to avoid the urge to get my harness and boots. I was bruised but more so on the inside, kicking myself for not topping out the day before:

We cooked up a feast and as it got dark Tim and I were ready to hit the sack, but Finton fancied a beer.  It was the first night we had camped without a pub in sight.  Some of the others camping out were heading in so he jumped in the car with them, I remember hearing them come back but slept well that night and felt better in the morning for not having had a beer.  Day two at the Burren and the onslaught continued, while I continued to be sensible.  The ankle was sore but I could wander about on it, however there was a risk of opening up the cut on my hand if I tried to climb.  With just two they seemed to move quickly and did a good number of very fine lines, and before we knew it they were on their last line Pis Fliuch.  Set way off over the water and requiring a scramble to get to it I stayed put.  The belay was on a slopey boulder, but the climb certainly looked very good and from all accounts was a fun, steady and safe corner climb and a fitting way to end the trip.  We had a ferry to catch, it was the first one in the morning so would leave at 6am but we had to be there two hours before.  With needing to cut back across the guts of Ireland that meant driving overnight:

Seeing I would be dropping them back at the train station on the way back into the Lakes we had cleaned up the car, sorted all the gear and repacked it all. Then it was time for a quick posy image of the crew before we started on our journey. After an hour we stopped at a pub (of course, remember this was Ireland) and had some food. It was the usual story and there were a bunch of locals jamming away. So Tim and Finton, after a pint, got a taste for the place and decided to have a few more. It was close to midnight before we left there, and as I drove in the dark they slept. When we got to the border to get back into Northern Ireland they got a rude awakening. I pulled up in the darkness of night at three or so in the morning and this drew the suspicions from the border patrol. I was greeted by a tap on the driver’s window which when lowered allowed the muzzle of an automatic weapon to come into the car. After a brief very direct chat about what we were doing, where we came from, where we are were going and why we were driving so late at night they let us through. Welcome back! We made it in time for the ferry and even managed to get a brew and some food down us before the cars started to roll on, then once we found a good spot with some comfy chairs it was my turn to sleep:

Two weeks later I was back on rock with Gary tackling Triemain Eliminate on Castle Rock of Triermain in the Lakes.  The next email will be my last from my climbing in the UK… well kind of as I will be once again be going overseas, this time to Europe.

I feel a little bit excited about this one, while every place I went to had its own charm and appeal I’d regard the South West of the UK as being up there and as a close runner up to Swanage.  I’ll skip round a few places in both Cornwall and Devon that make up the toe of the UK, so once again a bit of Googling may be required to keep up.  My early memories of this area are from family holidays to quint seaside villages, nestled in coves with amazing coastlines.  We’d hire a caravan in a big park and go out to the shops, walk along the coast and visits the many great natural tourist spots such as Lands’ End, The Lizard, St Michaels Mount, Dartmoor, etc.  Then while at polytechnic (as the now Coventry University was then called) I went back there on both surveying and geology field trips, including one trip in which I visited Lisa’s home town of Torquay.  The latter indicates it is a special area and the rock down this way gets both climbers and geologist equally excited:

During my move from working in the Lakes to working south of London in Leatherhead I convinced Gareth that we both needed a holiday. So we organised a ten day trip to Cornwall. We hadn’t been here before and there were so many places that appealed, making it hard to know where to go. But we had a few criteria being to try a few places, climb our hearts out, and bag as many classics as possible. On this trip I kept a route log so could real off all the lines we did, but I won’t subject you to that. Unlike where I climb now the classics in the UK tend to be well bedded in with generations of climbers having agreed that those climbs with that lofty status really were worthy, not rating them after the ink on recording the FA hadn’t dried yet. That said on occasion we did wonder if they got it right, and our first port of call made us think twice on that score. Chudleigh was just off the road that took us on our journey west, so it seemed like a good spot to break up the journey. Comprising a 50m limestone crag we had high hopes, but only did two climbs. Below Gareth is starting up Reek, and the other line we did was listed as one of the crag classics called Sarcophagus. It was an epic corner climb that required squirming, bridging, back and footing and all on the slippiest and slimiest limestone I have sampled. It was horrendous in so many ways that it felt epic, and reading about this crag now it says it is highly polished and feels much worse in humid conditions. I can certainly testify to that:

We didn’t hang about but jumped back in the car and headed a bit further along the road to Dewerstone. A much more pleasant place both to camp and to climb. We pitched our tent under cover of the trees and in the early morning we wandered along a babbling creek through the woodlands to find the main buttress of this area that comprised a 50m granite crag. Grippy solid granite, a delight to touch after the slimy limestone. We didn’t muck about and spied a number of lines that appealed, starting with the great Club Climbers Direct (probably the best) for which I’m on the first pitch below. Great jamming to get through the overhung start and then it just kept going in great style. We picked off route after route, alternate leads were the go and it was very rare for us to falter from that pattern. Mostly crack climbing so our jamming was tested, something we usually tried to avoid which in truth could be said about my climbing even today. Our criteria did not have in it the need to seek high grades, it was more about quality lines whether easy or hard (for us):

After a good number of leads we had some lunch and being conscious of the drive ahead to the next destination we decided to pick a couple of the easy lines that looked fun and have a solo.  Gareth is coming up Mucky Gully below with full safety gear on, while we had tin pots with us they didn’t come out too often.  Usually the tin pots were used when we went to places less frequented or on big mountain routes, and even then we were a bit carefree in our youth.  We had picked a great time for the trip, sun every day but not so hot that it became unbearable.  So after another long 50m solo it was shaping up to be a great start to our trip.  We did however, have to get back on the road and so it was with reluctance that we left this place.  There were plenty of other good looking lines and that combined with the great setting in amongst the trees gave it a really calm and tranquil feeling:

We kept heading west and got there in the dark, checking the maps for where we could camp and being cheapskates we were looking for sneaky spots to camp for free. Porthcurno Beach, which in the Cornish language means ‘port of Cornwall’ provided the perfect spot. It is a popular beach and had the usual no camping signs but we would get there late and leave early, so never had any issues. Some nights others would be on the beach, some stayed late into the night and left others stayed all night and were still sleeping off the woozy heads (they deserved based on how hard they drank the night before) as we left. Porthcurno is not only famous for this beautiful beach but also the Minack Theatre a unique open-air theatre with the mighty Porthcurno Bay as a back drop. It feels like it has been carved out of the rock that makes the headland, but that is not the case. We were also only 4km from Lands’ End the most westerly point in the UK but we didn’t bother going there, firstly you had to pay to get in and secondly it would be overrun with tourists:

On our first day out we sampled a small’ish 35m crag by the name of St Loy Cliff. We were now well and truly in granite country, the whole coast seemed to have rugged orange tinted granite buttresses that provided incredible scenery and a very rugged and quite dangerous coastline. This crag however sat above the ocean with a grassy and heather base, a good spot to kick back and make a brew and have lunch when we felt like it – well we were on holiday. Some lines were very intimidating with wide rounded cracks that had no other feature other than the crystalline surface of the rock. No crimps, edges, slopers just pure friction with cracks to wide for any gear we had. We tried one such climb and bowed down humbly admitting defeat. There were however plenty of other routes to jump on such as Cress Cendo below, and the best line of the day would have to be Chlorophyll Cluster. This climb had a steep wall that you had to gingerly work your way up to get into the steep slabby grove. Lots of footwork and balance, just my style. The granite also provided awesome flakes for lay-backing, something I really enjoyed but the place also offered good not too painful jamming cracks and airy horizontal traverses. Gear was plentiful as long as you stayed away from the wide cracks, so all in all it was a worthy crag and one described as having flawless granite (something true of many Cornish crags):

The next day we went truly coastal, for the first time on the trip.  No trip to Cornwall would be complete without a stop at Chair Ladder.  It’s a revered crag but claimed not to have a heap in the high grades, not that it was a worry to us.  At this place you could feel the rush of the water below you, the roar of the crashing waves rang in our ears and the wind on the few times it did pick up would add to the excitement.  Up to 70m epics on this solid granite buttress that is amply endowed with cracks and holds.  The tides here can be big, 6m plus and as such knowing when it was safe and not safe to go for it was important.  Below Gareth, as he followed me up Mitre, is suicide pool a beautiful calm rock pool at one time that can quickly turn into a raging boiling pot of white water.  These are the aspects that drew both Gareth and I so much to sea cliff climbing.  We hit classic after classic including what was regarded as one of Cornwall’s greatest VS’s Diocese.  It is high in the grade and has a very airy technical hand traverse above a roof, the exposure was brilliant and every pitch on every climb at this crag was nothing but fantastic:

To finish the day we had our eye on the very fine Terrier’s Tooth, it started from a platform and we watched as the party ahead of us make their way up the first pitch. The tide was coming in and the belayer kept looking out to sea in case a big wave came in. The water started to lap higher and higher up the sides of the rock platform, but we didn’t go for it until they were both up the first pitch. We dashed out and it was my lead for which I was grateful, as the first pitch looked awesome. A steep but well featured wall, technically the hardest pitch but full of beautiful positive and solid granite holds. I was also grateful to not have to watch the waves, which I left Gareth to do as he also (hopefully) watched me. The water started to lap the top of the platform as I got up and set up a belay. He started to climb just as a wave swept over where he was stood. I doubt he was at risk from being washed off but the rope probably would have. Now with the water below us we could relax into the climb. Better still no one would be following up the popular climb so we really slowed down and savoured yet another good climb. The route was never too hard and a good way to end the day with the light fading and the promise of a good well deserved feed at the pub:

Now I mentioned a good feed at the pub, it was good but the dampener was the slow service. There were not many choices of where to go so we went to the same place each night. You’d think they would recognise us but each night we felt like they looked at us just as blankly as the night before, and then walked past to serve a local seemingly waiting till they absolutely had to serve us. It was almost like they didn’t accept ‘strangers’ too kindly. With no alternative without a descent drive we put up with it. The next target on our list was one that didn’t get a great write up in the guide. Maybe because the north facing wall commonly being damp and slow to dry. The routes however looked good, so we risked it. The image below is from atop Fox Promontory looking west towards Land’s End. The coast simply oozes cliffs some mega and some not that great, but all provide for a very spectacular coastline. It is also a dangerous one with currents ready to pull you out and unexpected big waves on occasion ready to sweep you off the rocks. In some ways the surroundings made every crag good, but I’m pleased to say the guide had downplayed this spot. The guide write up was good in keeping the crowds away and we had the place all to ourselves, unlike the last few places:

We had a blast and managed seven multi-pitch routes in a long day and everyone was great. They were all pretty sustained and kept you working the whole way up. The relatively steep walls were mostly ascended by vertical cracks, with the occasional need to face climb on large crystals in-between horizontals. With the good weather the rock didn’t feel damp and was super grippy, but for half the day at least we were in the shade and that did make it a tad chilly so unlike the T-shirt clad days before, here the buffalo needed to come out. Below I’m jamming deep into the cracks on Dark Deinzen, the only line we did here that didn’t gain a star but we couldn’t quite understand that as it was just as good as the rest. I wonder if it had been damp whether we may have walked away with a different view point about this place:

With no one else about the place was super peaceful, the swell was down and the water was crystal clear with that rich aqua colour that seems to invite you to jump in for a swim. I can still recall when I was belaying Gareth up Dark Whisker, below. I kept feeding the rope out as he worked his way up, but all I looked at was the water at my feet. You’ll maybe notice that while we may have been lax about tin pots we did tie in when required and I’m safely anchored to the wall just in case. The line of the crag for us had to be the last route, Gareth liked the look of the crux second pitch of The Muzzle that yields via a steep crack up a clean face to an overhang that is bypassed with an airy exposed sequence. But to get to the second pitch I decided to tackle the crux first pitch of Sports Plan, a thin left tending crack on a slightly overhung wall. Small wires, smears for feet and fingertip crimps up the crack. We left this till last, for better or worse, and my arms were burning as I moved along the crack. That familiar quandary of whether to keep moving or place gear playing on my mind. I did a bit of both and made it up, with Popeye forearms, feeling like they did when I had topped out on Darius on High Tor in the Peaks. The second pitch was equally brilliant, and I was glad to be on second with a rope above me:

Gareth was keen on a rest day, but I was not that keen so made a deal that we could on the basis that we did only two climbs. Both highly regarded but some distance away from each other so requiring a bit of walking. He agreed and so it was that we spent half a day walking and climbing two mega routes, the first was back at Chair Ladder. I’d spied it when we climbed there and it provided a direct line up from Suicide Pool with varied and absorbing climbing up slabs, an overhang, corner, overlaps, hand traverse and steep vertical jamming crack to finish. Woohoo it was brilliant and I did the three pitches in one, which with twin ropes and some careful use of long extenders worked a treat. I was super happy and this true classic amongst classics rated highly in my mind, but I was still keen on the other route too so we broke tradition and I did two leads back to back. The next line was on Zawn Kellys a bit of a hike but on days like this why head into a town, so we wandered along the coastline to our destination, from atop we had a great view across to Pendower Cove (below). Yet another place that looked inviting, but not for today:

American Dream provided a 40m single pitch up a steep pinnacle via a consistent and sustained rounded flake/crack.  To get to it there was some steep territory through overlaps and shallow crack lines.  From start to finish this route had class written all over it, untouched for some time I couldn’t avoid the many cobwebs but by the time I was up there were no cobwebs left in my head!  It is regarded as being high in its grade but I didn’t notice and was fully absorbed from the moment I touched the rock and floated up this elegant line, almost as if in a dream.  This route is most definitely up there with the very best routes I’ve ever done and I couldn’t talk it up enough.  Could it get any better you may wonder, well yes it could.  When I started up I noticed a couple of seals playing in the water below us, they would both pop up and look up at me and then jump out and slash back down.  This continued as I climbed and then as Gareth followed me up, we packed up our gear and they still watched us and then as we walked back a bit they jumped out one more time and headed out to sea.  As we walked along the coast we kept an eye out but they didn’t come back, sublime.  We were both very happy with the two climbs and ready to head to the surfie town of St Ives expecting a bit of a lively night, but being midweek it was dead quiet and a letdown.  Still we got served first up by friendly bar staff and also had a wash:

Sennen is very, very popular.  Maybe because it has a rock shelf from which most of the routes go up, they are mostly single pitch and there are a host of sub-E grade lines.  We were there early but the place soon filled up with climbers, which included the army.  They said it was a regular training place for them to introduce their recruits to rock climbing.  They wore black and all their gear was black including the ropes, harnesses, slings, wires, hexes, etc.  It was weird but of course made sense, when you are climbing up a mountainside to mount a surprise attack on the enemy you need to be well hidden!  Despite being super popular the routes were not as classy, being a bit more broken, less sustained and generally not as engaging.  We still had fun and managed to find descents that at times made our hearts beat faster than the routes, such as Church Window which I am coming down below:

It was a bit of social climb here.  People chatted, sat about, and watched each other climb but we motored on while gabbing.  I was drawn to one line called Samson Arête, it followed a very fine and steep crack up an arête before another crack ascended the continuation slab.  The lower crack was great fun but wet, water was seeping from the midway ledge and while I could see the move I just yo-yoed for what didn’t seem that long before backing off.  So what to do but tackle another good looking line called Demolition.  I’m not sure what I was thinking but it was a slab and of course I could do it, I got half way up but again while seeing the move struggled to commit.  Reading the description online it says a pulse-enhancing and memorable pitch that features an extremely runout crux and gear just above half-height will protect the crux with a swift belayer, so psyche up and go for it.  I again bobbed about for ages and backed off, Gareth was super patient with me and I found that the two failed attempts had eaten away just over an hour and a half!  Mind you the second line was a lofty E6 6a, and I’m still baffled as to what I was thinking!  For one climb we snuck away from the main crowd and went up this wet black slab, it looked alright and at the grade was sure to be fine.  As I went up I kept saying that good holds would come, but my mind was still out of kilter and I had gone up the wrong line.  At the time Slab Happy was graded E1 5a.  It kept me focused and on edge all the way, and I notice it now gets E3 5b, I’m guessing something must have fallen off since:

We were heading back east now and making our way along the northern coast of the UK’s boot. On the way to the next crag we decided to drop into Carn Kenidjack that had a highly regarded climb called Saxon. Gareth was up and he set off but his head was not in it so after sometime attempting the first tricky section he backed off, not taking as long as I had the day before to decide on the right course of action. After letting him rest up and ponder what he wanted to do he decided not to go for it. I was of course more than happy to take on this very fine looking rope stretcher, the guide describes it as having equal measures of intimidating and amenable sections. Very true and a shame that Gareth hadn’t gone for it, but you get moments like that. It was a bit of a walk in for one climb but we both regarded it highly and thought it was worthwhile, other lines looked good but the grades stepped up so we headed for another location. So we moved onto a well frequented Cornish must visit crag called Bosigran, unless you are there on a long weekend and then you may find you are queuing for climbs:

We spent a day and half at this very fine crag, not at sea level but it feels like you are climbing over the ocean for much of it.  Some routes were up to 70m so a great length and a good range of grades, but being late in the trip we were slowing down a bit.  No matter this place has a very fine selection of the lower grade routes and we ate a good number up.  As we walked in, the heather was all burnt and soil was smouldering with a watchful fire crew on standby.  We had a chat with them and found out that the fire had been going for a week or two.  It would burn the vegetation and then go down in the root systems, follow them until it found a patch of soil high in organics and then come back up.  Amazing stuff!  As we climbed one route here we were greeted by an elderly man with a rack full of cams happily whacking them into the cracks and beaming with a smile that matched the guy I had met in North Wales half way up a climb.  We had a good old chat and he carried on his merry way laughing and loving life all the way.  It’s moments like that which really stick with me:

With a day and half to play here we had a lot of fun and there was plenty to pick from. You may remember I mentioned that Bob had given me a stopper, well it was on a climb called Anvil Chorus that I found my first stopper as crag booty. It was wedged in the horizontal crack I’m at in the image below, I made sure I could get it out before going past it to make sure Gareth couldn’t claim it as his! Sadly I read that much of Anvil Chorus has fallen so the climb is no more, a shame as it was ripper. We had a bash at Suicide Wall. A climb with a reputation, but we climbed well on that and both of us styled it. It was regarded as a classic but we were left wanting more, it followed a line that moved about a fair bit, became disjointed with way too many pitches to avoid rope drag which meant it was way too stop-starty. For the last climb we came up Ochre Slab Route 1, a fine line that offers two totally contrasting pitches; the first technical and the second super steep. The climbing was great but it was the way the orange granite was glowing in the evening light that made it special. Looking back down the crag to the ocean with the sun getting lower and lower we finally packed our bags to head out:

The next morning we had to drive back, but before we did we decided to bag one more route and went to Gurnard’s Head to take on the fun Right Angle.  This route is why most people know this place, it is never hard but the three pitches are super exposed and need a high degree of commitment.  The first pitch is a traverse toward a zawn in which waves smash and reach high up onto the wall, then the second pitch goes further along into the unknown with a continuation traverse on a steep wall.  This seems to take you into the very heart of the cliff and you eventually find a stance below a steep corner hearing nothing but crashing water.  The final pitch takes you upwards on a superb 40m pitch ascending the corner in an unbelievable position.  A great way to end the climbing on this trip and so worthwhile.  Eventually however it was time to head home but before we did that we found a parking spot in town and emptied the pigsty of a car to clear it up a bit:

The South West seemed a place that was worth spending time when we made the effort to get there. So the next trip was also a few days and this time I headed there with Kate, not so far down the boot this time staying in Devon and heading first up to Baggy Point. It is described as a mid-range climber’s slab paradise and provides well protected, consistent climbing in fine positions. The slab on the Promontory goes right into the sink during high tide but there is a window of opportunity when the tide goes out and you can climb from the base of the crag adding about 7m of extra rock. Below Kate is starting off on the well-known Kinky Boots. It’s not a climb for the short as you have to fall into the first holds, which are fortunately good but you don’t know that until you do the move. It’s a great all tide access to this portion of the crag and we did the move a couple of time because it was so much fun. We did a stack of good lines here taking our time and munching after each climb, never going too hard but there was one line that I liked the look of. I was a bit too cocky and rushed into the crux sequence up a narrow and disappearing crack system and stuff it up. I didn’t fall but did have to down climb the sequence and go for it again, which for some reason annoyed me but I soon got over that as I followed the fine slab above to glory:

Blackchurch rock is made of the same rock as Baggy Point. The metamorphosed sandstone can be brittle in places but general was pretty good on the popular cliffs, and when we got to this spot the tide was in so we couldn’t get to the bit we wanted and headed instead for the Main Cliff. This tall towering face features many delights that include 100m XS routes that the online guide say features some splendid crumbly rubbish and imaginary protection. Perfect! So with Kate not so sure I plumped for Loose Woman as it offered some of the best rock and protection on the wall. I started up the first pitch, a wide crack with plenty of features and places to pop gear in. Then I heard that familiar cry of a seagull, not in flight but on a nest… yes I really could speak gull. I looked up and sure enough up and to the left, on the belay ledge a head poked out and wasn’t looking too impressed. I assessed the situation and reckoned I could avoid the ledge by linking the first two pitches. So despite veering a bit more right and at the same time singing gently to the gull to calm it down (honestly), the gull was not impressed. A few diving swoops came next and I knew I was on a hiding to nothing, so instead I traversed right and down climbed the route to the right. Kate seemed happy to follow my circular route and did so without the gull swooping but instead the bird just kept a careful eye on her. Um must have been a girl connection going on there, check out the image below. After all that the tide was working its way out so we bailed and left the crumbling pile of choss to the gulls:

We were not too worried about leaving the Main Cliff as where we really wanted to climb was the ultra-magnificent Blackchurch Rock. This cathedral style creation sits proudly on a bed of ribbed sandstone and is only accessible at low tide. It has to be seen to be believed and to top that the rock is solid and the routes are quality being both sustained, interesting and a good rope length high. We walked round the rock a few times taking it in feeling just a little bit in awe. Kate fancied something up the side as it didn’t look so shear and offered more rests, Right of Spring was great corner system up the layered sandstone with good gear awesome position and nice exposure. After that line I was drawn, and why wouldn’t you, to the impressive triangular face and the route description says it all… a majestic pitch of flawless quality. The whole trip would have been worth it if we had only climbed this one route, Sacre Coeur was right up my alley. A series of perfect finger cracks narrowing into nothing all the way up this stunning face. Small wires were the go and like American Dream I floated up this and was in ecstasy. I would love to have bagged another line on this face and had in mind which one but Kate was pretty pooped from a few days of fairly full-on climbing so we headed out, also not wanting to get stranded as the tide was on the way back up again:

We went to another Devon delight by the name of Gull Rock. These places were at times a bit of the beaten track and required a walk-in, this one took us along Welcome Mouth Beach and navigated past some massive folds and cool rock formations. The landscape seemed to impress age on you and when you walked in places like this you felt very small, humble and privileged. It took well over an hour to get there and while we went here to climb we spent a fair bit of time exploring rock pools that were bursting with colour, checking out the rocks and on one beach there was an amazing waterfall from a cliff high above. This was yet another crag which was tidal and that also included the approach, the way we walked in you get a six hour window of opportunity, which was enough for us seeing it was also the day so we had to hit the road home:

The crag is yet again made of the metamorphosed sandstone, a steep slick slab with small crimpy holds very narrow cracks and not much else.  The online guide talks of pegs to rap in and pegs on a couple of lines but I have no recollection of them, and checking through the images I have it seems that my memory is probably right on that score.  We got to the base and the tide was going out meaning the occasional wave came pretty close, but soon receded and we racked up some fun climbs.  On the slab proper the gear for the most part was small, micro wires and some routes didn’t require anything above a no.2 so some leads were a bit nervous with tiny gear and at times friable rock.  Unlike the rock I had climbed in the neighbouring county of Cornwall, Devon had its fair share of ‘exciting’ routes on what some would describe as less than desirable rock quality.  That said the lines were good if you had the head for them.  We also did one that came out through the cave to the right of the slab, the tiered overlaps offered lots of scary moment as you need to use flakes that you hoped held, with gear behind the same flakes, pulling through onto a thin edges above before the next overlap hit you.  It seems many of these lines are now significantly different due to rock falls, which doesn’t come as a surprise:

Below Kate following up Crazy Streak, and you can see the rock offered little for holds and gear, but enough for a slab connoisseur.  We had a good look at the guide; Kate tacking the corners and more featured climbs which offered a bit more security while I went for the slabs.  The classic, or so the guide stated was Lead Boots so we thought we would save that until the end and go out in style.  We picked off a few lines but began on Walking on the Moon, it started well and gradually got harder keeping the pace with good delicate moves.  The gear was small on this line with nothing greater than a 00 wire and it felt spaced, very exciting stuff and made us wonder what the classic would be like.  After bagging a few more lines the tide was turning and heading back in so we jumped on Lead Boots, and was sorely disappointed.  Maybe we had grown accustomed to what the crag offered and the spice of first taste had lessened, but whatever it was we both agreed that the first route had been the gem of the day.  Funnily enough the online guide that I refer to, as I type away on these emails, says the same thing only now it seems Walking on the Moon has a couple of pegs in it:

Lisa grew up in Torquay Devon.  So with each return trip we would head down there and I would get up early and walk along the coastline.  It is not quite as rugged, tall and wild as other parts but offers good scrambling, rock hopping and views.  There is one cliff at the southern end however that is well known for climbing and that is Berry Head.  On our first trip back we happened to be there at the break of the bird season ban and Gareth came down so we could try our hand at The Old Redoubt area.  It was summer so an early start was in order, and we arrived a little too early in the dark at the lonely carpark.  With no point in heading in on the short walk due to an hour of darkness to go we stayed put, being disturbed only by a passing police car checking in as to why we were suspiciously sat there.  At first light we went down to rack up, only to be mobbed by a huge university group who raced ahead of us.  Not impressed, we left them to it and went across the water to the Coastguard Cliffs.  Higher up above the water and not as spectacular in setting but we found some good lines and had fun:

The next day we decided to try again. One reason for our keenness was the guide suggested, as does the online guide, that the crag had the best HVS in the country. We were keen to get onto Moonraker to see if they were right, and obviously the uni group the day before had rushed in before us with some of them intent on that line. To get to the climb is a bit of a mission in its own right, you start from the sloping rock on the right in the image above scramble into the cave and then back out along the steep wall. It was effectively a deep water solo and pretty good fun, and this place has grown in popularity and boasts a high quality 700m solo traverse going at F7a/7a+. It took us a little while to find the belay perch for the first pitch and finally got comfy, three epic pitches awaited and we were excited. Better still we had the place to ourselves, the day was slowly waking up about us with fishing boats heading out to sea or were they already coming back in? The first pitch was OK a bit of a one move wonder but nothing to write home about. The rock was ish and the gear pretty average as the image below shows at times non-existent. Then Gareth headed off and the next pitch improved a bit, the rock was more solid but the line wasn’t grabbing us. The last pitch however was brilliant, up a steep corner that had great positions and exciting moves all the way up. Halfway up this corner we found a gull in its nest with a chick, I took a wide berth and it was luckily happy for me to pass by. Then as I topped out I found someone asleep on a bench, so we kept it quiet as Gareth followed up and we sneaked past him without walking him up. Definitely not the best HVS in the country but it was worth the effort for that top pitch:

The final place I want to show you is the first crag I visited in this area, Hay Tor. Dartmoor includes the largest area of granite in Britain, much of the rock is under marsh and bog comprising peat. In winter this place can be cold and heartless, it is high up and the wind can run right through you. On a geology field trip from uni we came here and it was impossible stand upright, if you tried and several did the wind picked you up and tossed you back. Today with OSH standards that field trip would never have happened. Dartmoor has a number of rock peaks called Tors, over 160, and the biggest of these is High Tor. It is provides 30m routes of great quality. Solid granite with big coarse crystals ready to take your skin off if you fall. Despite having been here a few times before with uni and family I didn’t climb here until I met Lisa, but I’ll get to that later. On a trip back to the UK I finally got to bag a few lines on this great chunk of rock, but not on the main cliff which was surrounded by tourists. We climbed on Low Man which is a stone throw away and equally good, the rock and climbing was as good as they say. All the climbs were sustained, interesting and lots of fun. Many felt exposed and nervous and the appeal to not fall was very high:

Below however is the route that I will always remember this place for.  Raven Gully is a high-moorland classic that features crack-climbing in all of its guises, and what better route than this for Lisa to do her first ever rock climb.  Soon after we met she was keen to try climbing and this was the gem that we did that on, we got here when the sun was low down to the east meaning this crag was in shade, not only that but it was cold.  Frost was on the grass and the rock was finger numbing bitterly cold.  The camera batteries decided it was too cold for them, but Lisa seemed to think that if I thought it was a good idea she would be fine.  The route goes in three pitches but I ran them all together and didn’t really think too much about the fact that I had all this experience that made this route not too bad and in fact very, very enjoyable.  When it was Lisa’s turn she got up and by the end was smiling, or was it grimacing.  There were certainly some testing sections that she managed to pull through with a little help and in truth she did amazingly well to get up.  We have been back since and while she is posing with a big smile and fond memories I am not sure she would have been keen to attempt this climb again.  Strangely despite this experience we stuck together and she continued to trust my judgement on what climbs she could manage, but that will be another story:

Next time we will head across the channel to the isle or Ireland, we spent a week out there on a climbing holiday and experienced some epic situations.

This will be the shortest section of my climbing emails, and focuses mainly on a little known area nestled on the border of Wales and England.  The River Wye (or Afon Gwy in Welsh) is the fifth-longest river in the UK.  It flows for over 200km from Plynlimon in mid Wales down the to the Severn estuary.  A good deal of the river marks the border between England and Wales.  So I guess the crag is in fact in England being on the east bank.  In this email I will also touch on a few other locations in relatively close vicinity and in a way this email encompasses some of ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ of my experiences in this neck of the woods:

We start with the ‘Bad’.  Further west from the Wye Valley on the southern coast of Wales is a great sea cliff area known as Pembrokeshire.  I attempted on a few occasions to get here but never made it and when I did the weather turned on us.  On one attempt I drove out with Johnny, Scott and Vince in the car, we left London late and in the darkness the other three snoozed practically the whole way.  It was late and to avoid white line fever I munched on the very delicious packet of chocolate hobnob biscuits that Johnny had brought.  We got there late and pitched our tents in torch light.  Then I fell into a deep sleep only to be woken by that familiar and dreaded sound of rain falling on the tent, light to start with but it soon increased in intensity.  Morning came but the light didn’t follow as it should and we were shrouded in mist.  I’ve included this image for a few reasons, most importantly it shows my ‘Wendy-tent’ on the left (the ‘Cheese-block’ belonged to Vince).  I had this tent for approx. 20 years and I can remember blustery trips to the lakes where the new-fad dome tents would crumple under the winds, due to being poorly put up, while my trusty tent, which gained scorn from many, never faltered.  Better still in conditions such as below it also never leaked, the Cheese-block unfortunately didn’t fare so well.  Johnny was in his Gore-Tex bivvy bag on this trip, which is when I decided I wouldn’t mind getting one.  In the morning he awoke to the gentle nuzzling of sheep, they were either nibbling or licking the water off his bivvy bag:

On days like this there really was only one thing to do and that was to head to the closest wall and climb indoors. We hoicked the considerable distance to Bristol to climb as the wall there was supposed to be pretty good (and it was). It was on this journey that Johnny asked where the biscuits were, and I had to confess to having eaten the whole packet the night before – oops. As the rain continued to come down we climbed in the dry, leading of course. The rain was supposed to abate and improve the next day so stuck it out and went back to our tents. The next day was better but not great. We made it to one crag and I did one climb, I can’t recall the names but what I do remember is encountering a gull at two thirds height. I pulled my head over a narrow ledge to be face to face with a gull who promptly regurgitated (in three goes) all over me. I dropped back down on my arms and made a quick tricky traverse right into another line to continue up. The rope drag was horrendous and as I gulped for air all I seemed to take in was the hideous smell of decomposed fish and gut fluids. We didn’t do anything else as the weather turned, so with my buffalo wrapped in several layers of plastic bags we drove the three to four hours back. In many ways it was a fun trip, but I never got to Pembrokeshire. Johnny was more lucky and went one time with Gareth, they started with a ripper of a line and were looking forward to a great time in perfect conditions. As they walked back down for the second climb Johnny was eyeing up and waving to a couple of girls, he didn’t look where he was going and twisted his ankle. Gareth wasn’t too impressed, and it seems that I was not the only one to not have luck there:

Next we move onto the ‘Ugly’ and I’m not referring to Rob in the image below.  He was one of my housemates when I was at uni in Coventry and on occasion I would catch up with him and Nick both of whom lived near Gloucester.  In the image below I am belaying him up his first ever rock climb at Cleeve Hill called Hand Jam.  His parents lived close to his place and the convenient 20m limestone crag provided some fun lines.  On one occasion when a chance to climb with Gareth in North Wales came up I was in a quandary, it was the weekend of Rob and Emma’s wedding in Gloucester.  I decided that I could do both so after climbing till mid-afternoon on the Saturday I drove the three and half hours (180km) to the wedding stayed till late and drove back.  After a few hours’ sleep Gareth and I were back on the crag!  I digress, back to the ‘Ugly’… the Avon Gorge.  I’ve been here twice and climbed at the Amphitheatre and Suspension Bridge Buttress.  Why ugly you may ask, well for me the highly polished soft grey limestone was not inviting, the sparse gear was not that great, the busy A4 road below in a trapped valley meant that the area smelled of car fumes and worse for me was that you were in full view of people being in the heart of a bustling tourist town.  On one occasion with Dawn we climbed a few routes but it really didn’t appeal to either of us, then I went back with Gareth.  On that occasion I forgot my harness, um no problem Gareth always has spare harnesses in his car.  You may remember in North Wales he didn’t even know he had a spare car alarm key, his car was always a mess and I used to bag him out no end.  As such it was just before this trip, and this trip only, that he decided to clean his car out and that meant no spare harness.  So we made a harness up from slings and after playing on a few non-descript lines to make sure it felt comfortable and safe enough he lead the crag classic Hells Gate.  Um it didn’t feel much like a classic to us and we bailed after the first pitch:

Now onto the ‘Good’.  That is an understatement and I would rather say the ‘Magnificent’ Severn (well the river below it does flow to the Severn estuary!).  I’ve climbed at a few places along the Wye Valley including Shorn Cliff and Symonds Yat, but it is Wintour’s Leap that is the one that is so amazing.  The glory of the crag can only be seen from the river, as the road on the east bank provides no clue of what awaits due to the trees.  You park up in small bays with only logs to tell you to stop the car, if you go too much further you would plummet about 100m.  The sight is staggering and this place offers superb limestone, outrageous overhangs, technical faces, cracks, flakes.  The tranquil nature of this crag just adds oodles of appeal, the tall trees and graceful river provide a great backdrop.  Before I start mentioning climbing, the name of this place beckons to be talked about.  It was named after a royalist by the name of Sir John Wintour who in the mid 1600’s was being pursued by parliamentary forces while on horseback.  Legend has it he leapt off this mighty cliff and both he and horse landed safely in the Wye River; then swimming to the nearby Chepstow Castle.  There is some truth in the story but he didn’t leap from here instead he escape from the Roundheads by crossing the river, without the leap, at less spectacular locations of Lancaut and Sedbury:

Below is an unknown climber (as a guide would say) on Let Us Pray a fantastic route stretching some 60m up the black limestone. These clean walls provide bold climbing with good gear when it is most needed and we did a good number of quality lines here. Some routes would look like vegetated choss piles but even these surprisingly kept to solid rock and provided great outings. On one occasion Kate suggested the climb called The Men in Black would be a good one to try. Well the film was damned good so why wouldn’t the climb be! The guide did warn that start was somewhat run out, but I was keen. I started up the groove that went for some 10m, and at the top I was to make a step left onto a rib. Only problem being that there was not much gear and a ground fall awaited, so I was somewhat nervous about it and pumped out while plucking up the courage to make the move. I finally went for it and with relief got some good gear in before the next groove, which proved to be the crux and pretty technical. I had a bash a few times but couldn’t work out the move, or was it that my arms were pumped out. So I did what I had never done before and asked Kate to ‘take rope’, to which she replied ‘what!?’. It was the first time that I had not either down climbed a route or taken a lead fall, and she was more surprised than me. As it was, after a quick recovered and I ate up the rest of the line and she had been right it was brilliant. Back then it was given E1 and some guys on an adjacent route said he felt it was more like E2, now the online guide tells me it is E3. Probably fair considering the runout nature:

During another trip here we were finishing up for the day and I had led the penultimate pitch to a big leaning tree that provided the perfect sling belay. I watched the light fade as the final pitch was led above me. When it was my turn to follow we had a problem, the lock carabiner had fully locked and try as I might I couldn’t get it to budge. I tried tensioning the system and knocking the gate but to no avail and the light was fading. The tree was big with a solid trunk towering over 10m above me so I couldn’t pop the sling over it. There was only one thing for it to snap the sling. This was at a time before I carried a knife on multi-pitches, something I started soon after but have since stopped doing again. So I tensioned the system with the sling over a rock edge and used a rock to smash it. It took what felt like eternity to get through the dyno sling, a good 20min of smashing with tiring arms. Since this occurred I have always had a very healthy respect for the strength of those slings, and that one was quite old. Back at the car we got some pliers and discovered that a grain of rock has got in the sleeve of the screw gate, with the pliers we could hear the grain grind and break up. The image below is, I forget who now on, Tigers Don’t Cry at Shorn Cliff, that cliff provides great routes but they are shorter single pitch lines so we spent most time heading to Wintour’s Leap:

Soon I’ll introduce you to Kashi, a friend from Bavaria.  He came over once and stayed at a mates house in Bristol.  His mate was a local hard sports climber and knew all the hidden/secret sports crags and the idea of visiting them appealed to Kashi.  So instead of heading to one of the great tall trad cliffs we bush bashed to what felt like poor second cousin crags, while the routes were impressive to see they were way too hard for either of us to contemplate.  It seemed a sad waste to me, as it was the only chance I had to climb with Kashi in the UK.  On the main cliff of Wintour’s Leap the top out came up right into several back gardens.  The people who lived here were pretty cool and they had separated out a pathway from their property to allow the climbers to top out and walk out back to the road.  The separating fence line included dense plantings to provide them with privacy and small signs asking people to be respectful and not be too noisy.  It’s one of the quirky things that I really liked about this place, and made we want to come back.  There were no walk paths by which you could get to the base of the crag so we had to rap in.  We would often take everything down to the base and then at the end of the day have to haul it all back up.  I guess there was a level of security about leaving things at the base rather than in carpark just off a fairly well used road.  This did however mean that on the last climb we would either haul or carry it all back up.  Unafraid of being a pack horse I would pack everything into the biggest bag and offer to follow up on the last line, below on one such occasion I’m following up Zelda after another great day in this little hidden gem that never seemed to get too much attention:

Next time I’ll take you to the south west corner of the UK where there is an amazing array of geological formations, and more great climbing including two in particular that rate very high on my favourite climbs.