In reply to jonny2vests:
An Anecdote from Alan Heason (the author’s dad). This didn't make it into the article as it's Lawrencefield and not Millstone, but I thought it might be an interesting read nonetheless:
We entered the amorphous arena of ‘Artificial Climbing’ in 1965 or thereabouts. This practise, we vaguely understood, entailed scaling otherwise-unscaleable cliffs by hammering metal pegs called pitons into cracks and fissures, hanging short rope ladders with alloy steps from them and progressing smoothly and gloriously up virgin faces that had never felt the tread of man. We purchased necessary (and probably un-necessary) gear and then rather nervously contemplated our next step. It had all seemed so super in the planning stage, but now, what? Where to develop the necessary techniques and skills? It certainly would not do to practice in public, for we would be rapidly exposed for the tyros we certainly were. I know, there’s that quarry we found not very far from Hathersage. Let’s see what we can sort out there. So there we were, six of us, on a grey, dank Saturday afternoon, gazing somewhat nervously at the blank, black wall. Well, not absolutely blank; here and there were teeny cracks. The others stepped back, producing cameras and adopting occupied airs. Oh. I’m the one who’s going to give it a bash, am I? Yip. The brand-new 300-foot rope, white for half its length and then light blue, dyed in the Hoover twin-tub washing machine, was uncoiled and I tied on at that middle point and commenced to climb. Hammer in a piton. Shouldn’t they ‘ring like a gong’ when lodged securely? Clip in an etrier. Climb up nervously. Four feet, perhaps. In goes another peg. Another etrier. The white upturned faces seemed a long way down. The crack thinned. No piton points would enter. Ah yes, this Ace of Hearts, slender and so short, slotted into a horizontal crack. Trouble was, there was no need to hammer it in, I just pushed it in, half an inch at most. Never mind, here’s a new crack above. Stretch, place, hammer, karabiner, clip in the rope. Mmmm, ok, ok, but… I’m an awfully long way up. Not far to the top now, ten feet perhaps? Ping. Rrrrippp. I was falling backwards through space, fifteen or so pitons popping out like a Riverdance line-up without the slightest delaying effect. I found myself head down, my face level with Bryan Porter’s, my belayer. He lowered me the final six feet onto my head and I shakily stood upright. What had happened? Not one of the final fifteen pitons had held. My technique was woefully inadequate. But. My Ace of Hearts, my darling little ace, pushed – not hammered – into that crack thirty feet above us, had held and acted as a fulcrum to hold me. When I descended to retrieve it by abseil I found it, bent double from the strain. I had it chromium plated at Raleigh. Incidentally, the lower pitons all pulled out of their placements with little or no resistance.
I did do some more artificial climbing, achieving a reasonable standard of competence, and eventually returned to that first climb having learned that someone had aided it successfully, calling it ‘Billy Whiz’. I led it successfully. I am somewhat chagrined to discover that those then-aided routes are now regularly climbed ‘free’.