the nostalgia project: Exile, Oman (2006)

The route

55 metres of razor crimps -
the monstrous Exile, 7b at Wonderwall in Oman

The limestone Al-Hajar mountains stretch for about seven hundred dusty kilometers from the northern tip of the Oman enclave, Musandam to the furthest western region of Oman. For much of its length it forms the approximate border with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) then a sort of retaining wall to the Empty Quarter sand desert. For climbers the Al-Hajar has strong positives and negatives. Vegetation is scarce and big cliffs are common, but the extreme heat renders most of the rock shattered and unreliable. Unfussy climbers will find almost unlimited "chossaneering" potential but good quality climbing needs more careful searching out.

Wonderwall, just west of the UAE/ Oman border and a few kilometres as the vulture flies from the UAE desert city, Al Ain, was one of the first cliffs in the region to be discovered by modern climbers and considered solid enough to document routes. It consists of a long fin of limestone strata twisted and up-ended to give interesting faces at various angles. A quintessential desert crag: camels roam amongst fig trees in the basin below the cliffs and some routes start straight from sand dunes. The Central Wall is Wonderwall's most impressive feature, being almost plumb-vertical and blank for a full rope length. Exile, 7b (5.12b) is the "king line" up its middle. Nowhere desperate, it gets its grade from its crimpy sustained character: one monstrous 55m pitch with no hands-off rests. Eighteen bolts!

The context 

When I was deciding whether to accept my job offer in Abu Dhabi in 2004, one criteria that had to be checked off was the existence of outdoor climbing. Fortunately this required no research as UK climbing magazines had already run a couple of articles about UAE climbing. Furthermore a frequent poster on the UKClimbing.com web forum, Alan Stark, had just returned home from the country, and often wrote about the climbing there. He had also written a guidebook, which he was selling as a PDF on a CD. I bought it before leaving Britain.

As Alan had discovered Wonderwall (and named it - in the mid-90s when scouse-rockers Manchester band Oasis were at their zenith), the cliff featured prominently in his guide. I could not help noticing that the Central Wall seemed unclimbed. Alan confirmed this in email, alluding to the probable need for bolts, which he regarded as undesirable. I was surprised that a traditional British view of climbing could hold sway so far away, but would soon learn that the small UAE climbing scene was heavily influenced by some older expats with roots in the 1960s/ 1970s. An exception had been the Cook brothers team from Dorset, Damian and Dominic, who had bolted a few sport routes in Musandam but they had left a few years before. (Indeed, Damian, very sadly, was dead, drowned in Mallorca after a DWS session.) Regardless, my interest was sufficiently aroused that I obtained some bolts and hangers before flying to Abu Dhabi.

Looking across Wonderwall from the west in typical hazy UAE conditions

Side view of Central Wall.
For scale, note the climbers on the hollowed-out ledge on the left.

Straight-on view of Central Wall

Somehow I managed to get a ride out to Wonderwall on my first weekend, with an enthusiastic expat teacher who, impressively, had also persuaded his employers, the American School, to allow him to build a lead wall in their gym. (Sadly Chris quit the UAE a few months later.) We did a few moderate sport routes then hiked under the Central Wall, which lived up to expectations.

However the most memorable part of the trip came near the end of the two hour drive home. Just after crossed the wide freeway bridge that connects Abu Dhabi island to the mainland, a Porsche Cayenne abruptly left the fast lane and cut diagonally in front of Chris' ageing 4x4, missing us by a few metres. We estimated the car's speed at well over 160 kmh. The driver, obvious from his clothing and vehicle to be a local, clearly valued making his exit ramp, rather than the next one a few hundred metres further up the road, as much more important than the high likelihood of killing two expats. The UAE's lethal characteristic of impatient fatalistic drivers with the wealth to afford the world's fastest cars would haunt my time in the country, especially as remaining an active climber necessitated long drives on the lawless freeways. The strangest thing was that the same dishdash-clad Abu Dhabi guys who drove with murderous intent were almost all unfailingly generous and charming in an office environment. At least to your face - it was hard to know what they gossiped about in Arabic behind your back.

On my second weekend I met the other climber in Abu Dhabi (at that time most of the UAE climbers lived in Dubai), an eccentric Brit/ Texan named Bernard. He and his wife had begun bolting routes at Wonderwall, figuring out techniques and equipment for themselves. He helped me find my way to the top of Central Wall from an area called Wonderslab and fix my longest rope down it. He also gave me directions to a hardware store, ran, like most small businesses in the UAE, by expat Indians, who happily overcharged me for a DeWalt cordless drill.

My next two visits to Wonderwall were solo in a rental Nissan Pathfinder. From the diary:

"Big day driving out to Wonderwall by myself. Drizzly weather.  Parked under the central walls and stashed water, spare drill and battery under my route, then hiked up to the ridge via the Wonderslab ramp.  Up on the knife-edge the air felt quite sultry and heavy, then started getting weird noises from my feet and little electric shocks.  Dropped down below the ridge (crossly) for a while, then after it started to rain, decided that the risk had diminished.  Then spent about 4-5 hours rapping and jugging my route, placing about 7 bolts.  Figured out most of the moves but some blank spots remain.  Rain picked up quite heavily before I left.  Got so wet I was almost hypothermic.  Drive back to AD was knackering, had to stop for an hour or so."

And the next weekend:

"Drove back out to Redat Saa (wonderwall) and completed my bolting.  Jugged my ropes left from the previous Friday, then abseiled, then juggged with the drill to half height, then went back down to fetch another bolt, then jugged whole wall again, then rapped from the top once again!  Left the crag in a thunderstorm and rain again, like the previous Friday.  Fairly gripped on the final abseil and had quite a struggle getting the ropes down.  On the drive home had to ford about ten floods on the road.  Fairly dramatic. "

I had no idea that rain could be a problem in that landscape but in fact the lack of vegetation and bare rocky terrain in the Hajar mountains means that precipitation has nowhere to go and that flash flooding can be immediate. At that time it seemed the worst outcome might be abandoning the vehicle but in subsequent years I would learn that deaths occurred regularly during rainfall, especially when floods were channeled into narrow wadis (canyons). Fortunately the terrain around Wonderwall was not of that type.

Eventually my engagement with the route transitioned from the preparation phase to actually attempting to send. The biggest obstacle then became getting to the cliff with a suitable belayer. Shoko (and five year old Leo) came out with me on a couple of occasions. I managed to send the route as far as intermediate anchors at 30m. The climbing was very continuous with a couple of crux areas. Maybe 7a (5.11d) to that point. At my highpoint there was a good foothold ledge which enabled an almost-rest with body pressed into the rock.

Shoko at Wonderwall, 2005

With Leo at Wonderwall, 2005

For a short while I fell in with a group of Dubai climbers who visited Wonderwall fairly regularly but were not at all serious about their climbing. On one occasion I lured them over to Central Wall from a slabbier sector of the cliff to belay me on the project. I rapidly abandoned that plan when I discovered that no-one had a belay device or any experience with the Grigri that I had with me. One guy offered, apparently in all seriousness, to belay with an Italian Hitch, a knot which works for belaying short easy pitches in, say, alpine terrain, but unthinkable for belaying an ultra-long sport pitch. I concluded that I desperately needed to find more climbers.

The main UAE climbing areas c.2005

A promising candidate was Pete, an ex-military English guy living in Dubai with an impressive climbing resume. Our first meeting was in Wadi Bih, a canyon area in the Musandam mountains about four hours drive north of Abu Dhabi. For reasons that I now forget we arranged to meet at a specific cliff deep in the canyon rather than somewhere nearer to civilization. I had not been to that area before. The last part of the drive involved many km on lonely gravel roads with multiple junctions and a weird unmanned border crossing (this was in 2005 - these days it is closed to expats). I eventually found what I believed to be the cliff, which was vast but also implausibly had a small sedan parked underneath it, apparently abandoned.

I got out of my vehicle and wandered around a little, then heard a yell from above. My prospective partner was high above on rappel, extracting some gear from the second or third pitch of a trad route he had FA'd on a previous weekend. He apologised and I suggested I would brew up some tea while waiting for him to descend. This met with significant approval. I would later learn that Pete had a near-limitless enthusiasm for the stuff. We would go on to climb a lot together, develop new cliffs and collaborate on the UAE's first printed climbing guidebook. Unfortunately, his Dubai base made it inconvenient for us to climb together often at Wonderwall.

Pete bolting a giant roof at Hatta Crag, Oman, 2006

Around the same time I also met Wolf, a German teacher, who had also just moved to Abu Dhabi with his family, in the much more convenient location of the Abu Dhabi american school's climbing gym. I was delighted to discover that he was a bona-fide climber with years of experience. Though he was more of a mountaineer than me, he seemed happy enough to visit Wonderwall and climb sport routes. In my memory we did that many times, but the diary tells me that I was actually so antsy to climb the project that I got Wolf to belay me on it on our very first climbing trip together.

Wolf, summit of Jebel Rum, Jordan, 2009

The ascent

Regrettably I remember very little of climbing the route. The actual crux is in the lower section, which I had already redpointed, a classic tenuous rock-up move on crisp little edges. The top section was more of a long fight against a building pump, clawing endless crimps and trying not to make any mistakes. Wolf and I were alone at the cliff, so the last moves high on the 55m wall felt especially remote and isolated.  The name, "Exile", had long been my working title for the project, and felt apt as I reached the anchors. 

Cheatsheet for Exile.
Numbers on the left are metres - not all the holds are documented!

Subsequent ascents

I never went back on Exile. Read, a very strong Dubai-based Canadian climber, repeated the route a year or two later ("too sharp!") but to my disappointment there was not much other interest. I was fortunate to be at the cliff with a camera and tripod when another Dubai climber, Gordon, made strong attempts in 2010, but as far as I know he never sent. The third confirmed ascent was by a young US crusher, Dylan, in 2011.  He onsighted it and pronounced it "great" and "the longest single pitch" he had ever climbed.

Meanwhile I bolted routes elsewhere on the cliff, but gradually became more excited about other areas. As my UAE years stretched out, I came to regard Wonderwall more as an old friend. Primarily a fun place to hang out, sit around campfires in the dunes and trade rumours of other secret cliffs.

Climbers camping at Wonderwall