UKC

Yesreday's thread got deleted just as it was developing nicely (reasons see here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/thread_removed_because_of_exter... ). Hopefully there are many accounts out there just waiting to be told.

My first proper attempted lead was Sin at Stoney. I'd spent my remaining pocket money on my first hex at Tanky's in Sheffield, and I managed to place it just below the crux. I did the crux and then stupidly fell off a few feet later. The hex held, and my partner received rope burns ( waist belay). He then led the route and I followed, suitably chastened.

I went out with someone I’d met in the gym, had been indoor climbing a few times and when he asked me what grade I could climb I said “3”. Grade 3 scrambling that it.

After a trip to Go Outdoors to buy some ice screws I soon found myself seconding the first pitch ofThe Curtain (IV 5) on th ben.

Having expected to second the whole thing it was an unpleasant surprise to be handed the ice screws at the belay. I was more scared of admitting I’d never actually led a pitch let alone placed a screw than I was of the route, so set off on lead. It was the most chillingly frightening experience of my life so far, and when I reached the belay I was shaking violently and fely quite sick.

In fact trying to remember how to build a belay (someone had shown me with chairs a few weeks before) was perhaps the worst point. 

After that I was hooked on climbing, and have been ever since. 

Ok, since I opened my mouth in the other thread:

It was my birthday on a sunny day in October many moons ago. Me and a friend had decided to go climbing at Kullaberg, a lovely peninsula in southern Sweden. He had learnt his ropes in the army, and I knew some from hearsay and rumours. At least I had bought the needed equipment including nuts, slings and a static rope(!) I remember we had a discussion in the bus about the merits of the bowline versus the figure of eight for tying in. We also talked about how funny it was that our belay device was called a figure of eight too.

We arrived at K2 (the crag) around noon and immediately prepared for climbing with me at the sharp end. The climb went well, apparently, until I was almost at the top, and I turned my eyes down the route. There lay my belayer comfortably on his back with his eyes half closed. He was quite a few meters from the wall which caused the infamous zipper-effect. Nearly all my pro had popped and was now dangling down the rope. I must have shouted at him, at least to wake him up, but he just smiled back. I knew no other escape than to down climb. 

Lesson learned: Belay closer to the rock! Unfortunately, it took me quite a long time to learn about the difference between static and dynamic ropes…

Titahi Bay,  New Zealand.  My mate had all the shiny gear but lost his bottle, climbing up a metre or two to a pitiful overhang and then backing off.  He handed the gear to me and I made my way steadily upwards, it was an easy climb but I somehow got the route wrong and ended up above and to the side of the belay chains.  No problem I thought I'd got up higher than the chains and had therefore done the climb and going down and sideways to the belay should be no problem.  I traversed sideways to the chains.  Somehow on the way across I dislodged a microwave sized boulder, I think it was the rope, which trundled down.  OK I thought I know what to do here as I've just been reading up on climbing calls.  "BELOW!".  God knows how I managed to anchor, bring up a second and then ab off...I really can't remember.  Likewise why were there chains on a trad route? Much about that day is now lost in the mists of time.

In hindsight god knows how we survived!

Great thread!

I suppose my first lead would have been a diff at Pleasley Vale that I cpuld happily solo bit I wanted to practice belay set up etc... 

My first true lead was probably Pupil Power near Glen Nevis. We arrived ready for a weeks scrambling and with my shiny new gear tow (50m rope, 10 nuts, 5 extenders and maybe some hexes). I couldn't resist what I assumed would be an easy route, little did I know that after the start hard packed mud filled the cracks making gear placement impossible, not wanting to reverse the last move I pressed on finally topping out. 

My next lead was more memorable though (not for good reasons). We set out to climb the North East Buttress on the Ben (Summer), as the CIC a 'kind' bloke pointed out a gully we could scramble up to avaiod a longer walk in. Starting off at grade 2/3 we were well with in out comfort zone, however the gully steadily turned into a groove and sharpened, the crack system at the back closed up. We opted to take a belay on a ledge (not wanting to reverse the previous section and no good options to form an abseil) and I continued up on the sharp end, foot holds getting smaller, the groove flattening out and still no gear. Foot holds still smaller and my bendy boots feeling less secure with each move. Past the half way marker on the rope, spotting a good spike in another 15 meteres I pressed on the features finally gave better holds and with a sling thrown over the spike my heart slowed it's pace (lesson well and truly learned). One short mod/diff section and we topped out on the ridge proper, the 40ft corner was a fun solo after that!

My first attempt at leading was at Broomhill Quarry in the Malverns on a warm sunny evening back in '07. Me and my then girlfriend had been climbing indoors for a while, were really getting into it and had just started building up something that was supposed to look like a trad rack. Or, what we thought was a trad rack.

We'd had a late lunch at the pub after a mornings hike up the Beacon and were returning via the crags that lay next to the road, we visited  Westminster Arms Quarry (Malver... and then Broomhill, which was essentially right behind her parents house. 

I briskly declared as we walked through the front door that we should go climbing, just one route, they were relatively easy routes, or so the old pdf guide suggested. Her parents let us out with some skepticism and my girlfriend scurried on behind me, rope bundled in arms, much less than enthusiastic about the endeavor.

Bushwhacking back into the crag, was some effort, even though it lay just a stones throw from a footpath. Cans of Stella, fag packets and other waste lined the brambles and nettles at the base, it was a proper dump. It was west facing and thus humid and sticky, full of flies, midges and mosquitos.

We dropped our gear and nervously began to rack up, first my Momentum AL harness, one of the cheapest that came with padding at the time. Then my helmet, an over-sized BD half dome, I think I bought it off e bay. A set of DMM wallnuts £40 from UKC, 5 mountain technology 10cm quickdraws, one prussik, one sling, nut key and a figure of 8 device. We only had one proper belay plate between us so I figured it best that the leader be belayed with that. Then the shoes, Red Chilli Sausalito's, they were crap!

"Right then," I said as my girlfriend nervously put me on belay, "here goes!" Off I went, up the middle of the crag, trying to follow the somewhat topo line for a route called 'We know the meaning of cleaning,' it gets HS 4b/c (there's a 4 there, how hard can it be right?!). Part of me wonders if the name lies in the efforts made to clean the base of the crag, or the crag itself (other routes have names like Syringe and Smack, so?).

I pull up over the lip of the starting wall that then eases to a small slab, a groove at the base of a steep wall to my right looks like it might offer some protection to the start. It's a bit mossy, so I pull out my nut key and scrape away to reveal a shallow crack. I poke in a #1 wallnut give it a yank and clip in the rope. So far, so good. I fumble around looking for the next foot and handholds, they seem surprisingly sparse. Slowly working my way up, the hard soles of my shoes struggling for purchase on the slimy rock, I aim for what looks like the sanctuary of a small block at the top of the groove. I push up and as I reach out to grab a sudden feeling of weightlessness hits me. Oh, shit.

I'm airborne, my feet catch the lip of the slab and throws me upside down, I become frozen mid way into a reverse salto as the gear begins to take the fall. "Ping" out pops the #1, a flake of rock with it. I land arse over tit in brambles and stinging nettles, the momentarily paused reverse salto continues as I tumble through the soft undergrowth. 

"Ufff shiii, take this" I untie from the rope and dump my harness. "I'm going for a shower" my last words to my stunned girlfriend before I hobbling back down the path to the house. The burn already setting in. 

Needless to say, despite the relatively soft landing it certainly wasn't painless. The entirety of my back was an enraged mess of thorns and stinging nettle burns. They continued all down my right side, arm and leg. I was quivering in the shower when my still relatively stunned girlfriend came back in, her confused parents poked their head through the door. "What on earth happened?" 

"Well, I fell off."

So that was my first trad lead. Probably explains why I'm a complete chicken.

And as an extra little dose of nostalgia, I even found the thread I started about it: https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rocktalk/first_fallouch-245305

What a tit I was.

My first lead was on Portland, we had a handful of quickdraws and a rope, but no idea of what we were doing, but we had been reliably informed 'the Cuttings' was the place to go.  No guidebook and vague idea where the crag was, we wondered around through the bushes, until we finally found 'the crag'. 

Despite it all looking quite steep and hard, I started up what I thought looked like the easiest line in a corner, the first bolt looking tantalisingly close. If I can just clip that I thought, all will be fine. 

After much slapping, swearing, terrible footwork and grunting, I got level with the first bolt, and shaking like a s******g dog, clipped a quickdraw. I remember thinking "are all routes this hard", as I  started to desperately fumble the rope into the krab, aware that I was rapidly running out of strength. Just as I thought I had it, my foot pop off the hold and I landed in a heap by the belayer....my foot hurt like hell and started to swell up, and I spent the rest of day (and about a month after) limping around.   

Anyway, once we walked round the corner we found the actual Cuttings and all the easy routes. Turns out we had been at the New Cuttings where the 'easy' route I was stupidly attempting was about 6c (or something similarly beyond my ability).

Great fun.

I can't seem to find the archive on the site, but DMM and UKC ran a competition for 500 word accounts of first leads, possibly about 2008. It would be interesting to see how things have changed, or not, in the intervening decade. Maybe a UKC guru can find us a link.

Dave

"Ordinary Route" on Idwal Slabs was mine; "not too bad" you might think and "quite suitable for a first lead" however it was a cold drizzly January day and just my third climb of any type anywhere. As I knotted the rope around my waist and draped a couple of slings around my neck with two or three nuts clipped onto them, I glanced across at my partner, who I'd known for all of two days and thought "this'll be fine, he's done loads!". Little did I know that he had looked at me and thought exactly the same thing.

We set off, taking alternate leads and despite our inexperience managed to get to the top of the route without too much bother; now all we had to do, in the gathering late afternoon gloom, was to find the way off! This proved far more difficult and dangerous than the route but we somehow we survived and forty years later are still mates.

My first lead was trad on some short damp grotty Diff in a short damp grotty quarry somewhere in South Wales (lost in the mental mists of time). I was, frankly, rather scared and not quite believing I was doing this. Got to a ledge and to my shame belayed (about 6 metres off the deck!) so my partner could lead the second half rather than me. A very inauspicious start but the first the start of something I have found to be wonderful to this day. 

Excellent! Well done for surviving. 

Excellent tale, I wouldn't send my worst enemy to lead anything in the Malverns! 

Awesome effort, best thing I've read anywhere in ages!

Not especially epic I'm afraid, but it's​ a bit of a story.
After a year or two of indoor climbing and progressing to southern sandstone, I decided it was time to progress to outdoor leading. Sport of course, trad was just way too much gear, faff and risk. What's​ the point when you can just clip bolts? 
Asking around at the wall I joined up with three guys who were heading to Wintours Leap. A trad venue, but with a promise of bolted stuff too. I could second the trad and lead some sport.
In the car on the way I paired up with a guy who had some trad experience and a rack. On arrival it transpired that his total experience consisted of three days, and his rack, which he'd never used before, had been given to him by a retiring acquaintance and appeared to consist of the odd bits left over after someone​ has lost all the useful sizes. 
On arrival we set off in search of the North Wall, as it had been recommended as a good place to start. It's not hard to find, but we failed miserably. During the epic battle through brambles and fallen trees that followed I felt a sting, then another and another. I was surrounded by angry wasps and they were laying into me with a vengeance. Screaming and flailing my arms I ran down the steep overgrown hillside to escape, amazingly managing to stay upright and uninjured. Back on the path I took stock. I was covered in stings and my left hand was swelling rapidly, already I could hardly bend my fingers. 
We eventually found a suitable V Diff and got ready to climb. Like all the easy routes at Wintours it was more than one pitch, four to be precise. My partner had never climbed a multipitch before, and wasn't sure how it worked for the same person to lead all the pitches. He decided it would make it easier if I led alternate pitches. I wasn't sure about this, but he insisted that I was technically a better climber than him and only slightly less experienced, so if he could do it so could I.
So, my first ever trad climb as a second was pitch one, and my first lead was pitch two. I learned a lot. At the first placement I realised that I should have racked all the gear in some kind of system, instead of just taking all the gear with quickdraws still attached and clipping it to random places on my harness. At the second placement I learned not to place gear behind small flakes, after I tugged on the wire and the flake broke off, taking a chunk out of my lip. Eventually I made it to a large ledge and built myself a nice belay.
I sat on the edge, 70m above the Wye and looked out at the view while my partner climbed. Scratched to bits, stings throbbing and blood dripping from my lip, I felt a wonderful peace. This, I thought to myself, is what climbing is about.
We didn't do any sport that day. I did eventually do a few bolted routes, but I don't really see the appeal.

I'm sure I remember climbing next to you some time a good while back at Wintours, think we did maybe Left Hand Route or Right Hand Route and you guys were on John's Route?  I remember the almighty clatter of gear and associated other noise that signified a fall but you folks shouted out that all was OK when we asked.  Was this the same day?  I've avoided John's route to this day, but perhaps you were on Compost Wall or Loads Lids or something? But as you say sitting at a belay in Wintours makes it all seem worthwhile : )

Some great stories here, keep 'em coming!

I said in my first post that my first proper lead was Sin. My first actual lead very nearly got me into what would probably have been deep trouble. I'd been taken to Froggatt for my initiation, and I seconded a couple of Diffs and a VDiff. My partner then wanted to lead a Severe, which was basically a 12 foot boulder problem, but couldn't get off the ground. I was quite a bit taller than him, so I asked if I could have a go and succeeded.

Cut to my second outing, a few weeks later: I now considered myself a climber and found myself in a van full of friends of friends, heading for North Wales for a climbing weekend. That first evening we all, of course, got very drunk. One guy was without a partner and asked me at what standard I climbed, and I in my euphoric state replied that I led Severe. He replied that that was perfect, he'd got a VS lined up for the following morning at a place called Gogarth, and could I second him? I accepted the offer enthusiastically. Thankfully it rained torrentially for the next two days, and we were forced to organize crawling races through culverts and streams to keep ourselves occupied.

That was the same day, my second ever lead. I learned something important on that one too - the vital importance of route finding. I went off route onto a variation that is described in the guidebook as "VS. Not cleaned or recommended" An accurate description. It's not VS climbing, but it's a pile of choss with no gear apart from a couple of trees. I had a "What the f*ck am I doing I'm 10m above a worthless runner with no hope of escape or retreat. I'm a f*cking idiot for getting into this situation, if I get out of this alive I'm never climbing again" moment. But then I pulled myself together and realised that my only option was to keep climbing, so I topped out. There​ was no gear at the top either, so I stood behind the wall on the 1' wide verge with trucks whizzing past on the road behind me. That belay was almost as scary as the climb.

The guy who fell off was leading the other pair in our group, and he'd blindly followed us up this appalling route. He didn't have any proper gear in either, but he landed in one of the trees and was OK. He finished the route ( he didn't really have any other options), but I don't think he ever climbed again.

​​​​I think John's route is actually OK, if you stay on it.

I had to laugh at this. I bet the Govarth VS was Lighthouse Arrete, as it's probably the easiest route at the crag. A perfect epic would have resulted, as the first pitch is an easy traverse, so by the time he found out you couldn't climb VS he would have been totally up shit creek

The only thing I regret about my first trad lead was that I didn’t note down the name of the route. I wasn’t really thinking about such things back then! It was a Diff or VDiff at Kyloe in the Woods - the only time I’ve been there or indeed to Northumberland. I don’t recall much other than that it was a nice spot and things passed fairly uneventfully. How dull!

Here is someone else's (an ex of mine) first - and last - lead: After seconding for a while, she decided to give leading a go and we chose Acoustic (V Diff at Shorncliff). I led it and pointed out the gear placements, she seconded and took the gear out then we swapped places. She got about 6 feet up, placed a wire and I said 'Give it a good tug to make sure it's set properly'. She did, but outwards and committing her weight to it without holding on with the other hand. Of course, it popped and she landed in a heap at my feet. Never to lead again...

Yes, I also assumed Lighthouse Arete years later, and yes, you're right about the probable consequences! I'd never even abseiled before.

Mr Stottie is correct. In 2007 DMM sponsored a UKC comp in which 122 entrants submitted descriptions of their first lead in 500 words or less. Unfortunately, each entry was given its own URL, so they're difficult to find. Fortunately, in January 2008, UKC instituted 'New content at UKC this month' and links to quite a few can be found there. 

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/new_content_at_ukclimbingcom_t...

Mr Stottie's entry figured amongst the Top Ten finalists:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2008/01/my_first_lead_essays_the_top_ten-42...

Although my own entry warranted no plaudits, the competition did lead to at least one lasting friendship:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=268542

Nice. Google search also brings up a few...

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.ukclimbing.com/news/competitions+%...

Thanks to you and nwclimber!