the nostalgia project: Prise de Tête, France (2001)

The problem

Prise de Tête is a problem at Franchard Sablons in the Fontainebleau ("Font") forest south-east of Paris, widely regarded as the best bouldering area in the world. The grade is around Font 5+/6a or V2/ 3'ish for North Americans.  The problem is also #19 in the "Red circuit" at that area. Circuits are a concept conceived decades ago in Fontainebleau to make bouldering more relevant to multi-pitch or alpine climbing. Problems within a circuit, numbered discreetly with paint, are climbed in a strict consecutive sequence to simulate a long route. Much less fashionable these days; the paint marks now mainly serve to orientate people in finding specific individual problems.

The context

Sometime in the early 1990s, various firms in the US and Europe began selling bouldering pads. Hardly a radical technology, pads could probably have been developed any time in the previous half-century or even before, but what really mattered was their cultural acceptance. Though there was surreptitious softening of landings with backpacks, puffy jackets, old mattresses, etc in places like UK gritstone for a decade or two previously, anyone wielding a purpose-built mat in, say, the late 1970s/ early 1980s when I began climbing, would have been mocked mercilessly.

By the turn of the millennium the bouldering pad had changed the world - for climbers, anyway. Rendered "safe", bouldering mushroomed into a huge new sub-sport, with all kinds of impacts from explosive usage growth at specific climbing areas - Squamish's Grand Wall forest is a good example - to major changes in gender participation to redefinition of the indoor climbing gym.

However my first bouldering pad purchase was prompted by a more mundane reason: becoming a dad. Bouldering venues seemed much more reasonable to inflict on a baby than cliffs for roped climbing (notably the ubiquitous British sea cliff!). Leo therefore visited places like Burbage and the Roaches in the UK's Peak district while still aged zero. The pad was used as often for changing nappies as falling on.

In 1999 my brainy nephew, Jeremy, who spent most of his 20's in a grand tour of the world's most prestigious academic establishments, moved to HEC (pronounced ash-eh-say) near Versailles, for a master's course ostensibly in  economics but apparently in partying. Presciently I had somehow inculcated him into climbing during his undergraduate years, so he also became a habitué of nearby Font. That year and the next we visited him several times, combining tourism in Paris for Shoko with bouldering for me.

Leo strikes an existentialist pose in St-Germain-des-Pres 

The most elaborate of these trips was at a weekend in spring 2001, just as Jeremy was finishing up at HEC. My sister Sally also joined us. We stayed in a cute boutique hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, at the heart of Paris' once-bohemian, now just expensive, Left Bank. Jeremy climbed with me on both days. In Saturday we went to Bas Cuvier, Font's most popular area. The next day started with brunch at a painfully-hip club, the Bermuda Onion, with which Jeremy had become acquainted. This was memorable primarily for two factors: that the food took hours to arrive (bad) and that the dining room had giant skylights which opened to let in the morning sun (cool).

Jeremy, Sally, Leo and Shoko at the Bermuda Onion, great food once it arrived

Jeremy and I then escaped to Font for an afternoon/ evening session. We chose Franchard Sablons for reasons I have long since forgotten. Probably because Jeremy had checked it out before and found it to be quieter at weekends. By chance - and this really made the day - there was one other group there, but they were true Font royalty: Jo Montchauseé, the guidebook writer and pioneer; his son; son's girlfriend and their other friends. We ended up working on a few problems with them. These days many people's experience of bouldering is almost entirely of this type - big groups playing on a single boulder - but for me at the time it was a total novelty.

The younger Montchauseé crew (and Jeremy)

Jo mentioned something to me that stuck in my mind (and has had some resonance subsequently): that, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the opportunity on his doorstep and supportive dad, his son had taken no interest in climbing until his late teens - but was now psyched and climbing hard.

The ascent

Jeremy styling (do people still say this?) Prise de Tête

I don't remember much about Pris de Tete. Mostly that it looked easy but in reality was slopey and baffling. Montchausee père et fils demonstrated various ways to do it effortlessly. The rest of us flailed but got up it eventually. Jeremy may have done it before me; generally he was climbing well at this time. The diary just notes that "we took ages".

Another shot of Jeremy at Franchard Sablons - identity of this problem now lost

 Ditto

Subsequent ascents

I have not been back to Font since this visit. Bouldering did continue to be a genuine, if unambitious, interest for a few more years subsequently. Notably I discovered and developed several areas in the west of Ireland near the family cottage, including a beachside V6 that made the "Irish Top 50" list in the first Bouldering in Ireland guidebook, and a massive area of bogland granite, Derryrush.

The Barn - a fun moderate boulder in the Derryrush area in southern Connemara which I discovered in 2004

Butterfingers, V3 - another addition to Derryrush from 2004

Unfortunately three arm/ wrist fractures between 2009 and 2013 have made me very wary of ground falls, even on to pads, and the horrific talus under most Squamish boulder problems has reinforced that. I hardly ever boulder outside now. I like to think that would change if I ever found myself at a bouldering area with genuinely flat landings. Even looking back at the old Font photos is quite inspiring.

the nostalgia project - The Quiet, Ireland (1980)

The route

The Quiet is a route - probably the best route - at Little Killary, a minor single-pitch cliff in Connemara, Ireland, named for the sea inlet just below it. The area is also often referred to as Salrock Pass, after the ancient trail that runs under the cliff, connecting Little Killary bay with the dramatic fjord Killary Harbour. On a clear day it is a beautiful place with long views out over the Atlantic.

Looking west from the highest point above Salrock Pass, 1998.
Little Killary bay on the left, KIllary Harbour entrance on the right, Inishturk island on the horizon.

The route takes the easiest line up an abrupt, seemingly laser-cut 70 degree slab in the middle of the cliff. Gear is sparse and fiddly, earning the route at least HVS or "Hard Very Severe" in Britspeak (strangely the Irish use their ex-colonists' grading system but not their currency), perhaps 5.9 R in YDS. The two other classic routes at Little Killary are The Pinnacle, a partially-detached tower at the seaward end, weighing in around "Very Difficult" or 5.4, and the runout Drown in the Sky, taking an overhanging face further uphill at E4, perhaps 5.11+.

The context

Little Killary cliff from the road. The Pinnacle on the left.

As Salrock Pass lies very visibly above the only road between our family cottage and the rest of the world, it grabbed my attention from a very young age. I would often organise to sit on the correct side of the car (left outbound, right inbound) so I could crane my neck toward it as we drove past. Eventually I discovered a climbing guidebook that included the cliff, describing four routes climbed in the 1960s. I spent a little time there by myself trying to match the detail to the physical reality. The Pinnacle was obvious, but the other routes less so. The best feature of the cliff was the laser-cut face, so I assumed it must have been climbed and convinced myself that it was Ivy Slab graded "Severe", about 5.5. A year or two later it dawned on me that it was harder than that and had yet to be climbed.

The ascent

More accurately: the attempt. From the diary: "August 1980 Tried a new route in Salrock Pass, no luck." Somehow I had persuaded my father, then in his mid 60s, with no roped climbing experience at all, to belay me. I remember very little of this day except the scramble up a decomposing gully, to set the top-rope, was sketchy, but had to be done confidently so that my parents would not get nervous. My mother's photo shows me reaching about one-third height, which was probably my high point.

Top rope attempt, summer 1980. Dad visible belaying on the right.

 Posing for my parents on top of The Pinnacle, summer 1980

Subsequent ascents

From the diary: "June 1983. Connemara plus JW + MP .... finally led The Quiet". The "finally" bit is mysterious, as it implies multiple tries, but the diary is silent on any attempt between 1980 and 1983. I do know that I visited Connemara twice with school friends in 1981 and 1982, and that we climbed some forgettable new routes on other cliffs in the area. I also know that the first ascent was not on-sight; at some point previously I had rappelled the line to clean off some dirt and check the gear placements.

Retrospectively I am not very fond of the name but it is at least better than my original idea: The Quiet One, the title of a song by John Entwhistle, the allegedly-introvert bassist with The Who, a band I unfashionably liked circa 1980. Someone persuaded me to truncate it, thankfully. "JW" and "MP" were James Wheaton and Martin Perry, friends from school and university respectively. We added another eight new routes to the cliff that summer.

First ascent, June 1983

About three years later I was back at the family cottage, visiting with my parents and my sister Sally who were already there for a longer holiday. I was one year into my post-university attempt at being a "full-time climber", having spent six months climbing in Australia then a summer trailing in the wake of Crispin Waddy, one of Britain's most eccentric and creative climbers. Crispin and I had spent a couple of weeks putting up the first routes on the terrifying limestone sea cliffs of the Aran Islands, just south of Connemara, after which I had hitchhiked alone to the cottage. I couldn't get a ride for the last ten kilometres of winding mountain road so hid my backpack full of ropes and climbing gear and walked the remainder in the dark; an oddly enjoyable and meditative experience. I recall arriving at the cottage around midnight, having to wake everyone up but receiving a warm welcome.

Once again I lassoed family members as belayers for Little Killary projects. I added two routes either side of the Quiet, then worked on the excellent and much-harder Drown in the Sky nearby. What I remember most from that period is that I was in great climbing shape after Aran and felt invincible; more so than at any point in my life before or since. While cleaning the new lines I would routinely solo up and down The Quiet as the most efficient way to move around the cliff, sometimes in front of my parents. As far as I recall they did not comment, but I wonder now whether I was scaring them? Poor Dad was battling myeloma, a bone marrow cancer, so probably had his thoughts elsewhere. Drown in the Sky was protected by just a couple of fixed pitons low down then some weird sideways RP's higher up. Factoring in the dodgy gear I think it was (then) a Brit E5 (5.11+ R), my first at that grade, and, with hindsight, probably the hardest trad route that I climbed at any point in the 1980s.

First ascent of Churchmouse, right of The Quiet, in September 1986

For various reasons I only visited Connemara a couple of times during the next decade, though on one short visit I re-equipped Drown in the Sky with four titanium pitons, making it safer, and probably dropping the grade to E4. In 1998 I re-climbed The Quiet on a visit with Shoko. It felt hard, more E1 (5.9 R) than HVS, and unthinkable without a rope. During that same period we visited Inishturk, an island visible on the horizon from Little Killary. We found it to be home to enormous sea-cliffs on its hidden west side.

Repeating The Quiet in 1998

I returned to Inishturk with various configurations of people to explore in 2002 and 2003. On the first of those expeditions, our team of semi-famous climbers (and me) were badly rained out and ended up spending a day at Little Killary. Surprisingly two of them declared it the best day of the trip. Even better, Glenda Huxter, at the time one of Britain's strongest female trad climbers, made the first repeat of Drown in the Sky and confirmed the difficulty.

All-star Brit trad team visiting Little Killary in 2002
(from left to right: Glenda Huxter, Dan Donovan, Emma Alsford)

The last time I climbed at Little Killary was in 2004. My friends Noel and Jane Jenkins were visiting Connemara with their daughter Laura. We climbed the three classics over a couple of mellow days. For the first time in my experience, there was even another group climbing there; as if it were an established respectable cliff.

My repeat of Drown in the Sky in 2004, Noel belaying

Noel and Jane Jenkins on The Pinnacle, 2004

And another thing ...

One of the best aspects of the climbing life is the way it subverts the usual topography of shared experience (countries, cities, towns, etc) and substitutes, well, rocks. Sometime around 2008, after a new job had taken me to the United Arab Emirates, I met another expat climber, Aodain O Laithimh, in Dubai. It took just a few minutes for the conversation to progress from "hello" to discussing The Quiet (and Inishturk). It turned out that Little Killary had once been his local crag too, when he had worked for a nearby adventure centre. Aodain and I have somewhat different tastes in climbing and have not climbed that much together, but the days I have spent with him have been memorable. Best of all a two day trip in his yacht, Moon Penny, to make the first ascent of The Pyramid, a 300m semi-detached tower of limestone choss on Oman's other-worldly Musandam coast.

The Pyramid (and the Barracuda Stack), Musandam, Oman. Just a bigger version of The Pinnacle, really.

Moon Penny moored between The Pyramid and Barracuda Stack, November 2010

Aodain following the last pitch on The Pyramid