In the second article of our new series, Franco Cookson shares the story of his favourite route and an important milestone in his climbing career...

16 years old. I sit in my chemistry lesson, even more bored than usual. The black and white of the whiteboard forms a swirling pattern of textured wall. I daydream. I already have an exit plan for today. As soon as this lesson is over, I'm not going to my lessons this afternoon. I'm going to meet up with Ian and head straight up to Highcliffe. I've had no time to think about school for the last few months. Climbing has completely taken over all of my waking thoughts and all I think about is the next challenge, the next wild place to explore, the weird characters of all these crags in the North York Moors. But most of all, I plan how we're going to get there.

Fortunately we have no such travel worries for the route today. Perched in the woods above Guisborough, right above school, Highcliffe is a mixture of prominent clean buttresses and hidden greenery. Ian is a little bit older and already on a gap year, working in his dad's fish and chip shop in the week, and showing me this hidden outrageous world in his free time. He's got all the gear. All I need to do is cram my slightly broken harness and hand-me-down climbing shoes into the bottom of my school bag and meet him as soon as I can.

Ian has been encouraging me to try ever more difficult routes recently and today's target is to be my first proper E1: the esoteric marvel of Wombat. The line is positioned on the far left of the clean part of the escarpment, just before the greenery takes hold. It takes inspiration from both the pure crack style of the main buttress and the esoteric adventure that hides in the trees further along. Ian beams with excitement about the 'coffin move' high above the initial corner and encourages me that the steep headwall corner crack isn't as intimidating as it looks. But he already pointed out the line it takes last time we were up here and I'm still anxious about taking on that kind of terrain. It really doesn't feel like long ago that I was struggling with the Severes at this crag and I can't quite comprehend how it is possible to get up such a steep and blank-looking corner with so many little rooves to overcome.

Time is of the essence today and we race through the streets of Guisborough, first through the high street, with the higgledy piggledy buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries and then the marauding cul-de-sacs and cuts of pristine suburbia. Eventually we're at the base of the forest that Ian knows so well and only a couple of hundred metres of ascent stand between us and our climbing fix. We race up the steep muddy tracks and paths, thinking only of the route we're about to try, failing to realise that in future years, we'll look back at these hours of approach and logistics with as much fondness as the climbing itself. But not today. Before we know it, we're at the base and unpacking our gear.

I rack up, trying not to lose Ian's precious climbing gear in the rush. He talks me through the route, step by step. Each section he describes sounds impossible and it is only because he's previously shown me on many occasions that 'the impossible' can indeed be climbed that I agree to tie into the rope at all.

I start up the initial crack and plug in a couple of wires that don't quite sink as well as I'd hoped. My boat shoes are without points and the heavily worn bottoms feel horrible on the slippery rounded nubbins of rock that I have to press my feet against. All the footholds seem too close to the crack, which makes me stand straight down on them, like a goat perching their hooves on a walnut. I feel colossally unstable, unprotected and have little faith in the form of fingerlocking I invented just thirty seconds ago. I sketch, out of control, only to eventually, somehow, arrive at the mid-height box.

I'm still in my school skinny jeans, which I have already realised are a terrible choice of legwear for contorted bridging. I'm now at the 'coffin move' and quickly find that to get onto this three-foot-wide ledge, capped by a roof only two feet above it, is going to require some inventive shapes. I can feel the cheap denim chafing against my thighs and my knees struggling to bend in their prison. I still don't feel adequately protected by the gear I have placed. Instead, my greatest sense of safety comes from the position I am now wedged in – a position though that I will have to find a way out of, if I am to continue up the rest of this climb. Eventually I manage to do an entire 180-degree pivot around my hips, and lie, flat on my back, sweating, looking up at the corner above.

I can't quite manage to turn my head to see Ian below, but I can tell he's enjoying this far more than me. His shouts of encouragement seem tinged with a hidden pleasure in my suffering, or more charitably perhaps, with the excitement in being able to share such an experience of self-discovery. The corner crack continues above the little roof I am trapped under, and is sportingly decorated with tiny ferns. With my face now at the base of this, I can reach around the roof and place a decent nut. I jam my fingers in the pod above this placement, finding that the nut actually improves the base of this slot and my fingerlock is far better than if there was no nut there. "Is this cheating?" I wonder to myself. But no one can see, so off I go...

With the aid of my sneaky fingerlock, I drag myself out of my coffin, knocking my knees against the roof. My feet eventually reach the point my head was at, where the ledge drops away and free space hangs below the corner. The exposure now feels extreme to my little North York Moors brain, with the steep wooded hillside sliding back down towards the town and towering walls on either side of me.

I keep pressing my way upwards, the grassy summit now tantalisingly close. I know to try and place some protection before taking on the cornice of vegetation above, but the cam I place inspires no confidence. I grab the dry sod, poking each of my fingers into the ball of reassuring moisture below.

I may be new to rock, but I know my grass and this is solid. I yard with every morsel my puny arms can muster, slumping over the top with a wide grin: the first smile of the day.

Add it to your UKC wishlist: Wombat (E1 5b) (Highcliffe, North Yorkshire)