Hoy on the horizon

Now after four weeks of thrashing it out on the circuits I’ve gone from zero stamina to nearly-got-stamina. It’s been almost exclusively on my board since the rain has been incessant in Scotland for the whole of May. Hence the lack of new routes to report. However, the focus has been good for me probably. My 60 move circuit is now extended to 100 moves and the rest between bouts are getting shorter every session.

Still much more work to be done, but with that under my belt and a good forecast at last it’s time to head north to Orkney and get on my project for a few days and try and remember how to trad climb. 

Cloud Mist Rain Drizzle Fog and bird poo

Michael and myself on the Longhope route, just before the cloud and rain ended the day’s play.

The crux pitch linked, I headed back to Hoy with Michael, Claire and Diff for a shot at a redpoint of the route. Time was limited, and weather and work appointments gave us one chance. The day before I walked in with Diff and we rigged ropes out in space above the crux pitch, coming in a various angles to get stable for filming. Before we left, the rain came out of nowhere and we sat in the shelter of a cave before walking out, with the sinking feeling in my head that the sea-salt encrusted cliff would be absorbing all the dampness and conditions would be too poor for the 8c pitch.

Nonetheless, we set off early from our doss the next morning into rain to have a look. It was still raining at the foot of the route three hours later. But we sucked it up and started going up pitches. Michael was doused in bile twice by the evil fulmars, myself only once, but the grim yellow slime ran down my neck as I wobbled onto a ledge. Things kinda went from bad to worse. A belay on an arete in the wind had my teeth chattering once again and higher, while having an discussion with a razorbill stood on my thread runner on the vile crack pitch, I noticed the clouds overhead dropping. They were whizzing over the top of the wall, and quickly obscured the top 100 metres of the wall. The damp air had turned the thick coating of lichen covering the vile crack into viscous goo, adding a tinge of green to the yellow fulmar bile already spread over my clothes. The writing was on the wall.

As we made our abseils, the sight of Diff 300 metres above spinning in a whirlwind of mist and space above us as he stripped the filming ropes was quite a sight.

Timing good conditions, partners and the fitness needed for this climb is damn hard to pull off. Back to the waiting, and training game.

Michael, still looking cheery after a long day

Claire feeling the chill after 8 hours on the edge of the cliff in a gale, filming our ‘progress’.

Diff - it was this big?

Orkney false start

With V13 fitness finally regained after the endless winter of snowy mountaineering, I was obviously keen to get back to me project on Orkney - freeing the original line of the Longhope Route. But winter, in the northern end of the UK at least, wasn’t giving in just yet. 

But we went anyway. It was kind of as bad as we expected, but worth going anyway. Donald and I spent a couple of days on the wall, one dangling about on the top and one on the bottom pitches. A lot of shivering was done, and trying to climb an F8c pitch in full winter mountaineering clothing didn’t fully work out. So we bailed without a great deal of deliberation.

Nevertheless I learned some more things about the route, namely that I need more time on it and it’s going to be damn hard. And visiting Orkney is always a pleasure. It was good to see that Donald found the lower pitches as adventurous as I think they are. I did almost have a nasty fall when a block I was holding onto parted company with the wall while a loooong way above a runner. A missed heartbeat to say the least. 

The appetite is well and truly stoked for a proper encounter when the ocean warms up to something less than arctic.