UKC

My First Outdoor Lead (101) - Swanage After Chapel

© monks
photo
Idwal Slabs
© monks

My first simple lead was at Swanage somewhere, but I don't remember it. Swanage was the crag where I learnt to climb and for which, as a result, have an abiding aversion. I was at boarding school, and after chapel on Sunday we could make our way there. I have fond recollections of that first summer of climbing, perhaps gilded by the school-bound tedium of wet Sundays without climbing.

However, my first lead of substance was in Wales; Tennis Shoe on the Idwal slabs in February 1978. We were staying at Ynys Etws, the Climbers' Club hut in the Pass, and I felt a little over-awed by the history of the place, but relished the atmosphere, the fire and the darkness and wind outside.

There were four of us: our teacher, Vernon Wilkins, who had started us climbing in the first place, and three boys. Seeing as he would lead one rope, I would have to lead the other. I chose Tennis Shoe simply because it looked right, out on the edge of the slab where the air was, and because the boulder at the top looked intriguing.

My gear was utterly appalling by today's standards. My clothing was a pair of old brown cords and an even older Dennison para smock that I had acquired from somewhere. I had a pair of Woolworth's plimsolls, but they had very unsatisfactory hard soles that I had pared down smooth with a razor blade. I had a Whillans harness and a collection of borrowed gear: some hexes, some Clog Cogs and a few straight-sided wedges on unbendable wire. They were hanging from some ferocious Bonatti krabs that could take a swift nip out of a finger in careless moment. These were set off by some massive Troll Super Blue slings, a hawser-laid Viking rope and a bright orange Joe Brown helmet.

I picked my way quite happily up the first pitch, enjoying the relaxed angle that was so different to Swanage. I placed my first piece of gear and with some effort clipped the unbending rope into it. As I climbed on, I could hear a steady 'tonk, tonk, tonk' as each notch of my salt-stiffened hawser bumped through the krab. The second piece of gear was not quite in line with the second, and it added its own tonk-tonk. Rope drag swiftly limited the number of runners that I could place, but the rope lifted many and eased my progress. The belay was simple, by virtue of the amount of gear I had and the limited range of knots that it was possible to tie in the inflexible rope.

I sat there and looked out across Idwal, at the wind blowing patterns across the llyn and I huddled warmer into my jacket. I picked at some Kendal mint cake, hopelessly broken in a pocket, and watched a sheep ease its way across the slab, pinching rugosities between its toes and eating the tufts of grass it found along the way. That moment, sitting on a bleak stance with no-one else in sight, has left me with an enduring appreciation of moments in climbing when there is nothing to do but sit and watch, and look and listen and feel: the view, the position, the angles of the crags, the smell of the air, the water, the lichen and the rock, the roar of the wind and the silence.

dmm-writing_comp

www.dmmclimbing.com

Write approximately 500 words about your first outdoor lead and supply an image of you climbing (not necessarily your first lead) and submit to: http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/send.html

The competition will be judged by us here at DMM and the winner announced on Monday 24th December and will win a complete DMM rack worth £500.

But more than that, everyone who submits an essay will receive a spot prize.

More details HERE



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