UKC

In this month's Crag Notes, Johnny Dawes takes us away from the mainstream and back to where it all began for him: the Malvern Hills. It's an unlikely venue for rock climbing, far away from being Fontainebleau or Yosemite in terms of its quality, but there's a joy to be found from working with such a medium. "That joy of inventing crags where they barely exist", says Johnny...

Fabulous; Dawes hits the target once again. I remember the agony of living in Herefordshire and trying to find anything to climb on. The Woolhope area provided a load of crap cheese. Symonds yat was great but involved a 30 mile cycle ride.

I did find good rock eventually but can't find any valid comparison to Dawes with what I did with it. Except in my imagination.

Bl**dy hell, if you'd been born a few years earlier we'd have been competing for first ascents (you'd have won, I think it is safe to say.) I managed to trade organised sport at my school in Worcester on Wednesday afternoons for climbing in the Hills from age 16 on; every week we'd anticipate the great things we were going to do, and then every Wednesday afternoon our anticipation would crash against the reality of our limited abilities and the truly sh*te rock that is the Malverns.

But we had some great times: top roping the Gullet Quarry, all 300' of it! Clipping useless mild steel pitons leading the routes on Ivy Scar, quite possibly pegs placed by Wilf Noyce. We practiced prusiking there as well, with a single mild steel peg as an anchor. But Tank Quarry was the jewel in the crown. There was a huge central feature, a 150' slab most obviously like the Devil's Slide, but Doug Scott had just had an article published called the Big Scoop so that's what we called it. From the ground I could see what I imagined would be a perfect placement for my pride and joy, a Clog Hex 6. When I finally launched myself at the beggar, 150' up the slab I discovered my perfect placement consisted of two walls of vertical earth. Escaping upwards from that - there's another 150' to the top - gave my what I still think is my first genuine near death experience. (Somebody 'famous' interviewed by the Guardian a few years back made the same claim.)  

But there were lots of really good slab problems at Tank Quarry, and we used to hope that some hotshot would visit and make us raise our game a little, stretch our ideas of what might be possible, but it never happened.   You were too late!