The 9th of January 2011 will for ever be a seminal date for me, this was the birth of my daughter Emily. However much I love her, though, the 19th of February springs to my mind too. Why would you ask? Well, for something petty and pretty much life-unchanging. On that day I managed to climb the crux of Blood, Sweat and Frozen Tears, my first grade VIII,8. Soon this grade will come down as it is widely accepted as being soft touch for VIII. Nonetheless, I went there, gathered the nerves and launched myself up that very steep looking route. Interestingly, this would be an absolutely rank summer route, so in my books is completely fair game for winter ascents.
So, you would think I'd be delighted. Well, in a way not really and this will be made clear in this report. But to start with I must say that BS&FT is one of two winter routes climbed this winter! The other one was a shortish route called Goldfinger on Ben Cruachan. Climbed about a month earlier. I would admit that this is definitely not the best build-up to pushing one's grade and particularly not in winter on a fairly remote crag. Golfinger, though, left me with a feeling that I could do it'here I was able to climb VII, 7 fairly well with no days out in ages. Futhermore I had a new pair of trousers and a new pair of axes to play with! Those who know me will be spilling their mug of tea whilst reading those lines: What? A tight fisted Frenchman like him buying new axes?
Rest easy people, I haven't given my soul to the all materialist golden calf. The trews were an absolute necessity since my old North Face ones, purchased in 1998, had more patches and holes than unscathed fabric. They had not been waterproof for the last two winters'but I am getting older and seem to suffer from the cold more these days. The axes'well! I needed a boost in confidence and decided to go leashless with those bungees. So I got a pair of DMM Rebels for '100 off Garth. I had considered tweaking further my old modified Axars. I just could not come to any satisfactory solution.
But anyways, back to the climbing. Leashless really made a difference: you can swap, you can shake out and you can really increase your range of moves. It certainly helped me on the crux of Goldfinger. But would that be enough for my winter goal, grade VIII? No, for that I needed to get the conditions, the weekend off and convince my usual partners that they had always been wanting to climb at that grade. The latter point was to be the hardest! I had to use reverse psychology and stoop to real lows: an extremely lame UKC post:
http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=445734&v=1#x6252518
This got me in contact with more folks than you'd think, and particularly one of our keenest Scottish young shots: Greg Boswell. My first VIII was to be Citadel and with him I was sure to get up it somehow. This did not materialize as Greg had put all his mind power towards repeating the Hurting. So on a very windy, foul day I ended up being a belay bunny. I was hoping to second a XI, 11. But he did not complete the route that day. He's a good lad though and I'll definitely climb with him again.
For that infidelity, I got stick from my usual climbing partners and a mini jealousy display for the weekend of the 19th. Greg owed me one and was going to stick to my choice, but I had loosely arranged to climb with Dave Kerr. He was well annoyed that I would dingy him. This proved to be the wee push I needed. My text read:
"I'd rather climb my VIII with you. I barely know the lad. I trust you. But VIII isn't your target!"
Dave was convinced. We planned the route well. We'd climbed on Beinn Eighe in winter three times before. He has a van. We had been on the wall before. We knew what conditions it would need. And so we rolled on the car park at around 11pm on Friday night. Got ourselves comfy in his roomy van and proceeded to get to sleep quickly. Despite the nerves building up, I slept like a log. Thurso-Inverness takes two hours, Inverness-Torridon another one and a half!
In the morning we woke up at 6am and got quickly ready for the brutal approach. In order to get to the far east wall, eastern rampart and fuselage wall you are much quicker to go up to the top of the hill via the front slopes: a real 2-2 and a half hours slog, closer to 3 hours under heavy snow. There wasn't a lot of snow, the snowline was around 800-900 meters. But I was confident we would find ideal conditions. Dave has been really fit all season after all his ski touring so we made the abseil station in 2 hours and a quarter!
If you've never been there, let me tell you that this abseil approach is very intimidating: 1 full 60m rope length, some of it free standing, to a narrow ledge and another 40 odd meters to the foot of the wall in the very steep west gully!
The abseil line is in its two lower thirds Blood Sweat and Frozen Tears!
The line was indeed very steep but all in and the turf was frozen. From abseiling you could tell there was more to the route then its crux pitch. It is all steep and sustained. Thankfully, from previous visits we knew all the beta. Where to find the belay stance, which is equipped with a good solid rope and gets replaced regularly; it doesn't really matter however, since for that particular route this is also the top belay so you could come with extra slings and leave them there. We also knew where to find the ledge and that you need to crawl, side step about 6 meters right above the chasm to reach the corner with another in-situ peg belay. Bring some pegs though! Some idiot had stripped half of it on that day!
The last pitch looked absolutely magnificent as we descended into it. I was getting jealous: I had come under the understanding that I would do pitch 2, which is accepted as the hardest. It is the hardest but the worse in terms of quality, yet it would still get two stars! Indeed pitch 1 looked even better as we looked down from the belay. And it certainly was. It is a peach of a pitch. 45 meters of amazing, sustained and always possible tech 7 climbing: You always feel like you have come to a cul-de-sac and then you find a bomber hook. It requires a positive approach though and good balance. The hooks are good, but sometimes well spaced. The terrain is also very steep:
The stance is at the very top of the shot at the end of the obvious corner. The crux is at the very top where you see a jutting block barring the corner. You have to climb across the slab on some fairly flat hooks to gain a really positive torqueing crack at the edge of the slab. The footholds are not aplenty and your last gear is in the corner. Solid VII, 7 in my books.
Dave worked steadily, and whilst he was not slow it took him the best part of an hour to get to the comfy belay stance right below the technical crux of the route. He is a solid climber and really climbed it well, finding good gear in places where things weren't that obvious.
I set off seconding the pitch, and was starting to suffer from the belayer blues! I was very shaky in the first half of the route, but warmed up to it. When I reached the crux of this pitch, I really enjoyed it. I felt a bit nervous but, generally speaking, good. Footwork was good, and I still loved my new axes. Arms were not suffering and no hot aches. Well I would need all of that and the rest for pitch 2.
The belay stance is a roomy ledge that finishes on the corner line on its left but continues right. I racked up, went for a stage fright pee further right and starting to study my corner. It looks deceptively easy but I had a strong suspicion that footholds would be rare. What I hadn't bargained for was the boldish nature of it. I asked Dave to re-jig his belay so that he would not stand right below me' not a confidence inspiring moment I will admit. I thought to myself that I would go a few meters, dig some gear out, place it, down climb and access the nerves. So I set off, it was thin, it was sequency and once I had started it, irreversible! To add more spice to it, it was bold too. I managed to bang a shoddy bulldog in an axe placement in turf come semi torque 3 meters up from the belay, all of it hard tech 7.
(next pick is not ours... Dave was too busy being scared for me)
Some more climbing in that slabby corner brought me to the obvious slab traverse left. 'I had an interesting,' tiny,' but somehow positive torque for my right axe, one thin rail for my feet (were the guy's feet are on the pic) and very pumped arms. So I used a technique I witnessed whilst belaying Greg B. It works a treat and helps you shake off: load your torque with a hand on above the shaft choke, hook your elbow on the hand grip and don't move too much! It works really well and allowed me to bang a number one nut in the right wall. There is an in-situ nut in the slab on the left that I clipped but one of the wires is bust. I managed to get some juice back and so I carefully proceeded through the sequence: left axe on shoulder, rock sidepull for left hand, tiny rail for left foot. Cross reach for a faint crack line with a thin 5 mil torque, swap feet. Get left foot up to waist level into a neat triangular shape small niche. Get all the weight on it (it's off vertical here), let go of the awkward cross over position.' Reach for axe on shoulder, try to hook on ledge'shit no turf. By shifting my weight further left, I managed to hook one of the blocks. One of these insecure, sliding all blade hooks. Get right axe on shoulder. Match the left axe. Heel hook on ledge in snow in pull hard! I now was on the comfy ledge panting. That was the most technical winter climbing I had ever done! It took me a good quarter of an hour sat on the ledge to get my breath back. The problem was that the ledge is below a head height roof with few holds on the backwall going onto a slightly overhanging wall and grooves. It wasn't over. The climbing was more obvious but very pumpy. A torque that was ok to pull all the weight with a flat holds for your left hand on the lip of the roof. Another of these shoulder axe arrangements. Crank up reach for your axe to another crack high up left with a choke stone hook. Cut loose, and place your left foot on the lip hold and hug the wall. You could stay here for a while and place gear. Until then I had climbed really well, steady and poised. At that point the pump set for good and the brain switched off. I should have placed one piece: my last was on the ledge 2 meters below my feet.
I had to move left to gain a series of grooves before coming back into the main corner line on the right after another couple of meters or so. I was hoping the grooves would become off vertical again as even though the place was a semi rest it was at least 5 degrees overhanging. I matched the shaft of my left axe, reached for the grooves torqued my front point into the crack and pulled up'.to find only flat shelves. I was too spent to climb down, so I placed axes on flat holds after flat holds for the next 2 meters or so. No gear, breathing really hard. Until I found a wee platform with a hand-free rest I still had no gear. I was now a full 5 meters above gear and ledge, and pumped silly. Things were snowier because it was now lying back a bit. Some tentative clearing found two bomber cams. I could breath.
The climbing was now much easier, solid 6 at most but I was spent. At one point I slid down 1 meter onto a wee ledge, both feet in the snow. A combination of whole body friction, ledge and bungees meant I never weighed the ropes. I still did not claim the onsight on my log book though. One of the rope had also jammed in the corner, making the drag horrendous. Those last 10 meters were a work of attrition. I had pushed the limit too far, I had climbed completely in the red'I had not enjoyed the second half of the pitch. I was disappointed in myself. 25 meters of climbing took 1 hour and a half.
'Dave was very quiet, I could tell he had been positively scared. It took him a good half hour to second the pitch. He climbed it well but said he would have never committed to it. He also said:
If that's how you'll climb your VIIIs, you'll do it without me. You were out of control. You could have out some gear above the roof'.
That's all he said- nothing more, but that nailed the last nail of that coffin. I had gone up an VIII, I had not succeeded in ticking an VIII.
The belay was comfy but not roomy, very exposed. It was below an obvious massive roof with only an off-width crack through it. Our line now traversed left wildly onto slabs, before joining the abseil line following and obvious left to right fault.
The climbing was never desperate but very tenuous. This is another full pitch of around 50 meters of tech 6/7 climbing. It goes through various overlaps via chimney with rock overs onto fins of rock. The climbing is very good but I must admit that I recall little of it. I was fried. The top of my forearms were cramping up. I do remember that I enjoyed seconding it and that it was not straightforward and very varied. It would probably get overall VII, if a bit soft.
We topped out. I was quite subdued. Dave shook my hand and said:
"You climbed well but you need to have some reserve for the gear mate. You can just turn up and climb at that grade safely. You just proved that VIII is possible but you need to train." Nough said.
The long walk back was tiring and I was fighting mixed feelings. We made the lower path before dark.
Then the long drive back. I did catch about 40 minutes sleep, because I would have to drive another 2 hours on top this 1 hour and a half trip.
I had stached my car at the Torre round about, 15 miles North West of Inverness. Dave dropped me. I then drove back up to Thurso on my tod.
Thankfully I found my wife happy after a good day with our 2 months old daughter. The latter was peacefully asleep in her cot. A hug, a shower and a quick pasta had still not livened me up. Helen had noticed I was very quiet. She did state: 'so VIII is your limit then'.
I will climb other VIII, but after I have trained and prepared properly. Anyways, that was probably not VIII. Just hard VII,8. It remains a fabulous line, climb and an awesome day out.
Innes Papert on the start of P3
Dave Kerr & Erick Baillot