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.

viking

My father was born on 19th September 1914, in Viking, a small prairie town in eastern Alberta. A month ago I drove there from Squamish for the centenary with one of sisters, Sally, and my youngest son, James. Anniversaries often seem rather abstract and contrived to me, but this one made a great excuse for a road trip. We took six days to complete a big loop, passing Helmcken Falls, Mt Robson, Jasper and the Miette Hot Springs on the outward journey and Canmore, Lake Louise, Revelstoke and the Okanagan on the return. 

Our 2900km round trip - like driving Paris to Moscow

Neither Sally nor I had been to Viking before. Our main motivation for the trip was curiosity about the town and its role in our family's history. Our grandfather, William, moved there from London in 1909, the year the town was established.

William outside the Viking homestead

He persuaded our grandmother, Irene, also from southern England, to join him. They had two sons in quick succession whilst William established a law business and a farm. We still have a letter from Irene back to her mother in Britain, which suggests that she and William were very happy. 

Unfortunately world events intervened in 1914 and William considered it his duty to return to Britain. He served for almost the whole course of World War 1, receiving a Military Cross for bravery in 1917, but was killed in September 1918 by an artillery shell, just a couple of months before fighting ended. He is buried in Tincourt Cemetery, in the Somme region of northern France.

Irene, who had relocated to Britain with her sons during the war, moved back to Viking in 1919. William's brother, Reggie, and his wife, accompanied her, and ended up settling in the town for almost two decades. Before the war Reggie had secured a job with a Hong Kong bank, which he had to give up in favour of this alternative, and very different, path. Sadly he died of tuberculosis in 1937. Not in Viking but in Victoria, as conventional medical opinion at the time was that the moister warmer coastal climate was better for lung problems (these days an arid climate would be preferred). However he was succeeded by two sons, and his descendants are now quite numerous across Canada, (with a statistically-implausibly concentration in Barrie, Ontario - click on the image below for a visualisation!).

Irene returned to Britain permanently in 1923, when my father was nine. Throughout his life he retained memories of his Alberta farm years and maintained close contact with his Canadian cousins.

In the late 1920s Reggie arranged the sale of William and Irene's farm to a Scandinavian couple. Astonishingly two of their grandchildren, now in their 60s, still live in Viking. One of them, Bryan, agreed to meet us; a very generous and trusting decision, given that we only managed to contact him a couple of days before we arrived. His local knowledge and recall of his ancestors' experiences really transformed our visit from random tourism to something more focused.

The first place Bryan and his wife took us was the site of our grandparents' old homestead. Though now just a wheat field, the remnants of the house were not removed until the 1980s.

Alberta is flat! James, Sally and I at the homestead site

He also obtained access to the town museum, which is normally locked out of season. There we found a copy of the local newspaper from October 1914, two weeks after my father's birth. The juxtaposition of an advertisement for William's law business and the newspaper's "Call For More Men" is poignant.

Viking News from October 1914

We also discussed at length what had drawn our ancestors to a remote prairie town from Europe? Bryan had a single answer: free land. The Canadian Northern Railway had laid track as far west as Edmonton in 1905 and needed passengers and freight to justify its investment. It (and other railroad firms) advertised heavily in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, selling the dream of fertile empty territory waiting to be claimed. Viking was one of the stops on that new line. The standard measure for land in Alberta in that period was a "quarter": 160 acres. Bryan thought it was likely William would have stepped off the train and "staked" several quarters, so perhaps ending up with six hundred acres or more. We also know that William's father, George, had died young and that he and his brothers were likely to have been under financial pressure. It makes sense that becoming a large landowner, even by then British standards, had a strong appeal.

the UK Daily Mail promoting western Canadian land in 1904

A strange aspect of this story is that there was a third brother, Percy, who also lived in Viking. Percy was mentally-handicapped in some way, though apparently able to work and look after himself to some extent. We think that he may also have travelled out to Canada in 1909 and probably - helped by William? - staked his own land claim. He remained in Viking until his death in 1962, aged 74. He never married nor had children. We searched the graveyard for his name but with no success. Probably there was no-one to buy him a headstone. It is odd to think that someone could live a reasonably long life leaving so little trace - a massive contrast to our modern hyper-documented InstaFaceTwit world.

The final part of the puzzle for us was what had driven our grandmother to return to Britain in 1923? Sally knew Irene quite well. She was a bohemian woman who never remarried and devoted her life to art. Looking at Viking now - a small and very dull agricultural town - and considering how it might have been in the 1920s - much the same? - it seems very unlikely that she would have fitted in there. The railway line had crossed the Rockies by then. I wonder whether she ever considered moving west to the coast? It is easy to imagine that she could have made a life in Vancouver. Anyway, she did not. My father finished his schooling in Britain then got swept up in another world war (India then Burma then Portsmouth, where he met our mother). He never subsequently lived overseas. But through a quirk of immigration law he is not regarded as having revoked his Canadian nationality when I was born, so, taking the story full circle: I was able to move here already a citizen.

Horne Lake

Road-trip! OK: mini road-trip. Last week a complex array of parent/ child/ holiday schedules aligned so that my friend Todd and I could escape for a couple of days. Both of us were keen to check out the limestone at Horne Lake on Vancouver Island. Our mutual friend Travis also joined, helpfully sharing the ferry costs.

The climbing at Horne Lake is all located on one large wall about 200m high and a kilometre wide, rising above the north-west corner of the lake. Most of the rock is relatively uninteresting vertical face, but the centrepiece is a sensationally steep open cave, the Amphitheatre, which was the catalyst for the area's initial development in the late 1990s. Tufa features are abundant in the cave, so the climbing style is very similar to some of the famous limestone areas in Europe and Asia, like Kalymnos or Railay/ Tonsai (though Horne doesn't free-hanging stalactites). A great resource to have within reach of Squamish, as otherwise the nearest good tufa climbing is in Mexico! The ambience is pretty nice also. The lake beckons for an after-climb swim and there are beautiful arbutus trees mixed in with the usual firs and cedars. Fixed draws on most of the routes is a plus for me too.

The main cliffline. The Amphitheatre is just visible above the trees

Inside the Amphitheatre. Spot the anchor chains at the lip

Looking down at the lake through an arbutus tangle

That, unfortunately, is the end of the good news about Horne Lake. Tragically, though adjacent to a provincial park, the cliff is on private land. And the landowners, a strata co-op encompassing many lakeside homes, also draw water from a spring under the Amphitheatre. Climbing is not allowed, as far as I can figure out because of the water issue, unfounded liability fears and - I guess - the inevitable inertia of a decision-making entity with many individual members. In practise, the climbing ban does not seem to be enforced or even advertised on signboards, but consensus amongst local climbers seems to be to keep the place below the radar to discourage excessive attention. There is no guidebook.

During our two days there, we did encounter other climbers; sufficient to make the narrow ledges under the Amphitheatre feel crowded at times. All Canadians, I think, but definitely not limited to "locals". For example, there was a couple from Saskatchewan. It is hard to keep cliffs secret. Horne is well documented on the US website rockclimbing.com and sporadically appears in sponsored climbers' videos, oddly including one from Vancouver-based posh anorak purveyors, Arc'teryz, who you would think would know better, though that one is now offline. So it is difficult to imagine that the current status quo is sustainable in the long term.

In the spirit of the dodgy access situation, I am therefore not going to spray exuberantly how Horne Lake is a fantastic must-visit world-class venue. However, I will, er, definitely be heading back. In the context of the Squamish climbing season, it looks like Horne may be a good option once the winter rains start, as the umbrella-like Amphitheatre should stay climbable until the tufas start to seep. (Similarly, the word seems to be that Skaha, in the Okanagan, is climbable in the spring long before Squamish.) One route at Horne in particular has gone straight into my long term wishlist: Jesus Save the Pushers, a monstrous upside-down thing across a 20m (?) roof, that I am told has no bad holds. JSTP is graded 5.13a, but I feel may be doable for me with work. I onsighted a .12b - Moonraker - and flashed .12a - Quarter Century Girl - on this visit without too much trouble (*), which bodes well. For me, the climbing style is very familar.

Todd and Travis, who haven't squandered as much of their lives in dusty limestone holes as me, did struggle with the tufas. However Travis redpointed Quarter Century Girl and Todd onsighted a sparsely-bolted .11c horror: the Waterspout. For the success of our short trip we owe thanks to Fiona, who greeted us from a yoga mat in the parking lot on day one. I have various not-wholly-positive preconceptions about people on yoga mats, but Fiona, a strong Aussie expat, proved extremely helpful: orientating us at the cliff (we had little information apart from a magazine article from 1999), directing us toward good routes and never saying "namaste" once. My preconceptions need a rethink.

Travis warming up in the Amphitheatre

Todd warming up in the Amphitheatre

Todd almost sending Quarter Century Girl

Fiona actually sending Quarter Century Girl

Todd leading the Waterspout

(* confession time: I grabbed the anchor chain on Moonraker to clip after my "onsight". I initially felt this disqualified the ascent but after doing the route again an hour later, without the chain grab, I decided it made no real difference to the route. Or put another way, I definitely onsighted a .12b but arguably not the full route ...)