the nostalgia project: French Pillar of Jebel Misht, Oman (2007)

The route

Jebel Misht from the east - spot the line

And from the south - ditto

From an online topo linked from Mountain Project:

"The 900m South-East face of Jebel Misht is thought to be the tallest cliff in the Arabian Peninsula. The 1979 French route follows the compelling central arete of the face and is undoubtedly the classic long climb of the region. Whilst there are many other striking cliffs in Oman, nothing else discovered so far dominates the landscape as the French Pillar. Anyone who has passed under the cliff will confirm that it is a stunning line, a desert hybrid of the Walker Spur of the Grandes Jorasses and The Nose of El Capitan; both climbs of similar scale."

The first ascent of the French route by a large team of (obviously) French climbing guides took a month and employed fixed ropes. Apocryphally the Sultan of Oman dispatched a helicopter to whisk the successful team from the summit to celebrations at his palace in Muscat!

The hardest climbing on the correct line of the route is around 6b+ or low 5.11 or, for Brits, E3'ish. However it is easy to get off-route and stray on to harder terrain.

The context

I first saw Jebel Misht in November 2005. I had driven with Shoko and Leo into Oman for several hours on the desert road between the Hajar and the Empty Quarter. Just past the first town of any size, Ibri, I noticed a vast dark wedge rising out of the haze to our north. It was Misht with the south-east face in profile, still 50 km away. The mountain disappeared as we drove toward it through a maze of ophiolite foothills, then as we rounded a bend it reared up abruptly in front of us. The line of the French Pillar was obvious and magnificent. Though my main focus at that time was on sport climbing, it was clear that I needed to make an exception for this thing.

With Leo, campfire on the Jebel Shams plateau

Jebel Misht from Jebel Shams

Tree on the Jebel Shams plateau

Unfortunately the only source of information available for the route at that time was a 1993 guidebook with a wordy account of climbing the route over several days but no topo.

In January 2006 I tried the route with a friend, Mike O, from Dubai. Many factors combined to make it an unrealistic attempt including a late start the day before which resulted in insufficient research of the approach hike and a lot of wasted time before we even began roped climbing. Then we got badly off-route on the first crux section. I led a long barely-protected pitch on virgin rock that still makes me shudder when I recall it; one of those "could have died" moments. On the positive side, when we abandoned our attempt and rappelled off, we saw where we had gone wrong. I also realised that the weight of carrying water, combined with terrain unsuitable for hauling, meant that a committed fast ascent was really the only sensible approach. And for that I needed a very strong partner.

Mike on the first pitch of the French Route

I mentioned the project to Dan who had already shown some interest in a visit to the region. He flew in from the UK in January 2007 for a two week trip, of which we allocated a whole week to time in the Misht region. My friend Wolf also offered to support us on a French Pillar attempt, generously promising to meet us on the summit by hiking the lower-angled north face.

Dan with local Omani kids who visited us for breakfast

Al Hamra towers from the same spot

Ahead of trying Misht, Dan and I did a “training route” on one of the more modest sized Al Hamra Towers, the seven pitch “En Attendant Les Lents”. This seemed like enough climbing for one day for me, but Dan had other ideas, and soloed the similar-sized but harder “La Mama” on the adjacent tower. Not for the first time I was reminded that he and I had very different risk tolerances. (Two months later I went back with a Dubai friend, Scott, to climb La Mama. I was horrified to find that the crux was insecure climbing near the very top of the 300m tower.)

Dan finishing En Attendant Les Lents

Dan soloing on La Mama

And higher on the same route

The next day was supposed to be a rest day but Dan proposed that we descend and ascend a via ferrata that had just been installed on cliffs below the peak, Jebel Shams - Oman’s highest point - where we were camping. This proved to be quite educational as the via ferrata followed traditional cliff “paths” used by inhabitants of a long-abandoned village at its base, including long vertical sections between ledges that had once been negotiated using dead tree branches and other precarious junk. The actual via ferrata was modern but Dan insisted that we should "solo" it without harnesses, lanyards or any of the usual equipment, added back some historical authenticity. After this adrenaline dose we drove over to the base of Misht. We had enough daylight to scope the approach hike properly - a distinct improvement on the previous year.

Side view of the cliffs crossed by the Jebel Shams VF - note vehicle for scale!

Via ferrata "soloing" shenanigans

Natural infinity pool above the Jebel Shams via ferrata

The ascent

Misht from our campsite

From the diary:

“3:45am start, then left car at 4:30am. Below the cliff just before dawn and finally started climbing at 6:30am. I insisted on leading the second pitch (again) to Dan's horror. ”

Waiting for dawn below the route

Beginning the simul-climbing

It was important for me to lead the crux (second) pitch as I did not want to feel that I was being “guided”. Dan was sceptical but I got the job done. In fact it turned out that I had completed the hardest moves on the pitch the previous year, before we had traversed off-route, and that the climbing above was just some strenuous yarding on big flakes. Above there we simul-climbed for hundreds of meters on easy ground. About half way up we encountered a food cache from the 1978 ascent with some meat cans still intact. Above this the line follows a classic ridge feature with an approximately 600m vertical drop to one side. Probably the most exposed situation I have ever encountered.

Thirty year old food cache. 

Massive exposure in the middle of the route

Near the top. We transitioned from simul'ing back to conventional climbing for the last 200m.

“Rest of the route passed very smoothly, bar a short shouting match on the ledges below the headwall where Dan left me unbelayed whilst messing around with a long traverse."

Simul-climbing becomes especially sketchy if you move sideways for long distances without placing protection! Dan had done this and then started ascending a harder vertical section. My analysis was that if he fell he would pull us both off - hence the shouting.

For the last 200m of the route we reverted to conventional pitched climbing. One pitch was quite fierce: a steep little finger crack which Dan led. It is possible that we missed an easier alternative.

Topped out the route at 3:00pm. At the summit we met Wolf, Suzanne and Tom and descended with them. Persuaded Tom to drive me back around to retrieve the car – managing to get lost in the main wadi in the dark. Then back to campsite on north side where we were treated to steaks and red wine – excellent.”

Dan, Tom and Wolf on the summit

The obligatory rack photo

The heinous north side of Misht. A knee-wrecking 1200m descent

Oddly we all managed to find the energy to climb the next day too. Bouldering (and swimming) in the idyllic Wadi Damm, one of the few places in Oman with year-round fresh water.

Active rest day messing around in Wadi Damm

Shallow water soloing

Subsequent ascents 

I visited the Jebel Misht area a few more times during my stay in Arabia but never climbed the route again.

Shortly after I climbed the route in 2007 I wrote the topo quoted at the beginning of this post and published it online. Surprisingly, twelve years later, I still see it referenced by people as the definitive description, even though a proper print guide exists. 

About three years after climbing the pillar, I had a business flight to Muscat from Abu Dhabi which flew directly over Jebel Misht in evening light. Viewed from above and in deep shadow, the South-East face was extraordinarily vertiginous, like a rendering error in a video game which had replaced landscape with blackness. It was hard to believe I had ever been there. 

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

the nostalgia project: Grand Wall, Canada (2005)

The route

The west faces of the Chief and the Malamute from Nexen Beach on a crisp winter afternoon.
The Grand Wall ascends the sunny face in the centre. The Split Pillar pitch is clearly visible.

For climbers who know it well, the Stawamus Chief has interesting rock faces on almost all its aspects. But for tourists driving the Sea-to-Sky highway to Whistler, who have turned in to the pullout under the Chief, it is the towering west face that captures their interest - and, if climbers are visible on it, brings out cameras and binoculars. The Grand Wall is the route central to that face and the best-known climb in Squamish.

The route's history began with the highway, as until the road reached Squamish in the late 1950s, the Chief was relatively inaccessible, on the wrong side of the Mamquam river from the port area that until then was the town's only connection with the rest of BC. Though Fred Beckey and others had climbed a few lesser lines previously, it was Jim Baldwin and Ed Cooper, scouting for Yosemite-like "big wall" projects from Vancouver, who committed to the big prize: the Grand Wall. Their 40-day ascent, almost entirely aided, drew thousands of spectators to Squamish. The local Howe Sound Brewpub honours them with a beer:

© Howe Sound Brewing

Over the years the aid on the original line was reduced to a couple of short bolt ladders at 5.11a A0. This is the route that most people now climb, either starting up Apron Strings to make a ten pitch route or via a scramble up Flake Ledges to reduce the pitch count to eight or nine. Three successive pitches in the middle of the route form the main difficulty: the soaring crack on the right side of the Split Pillar (sandbag 5.10b), the devious Sword (5.11a A0) and Perry's Layback (5.11a). (One day an earthquake, or perhaps just an abrupt freeze-thaw, will cause the already near-detached Split Pillar to fall off the wall, probably taking all these pitches with it.)

From the 1980s, Peter Croft and then Scott Cosgrove worked on variations to the right of the Sword to ultimately create the wholly Free Grand. This is rarely climbed, perhaps because the 5.13b crux pitch is a thin slab best suited to mid-winter conditions when the rest of the route is often wet or icey.

The context

In 2004, two events occurred that were pivotal in shaping the life that I lead now. One was official confirmation that I (and Leo) had dual British-Canadian citizenship. Though my father was born in Alberta, he never considered himself Canadian nor held a Canadian passport. Furthermore I was born in Britain. However, in the early 2000s, encouraged by research by my shrewd nephew Ollie and by a conversation with an emigration consultant, I took an interest in the topic. Weirdly, Canadian citizenship law is so poorly-worded that calls to the country's citizenship helpline yielded three different answers: "you are definitely Canadian"; "you are definitely not Canadian"; "we are not sure".

Fortunately the staff at Canada's London embassy were more helpful and recommended that I researched my paternal grandfather's status (for arcane reasons, which I do not understand, it was crucial that he had been born in Britain) then submit an application for citizenship. I did this in 2003 but the response took another year.

The other pivotal event was being offered an investment management job with a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. Though not previously a career option that I had considered, a friend, David, had joined the fund a few years earlier and spoke enthusiastically of the work and the lifestyle. I accepted the offer. As I knew that my time in Abu Dhabi would be finite (most outsiders can only obtain fixed-term work visas for the UAE), and I was weary of life in the UK, it also struck me that I could plan around moving to Canada afterwards.

An obvious first step was to buy a property in Canada. At that time we did not own a house in the UK, and - surprisingly though it may seem now - western Canada seemed comparatively affordable. In early January 2005, I flew alone to Calgary, hired a 4WD and drove across the Rockies and on through BC over five days, looking at towns that seemed like good locations for a climber: Canmore, Golden, Penticton, Nelson, Pemberton and Squamish. Squamish should have been bleak at that time of year but I arrived in what I now know to be improbably good winter conditions: cold, bluebird skies and just after heavy snowfall. The town looked beautiful. I viewed a few properties and tentatively picked one. The transaction completed four months later.

In summer 2005 we had a month-long family holiday in Squamish. Sometime before that, my friend Andy in Boulder, already featured here, mentioned that he had some unfinished business in Squamish - he had got injured on University Wall on a previous trip - and would be keen to visit for a week or so. I encouraged him to book flights and he then duly arrived for the second week of our stay, manfully enduring the family chaos into which he had descended. His visit worked out very well for me as I got my first taste of Squamish climbing without the uncertainty of seeking a local partner or risking failure on anything (Andy is one of the strongest trad climbers I know). Naturally Grand Wall was high on my priority list, and, luckily for me as Andy had missed out on it before, high on his. We ended up trying it on his third day.

The ascent

We started the route via Apron Strings. Fortunately Andy led the first pitch as I have since realised it can be quite serious. On lead there is a long layback on which it is strenuous to place gear. Some people opt to run it out - and some then fall most of the length of the pitch when they exit the layback into much more delicate climbing.

Andy leading the runout but easy pitch 1 of Grand Wall (Two pitches of Apron Strings lie below) 

Me leading pitch 2

Stance at the end of pitch 2, where the route steepens

Andy leading pitch 3, traversing over to the start of the Split Pillar

I got the Split Pillar lead. I was very intimidated by this and focused hard on climbing it well. It turned out to be one of those perfect cracks that widens steadily through cam sizes, making protection choice simple (and consuming most of the rack). I milked the rest at the good hand jams in the middle of the pitch then laybacked the top part. Seconding the pitch, Andy demonstrated much better technique, fist-jamming the wider section.

Me starting the Split Pillar crack

... and higher on the pitch

Andy following the Split Pillar

The exposure on Grand Wall is most tangible at the belay ledge above the Split Pillar and on the Sword pitch above. The first part of the Sword, which Andy led, is in a shallow groove system but higher up you step out left on to the flat granite wall with space clean to the ground a couple of hundred metres below. Above there you step back into the crack, execute some slippery laybacking and grab a chain where the bolt ladder starts. This is usually "french-freed" using quickdraws and standing on the bolts. Easy but also very exposed.

Andy on the Sword

Andy encouraged me to lead Perry's Layback. Though it follows a wide crack, it is fully-bolted and effectively a sport pitch. A good thing as you would need to carry up several very large cams to protect it otherwise and I am pretty sure a significant proportion of those cams would get fumbled and dropped by nervous leaders. Just clipping the bolts is hard enough. At the top of the layback you can find a cheeky rest with your upper back and head wedged against a fin of rock. I missed this opportunity and tried a little too hard on the last moves, straining my back. But not so badly that we couldn't complete the route. From where you finish, a very narrow ledge, the "Bellygood," leads right to the descent trail, providing a final dose of massive exposure.

Me on Perry's Layback

Subsequent ascents

My second time up Grand Wall was with Duncan (featured here) in June 2007. We had spent two weeks in Squamish attempting to climb, but were thwarted on most days by unusually bad weather. Somehow skies cleared just sufficiently for a lap up Grand Wall. The route was busy and we ended up waiting for an hour or so in the long-suffering tree below the Split Pillar. However parties above us then all bailed, In fact, a european climber took a very long fall off the Sword pitch then rappelled off. I was not sure if I was ready to lead that pitch but in fact it went fairly well. Risking a slight run-out rather than over-protecting the final layback seemed key.

After this ascent I felt that I was done with the route as I had led all the hard pitches and the necessity of setting aside a day or so to climb the thing was off-putting. But, inevitably, I have climbed it three more times since - and not yet had a bad time. These ascents have always been with visiting British climbers in need of a partner. I have yet to climb it with a Canadian or any other nationality!

Simon Lee and his son Tommy following pitch 2

Eric Hildrew apparently off-route on the Split Pillar

One tip I can share after five ascents is that Climb and Punishment (5.10d) at Penny Lane in the Smoke Bluffs is a good proxy for the hard climbing on Grand Wall. It features powerful right-facing laybacking plus a couple of fairly thin moves similar to the first crux of the Sword pitch. If your prospective partner can manage this route, they can probably climb anything on the Grand.

the nostalgia project: Freeborn Man, UK (2004)

The route

The limestone sea cliffs at Swanage are located on the UK's south coast, near to Portland, but otherwise very distant from other mainstream climbing areas.

Freeborn Man may be Swanage's best known route; certainly it has the most YouTube videos. The route tackles a 15m overhanging face directly above the sea, topped by a short slab. Nick Buckley led the first ascent in the late 1970s (graded E4) but most ascents are now in Deep Water Soloing style ("DWS") and the route is graded like a sport climb at ~6c (5.11b).

The 1990s Swanage DWS guidebook "Into the Blue" suggests that soloing Freeborn Man for the first time is "a major life event comparable to driving your first car or burning down your first public building"!

Climber on the crux of Freeborn Man. The Conger is under the spectators. © unknown

Starting a few metres left of Freeborn Man is The Conger, also first led by Nick Buckley and also now a popular DWS challenge. The Conger has a very different character; the wandering line takes the climber into, then out of, a hanging chimney at the lip of a deep sea cave.

The context

In 2007 UKClimbing.com invited me to review Mike Robertson's extraordinary guidebook to world DWS : "Deep Water".  Aside from a free copy of the book there was no payment or obligation, so I cheekily started the review with a self-indulgent autobiographical fragment. In some ways, the exercise of writing those four paragraphs (below) was the original inspiration for my "Nostalgia Project":

"For a couple of years in the mid-1980s, I toyed ineffectually with being a 'full-time climber'. After a promising start in Nepal, Australia and one or two other exotic places, this lifestyle choice gradually lapsed into an extended stagnation in Bristol, interspersing long periods of doing not much with poorly-funded trips to nowhere in particular. A few other climbers in Bristol shared this life, one of whom, Crispin Waddy, would carve a successful trajectory from it into the future, whilst the rest of us eventually slid into office enslavement or other variants of normality.

Sometime in late summer 1986, Crispin, already revealing glimpses of higher ambition, encouraged three of us - Phil Windall, Jamie Ayres and I - to join him in Swanage, where he'd set up home in the Tilly Whim caves. I have various fragments of memory from the week or two we spent there: evenings nursing a single pint for hours in the gloomy Durlston Castle; stumbling later down the long dark cave-access tunnel, within which our host banned use of a torch; sleeping fitfully after failing to find a flat place to sleep; waking up to diffused but dazzling sunlight burning through the sea fog each morning. We climbed for few days in the Boulder Ruckle then were led by Crispin over to Connor Cove. At that time, there were almost no routes recorded there, probably because of the low height of the cliffs and limited number of belay ledges. Crispin rigged abseils optimistically in a couple of spots, and I held his ropes on some first ascents around E3/4 on what was later named the Funky Wall.

One day I was down on a ledge sorting ropes whilst Crispin eyed possible lines around us. Then I noticed he was gone and - more puzzlingly - was not tied in. He traversed a long way leftwards above overhangs, vanished around a corner and eventually reappeared on the cliff top. Reunited later he talked through the physics of what he'd done: the cliff was steep and not that tall, the water was deep and there'd been no real danger. I listened but didn't comprehend. The route was Fathoms; years later I realised it was probably the earliest first ascent in Britain made intentionally in DWS style.

A day later we were below the Conger and made a convoy solo. Crispin insisted that this was the normal way to do the climb; a statement that would only cease to be an exaggeration a decade later (though it was true that the route, originally led on gear, had been soloed by Nick Buckley in 1983). Most people are elated after their first deep water solo. Lacking any peer group endorsement that it wasn't madness, I set off scared, had a moment of relief after sketching across the hanging chimney crux, then reverted to terror, not helped by Crispin and Phil's laughter, as I topped out on friable shards of crud. As I get older, I notice that the world is split into people who grasp opportunity whenever it appears in front of them whilst others examine opportunity, succumb to caution and say "no thanks". Handed a privileged chance to get involved in British DWS pioneering from its inception, I turned my back and didn't solo above water again until 2002!"

My ascent of the Conger in 1986. Note the first gen Boreal Fires and the redundant harness!
© Jamie Ayres

DWS did not take off in Britain until the mid-1990s but then became fashionable very quickly. Notably in the late 1990s/ early 2000s it was popularised through a series of DWS "festivals", mostly held at Swanage, which combined crowds of swimwear-clad climbers attempting DWS routes with rave-style after-parties - a conceptually-radical evolution for British climbing at the time.

Freeborn Man climbed by Leah Crane during a DWS festival

© Mike Robertson, used with permission

I attended precisely none of these events, considering myself even then to be too old and boring. However I eventually became afflicted with a degree of FOMO, not helped by the irony (see above) that I had tasted DWSing a decade before most of the organisers of these events, let alone the paying punters. In August 2003 Dan and I paid a visit to Berry Head in Devon, also on Britain's south coast but 150km west of Swanage, to climb two famous DWS traverses there: Rainbow Bridge and Magical Mystery Tour.

Of these, Rainbow Bridge was considered quite hard at the time and had not been documented in a guidebook as a DWS. We had some beta from the web forums but little else. The early parts of the route were just above the sea but the "Crystal Cave" crux takes you high above the waves in a pumpy technical groove. I was absolutely blown away by the intensity of the experience. Being with Dan, there was an inevitable "safety-third" aspect to the day, resulting in us soloing two sections of the route that have boulders, rather than deep water, underneath and are usually bypassed.

At the end of the route, after about 300m of climbing, there is a giant wedge-shaped ramp rising out of the sea on which to recover and sun-bathe. Somehow I had not fallen anywhere on the route, and as it was a very hot day, I felt perversely cheated. Already awash with adrenaline, it seemed absolutely appropriate to hike to the very top of the ramp and take a blind running jump off the cliff beside the ramp without any thought to fall-distance or the adequacy of the landing. Thankfully it was "only" 15m or so to the water and the waves were soft.

In 2004, I was still living in Oxford, renting a small house by the Thames close to the centre of town. My "employment" that year was acting as finance director / cat-herder to an ill-disciplined software startup attempting to exploit a clever idea in financial econometrics from a local academic. This sucked up my time to a greater extent than I anticipated without generating any income. Meanwhile Leo was getting older and deserved more attention. Consequently I was not climbing as often as I would have liked.

Furthermore, Oxford is about as far from decent outdoor climbing as it possible to achieve in the UK. Swanage was one of the least-distant options, well connected by fast roads for most of the 180km drive from Oxford, so I made several day trips there. By then Freeborn Man was on my radar as a route I should try. The problem was that conditions there were hard to get right. It needed sunshine to be dry but also a calm'ish sea to be able to access the bottom of the route safely. In June a friend, Roger, and I hiked to Connor Cove for a "look".  We soloed the easier Troubled Waters next to Freeborn Man but contrived various excuses not to try its harder neighbour.

Throughout the summer the route stayed front of mind for me but opportunities to try did not arise.On the last day of July I was scheduled to spend the weekend at home, as we were setting off for a long family holiday in Ireland a few days later. However I could not help checking the south coast forecast: it was perfect. Frustrated, a mad plan popped into my head. Central to my reasoning was the rationale that everyone, even a non-bread-winner at the weekend, is entitled to a "lunch break" ...

The ascent

After yelling a "back soon" lie through the front door, I jumped into my car with climbing shoes and chalk bag. The diary does not document my start time but I recall it was "mid-morning": 10:30 - 11:00am? Average speeds in the "fast lane" of British motorways are 130-140 kmh, so a 90 minute drive time was just about feasible and I believe achieved. Unfortunately the approach hike to Connor Cove is a further 3km or so. Somehow, I found the energy to run most of this.

At the cliff-top I decided I had about an hour available to climb, at the very most. However the diary records that I allowed myself a "few zen moments" before warm-up laps on Troubled Waters then another pause "taking everything in" before scrambling back down to the shoreline. An absolute cardinal rule of DWS is to never do it alone, in case you fall awkwardly into the water and are unable to swim (collapsed lungs and broken backs have occurred from DWS falls), or get hit on the head by loose rock. Unfortunately, though it was the weekend and conditions ideal, there was no-one else in the area. I put that detail out of my mind.

As I remember it, the first few metres of Freeborn Man are steep but fairly straightforward up to a committing traverse on small pockets and undercuts into the crux bulge. There is a strong sense of summit-or-fly at this point as the prior moves feel irreversible The exit onto the slab is where most people fall off. I remember rocking-up optimistically and finding a small crimp that I knew I was definitely strong enough to hold. Then pulling into balance on the slab with a huge release of tension.

For an encore, I decided to climb The Conger as well, touching those holds again for the first time in eighteen years. The diary records that it was a "long expedition and not trivial". But with all the traffic on the route since 1986 it definitely felt more solid.

After that I just had to reverse the run and the drive. The diary claims that I arrived back at the Oxford house at 3:30pm. It does not record whether anyone had noticed that I had gone out!

Subsequent ascents

I have not been back to Connor Cove. In fact, 2004 was my last full year living in the UK and I have only climbed British rock on a handful of occasions since.

Some years later I met Mike Robertson, and some of the other larger-than-life personalities who pioneered the British DWS scene. But that story must wait until the 2012 instalment.