the nostalgia project: Motorhead, Switzerland (1991)

The route

Eldorado, Grimsel Pass © gipfelbuch.ch

Eldorado (no relation to the Colorado canyon) is a 600m glacier-polished granite face rising above the Grimselsee reservoir in Switzerland. Along with the nearby Handegg Pass cliffs, it was one of the first cliffs in the Alps developed purely for rock climbing. Motorhead (6a+ or about 5.10c, 14 pitches) is the best known route there, following a series of crack systems. It was established in the early 1980s by the prolific Remy brothers. (Owners of Arnaud Petit's amazing guidebook to world free-climbing classics, "Parois de Legendes", can find it on page 37.)




The context

1991 was a fairly settled year for me. The house was no longer a building site. I had a programming contract with my old employer from 1987/88, in offices that I could reach easily by bike or bus. I started a part-time MBA program at what is now Cass Business School, also an easy commute. Most classes were in the evenings and were typically followed by lengthy pub sessions. It was the first time I had voluntarily socialised with non-climbers; probably a healthy development.

As the summer approached, a plan took shape for a climbing road trip in Europe. A good friend and regular at the Mile End wall, Noel Jenkins, had recently moved to the same area of east London. Noel, Catherine and I spent a lot of time together, especially in the "lesbian cafe", a coffee-and-bagels place in a repurposed 19th century warehouse with communal seating and studiedly-unfriendly counter staff. (Only Noel and I called it the "lesbian cafe"; in fact the cafe itself was too cool to have a name at all. In the 1990s we Gen-X males believed that politically-incorrect humour was OK if it sounded plausibly-ironic; wrongly, of course, we now know, looking back in time from the scorched earth cultural battlefield of the 2010s.)  Noel had visited Handegg earlier in the year, and was keen to return. I wanted to clip bolts at sport cliffs. With optimism, and a lack of attention to drive times, we concocted an itinerary in Germany, Switzerland and Italy that should offer something for everyone.

A doodle from the diary: a very approximate map of our 1991 roadtrip ...  

... and a more accurate version! Who knew Spain was so big and that Italy slants east?

However, we needed a fourth person. Catherine had been working with an Italian climber, Edoardo, who  had occasionally been joining on us on weekend trips and even on a short visit to Finale in Italy. He liked our idea, not least as he needed to spend some time in Italy during the summer. Unfortunately this introduced some challenging group dynamics. Edoardo, an investment banker with strong opinions and an intolerant streak, and Noel, a state-school geography teacher with an intolerant streak and strong opinions, did not get on very well. Meanwhile, Catherine and I, with less than a year left in our relationship, were becoming quite fractious. To make the trip happen, it was tacitly agreed that Noel would not climb with Edoardo, ditto I with Catherine.

So one day in early August, we crammed climbing gear, tents and four adults into my Vauxhall Nova hatchback (a bit smaller than a modern Toyota Yaris) and set off for the channel ferry. On the way to Switzerland we stopped in the Pfalz region, an un-recommendable area of sandstone cliffs surrounded by impeccably-neat German farmland. Another half-day of driving took us into Switzerland and up to the Handegg Pass, where we set up in a campsite for a few days. For the first couple of days we tried routes at Handegg. The style was predominantly low-angle granite friction: very alien for me at the time. The diary is ambiguous as to whether we completed any routes. The next day we planned to climb at Eldorado.

The ascent

The hike into Eldorado takes about two hours, walking along the top of the massive Grimsel dam, then along the shore of the reservoir. We must have woken early that day as the diary records that Edoardo and I started up Motorhead at 6:30am.  Catherine and Noel were climbing the nearby Septumania, a route similar in length and grade to Motorhead, but more of an open slab climb.

Perhaps unfairly, Edoardo had a reputation for climbing slowly. This concerned me, as I did not want to get benighted on the face. I was uncharacteristically assertive as to how I thought we should tackle the climb: alternate leads, minimum gear placements and no stopping until we were past the 8th pitch crux. Fortunately we discovered that the climb suited this style. Much of the route was easy jamming or laybacking on low angle rock on which long runouts were not too scary. I got to lead the crux pitch, some cool face moves on a steeper wall with sudden exposure.

The crux 8th pitch © unknown

Looking down pitch 11 © unknown

We topped out the route at noon; almost laughably ahead of schedule. As it was hard to judge where the other routes exited the face, we decided not to wait for Catherine and Noel. As far as I recall, the descent was easy enough to navigate but lengthy. At one stage there was an awkward crossing of a small watercourse. As we neared the base of the wall, we realised for the first time that the weather was deteriorating. We had been so focused on moving fast on the route that we had barely looked at the sky.

Almost exactly as we reached the shoreline, it began to rain. No big deal, I thought initially. Then the rain got much more intense. Within half an hour, it became clear the situation was quite serious. Like many granite cliffs, Eldorado has a dome-like shape. The convexity makes it hard to see beyond the first few pitches of the routes. What we could see were waterfalls appearing on all the drainage lines, followed quite rapidly by rockfall. As time passed, a few rappelling climbers started to appear, drenched and desperate. Unfortunately none were Catherine and Noel. I began to think the worst. It seemed inconceivable that they could have finished their route in the conditions, and rappelling amidst the rockfall looked lethal. My mind began considering how best I could explain to Catherine's belligerent father how his daughter had died (or whether it might just be safest to go into hiding for a few years).

Eventually, I suggested to Edoardo that we hike back up the descent to look for them. Pointless perhaps but at least would get us moving. Neither of us had any rain-gear or warm layers, and I was becoming very cold. I forget whether Edoardo joined me or stayed at the cliff base. I jogged up the descent as fast as I could. No sign of anyone for a long time. Finally, I saw them. On the wrong side of the watercourse we had crossed earlier. It had swollen with rain and was no longer a benign easy crossing. In my memory, Noel and Catherine were huddled-up and no longer trying to descend, but that may be inaccurate. Whichever, I was able to help them get a rope across and move on down safely.

By the time we got back to the car, we were all shattered, starving and close to hypothermic. We drove straight to the nearest town, at the base of the Handegg Pass. Bizarrely, the skies cleared at the same time. I have a strong memory of the four of us seated at a restaurant terrace, surrounded by happy diners enjoying late afternoon sun, while we shivered and could barely speak.

We drove out of Switzerland the next day in search of warm sport climbing in Italy. We visited Erto (too steep, too polished) then Arco (better ...) in quick succession. Perhaps because of residual fatigue, or perhaps because of too much time together in a small car full of wet stuff, the group dynamic worsened. Edoardo bailed on us in Arco - departing rather grandly on a Lake Garda ferry. Noel, Catherine and I returned to London via Donautal (pretty but unmemorable) and Freyr (not even pretty).

Subsequent ascents

I have not been back to Eldorado.

the nostalgia project: Right Wall, UK (1990)

The route

Dinas Cromlech © Mountain Project. No prizes for identifying Right Wall.

About ten years ago, when I lived in the UAE, I shared a long morning drive out to a climbing area with my friend Nick. His conversation topic, for at least an hour or more, was the word "iconic". He thought it had become massively over-used. As he worked in advertising, a business where adjectives matter, I paid some attention. At the time "iconic" was not a word that I used much, but, perhaps as an unintentional consequence of his rant, it has crept into my vocabulary.

Avoiding "iconic" or other cliched language is especially difficult when writing about Right Wall, not only as the route itself is iconic, but so are many of its neighbouring climbs and, indeed, the entire cliff: Dinas Cromlech in Llanberis Pass in North Wales. The Cromlech looms above "The Pass" like a medieval castle re-imagined by Frank Gehry, with big planar features rendered at intriguing angles.



At its centre is the Cenotaph Corner, E1, obviously sustained for most of its forty metre length. The legendary Joe Brown made the first ascent in the 1950s, notoriously using a few pitons despite his peer group, and preceding generations, considering that unfair. Focus then shifted to the two huge adjoining flat walls. Left Wall, E2, which is a few degrees less steep than the right, was climbed as an aid route in the same decade then free climbed in 1970. For modern climbers with strong fingers it is probably easier than the corner.

Right Wall was regarded as one of Britain last great climbing challenges in the early 1970s. It fell to a top British climber of that era, Pete Livesey, in 1974. Like Joe Brown, he used questionable tactics for the time. In this case, starting out onsight but tying off his lead rope at a ledge at two-thirds height, then soloing off sideways to arrange a rappel inspection of the final moves, before returning to the sharp end. Livesey would have graded Right Wall something like "Hard Extremely Severe" but once Britain's E-grade became generally adopted in the late 1970s the route was recognised as a benchmark at the then-highest grade: E5. In YDS grades it would probably rate as low/ mid 5.11 for difficulty but R or possibly X for seriousness. Most of the climbing is very runout.

The context

1990 was a tough year for me. Overshadowing everything else, my father died in April, from myeloma originally diagnosed in 1986, after a remission period of about three years.

During the 1989/90 winter I had earned some reasonable money from a programming contract but the commute to the client's office was long and the work tedious. I opted not to renew the contract. (The client was actually a subsidiary of a US investment bank, originating mortgages in Britain that could be securitised by the parent firm. Had I know that two decades later this type of activity would grow in size and complexity to a level that would almost crash the world financial system, I might have taken more interest.)

Gentrifying 150 year old floorboards

Meanwhile Catherine and I unwisely bought a small terraced house together in a sorta-bohemian but mostly-shit corner of east London. The house needed a lot of immediate renovation work to be liveable, for which we had limited money and no useful skills of our own. At an early stage there was a cartoonish, but not actually funny, moment when the ancient horsehair-and-plaster ceiling of a ground floor room collapsed while we were sanding floorboards above. We were storing all of our stuff, including clothes, in the fall zone. On another occasion, I ventured into the dusty roof void and discovered a crack in the side wall wide enough to reach right through into the neighbour's property: unrepaired bomb damage from the Blitz.

However I was in reasonable climbing shape. One reason was the Mile End climbing wall, which was only a few minutes drive from the house. This facility in abandoned industrial space near a canal was originally the headquarters of the "North London Rescue Commando", a sort of urban sea scouts group run by one of those elderly batchelor eccentrics who stereotypically involve themselves with such things. Somehow it had been infiltrated by climbers who had installed steep bouldering panels that were cutting edge technology for their time. It was by far the best indoor climbing available in London for several years.

Mile End was also a good place to meet other London climbers. Previously I had been feeling pressure to join one of the London climbing clubs, which seemed to involve a lot of forced socialising and other BS. A loose group of Mile End regulars were climbing regularly together from 1989 onwards. Most Fridays we would set off from central London for weekend trips to areas like the gritstone (2-3 hours), Pembroke (3-4 hours), North Devon/ Cornwall or North Wales (both 4-5 hours). We were starting to learn how to go sport climbing around Europe more frequently too, though that became exponentially more easy from the mid-1990s onward when low-cost airlines like Ryan Air and Easyjet began expanding. Sport climbing was good for stamina, which in turn made British trad climbing easier: fewer moments of pumped terror and more time to fiddle in decent protection.

Thanks to these factors, I was gradually progressing into higher trad grades, notably the "magic" E5. I had climbed my first E5 in 1988: Track of the Cat on gritstone, though as a solo after top-roping. In October 1989 I had managed another, Just Another Day, in Pembroke (since downgraded). This raised the question of trying Right Wall. There were rumours that it was "soft" for E5, though still serious. It was hard to get reliable information, as no-one in my immediate climbing circle had done it. (Being able to research routes online still lay a decade or more into the future.)

The ascent

A small group of us went up to Wales for the May holiday weekend. One guy belonged to a  Manchester-based group which the diary refers to "the misogynist Rucksack Club". I believe that referred to their then policy of not allowing women in their Llanberis Pass hut (yes, really, in 1990!) where we intended to stay. Unfortunately I don't remember whether Catherine and I camped outside or raised a finger to the rule entirely. I hope the latter.

On Saturday the weather was perfect. We headed straight up to the Cromlech. I remember a few things from that day. I had planned to warm up on an easier route but all the available options were already taken. So I started up Right Wall. The first few metres are unprotected and quite thin, but I almost immediately realised that the style of climbing suited me and that I wouldn't be falling off. The holds were all positive, either incut or well-textured flatties. I don't remember the middle section of the route at all. At about two-third height, a ledge runs across the face wide enough to allow a full no-hands rest.

About seven metres above is the final crux at the "porthole"; a recessed circular feature. I had heard of people taking long falls from there. For me there was no drama there either. I have a vague memory of rocking up into the porthole using an undercut, but I may have invented that retrospectively. Similarly placing some small RP nuts close to the porthole and wondering how people managed to take long falls there. At the top, I yelled down "E3!" to Catherine, no doubt to the irritation of other people at the cliff. But the climb had felt straightforward.

climber on the middle section of Right Wall © unknown

On the rappel descent I swung over to inspect the top part of Lord of the Flies, E6, the direct line left of Right Wall, next on the list of Cromlech classics and immortalised for my generation by a TV program (below) about Ron Fawcett's first ascent (25:08: "Come on arms, do yer stuff"). "Lord" was damp at the top so my massive overconfidence did not flow into making an attempt; almost certainly a good thing. Catherine led Left Wall cleanly, which was a new tick at her highest grade.



Subsequent attempts

I never climbed Right Wall again but did revisit the Cromlech a few times. In 1993 I hiked up there twice and climbed three more routes left of the corner: Resurrection, E4, the slightly-contrived True Grip, E5 and the dangerous Memory Lane, E3. I also have vague memory of climbing Foil, E3, left of Memory Lane, but can find no record in the diary.

Lord of the Flies is high on the list of British routes that I wish I had done. 1990 could have been my moment, when I was still young enough to summon the boldness/ stupidity. In those days the route was also better protected. (Subsequent years have seen Fawcett's original pitons rust away and break, then some critical nut placements disappear also. These days people are using skyhooks and even foot-placed slings for protection!) Unfortunately, about a month after climbing Right Wall I fell awkwardly at the start of a limestone climb in Derbyshire, landing on a boulder at ground level with an outstretched arm. I broke the ulna on that arm completely so it had to be set under anaesthetic. Though it eventually healed up fine, I was out of climbing for most of the rest of the year.