I just got home from Wales after a stop off in Glasgow. Man it’s good to be in my own house after three weeks almost continuously on the road around the UK. Here are a few video stills from our footage of Indian Face.
Micro stopper ready for a quickfire placement. I placed all the gear on lead (goes without saying these days I know, but a few folk are still pre-placing) and getting the RPs seated perfectly and quickly in their placements was one of the biggest elements to prepare for. The route is definitely a tiny bit safer now Black Diamond’s micro stoppers have a much higher breaking strength. My dad’s jewellery files came in handy for filing the micros down to fit the placements just right.
Starting nervously up the hard climbing, not really finding my focus just yet.
Lovely piece of wall, eh?
Resting tired feet at the good hold.
A nasty barn door move, mid crux section. Dawes swapped feet for this move and so could move the left hand in balance. I felt the foot swap was a bit awkward and had potential for a mistake, so did it this way. But I was worried an easterly wind during the move might make the move impossible. It was westerly, so it was no problem.
“It’s just a bit of rock”. Tying in to lead The Indian Face
Yesterday, I climbed the Indian Face. After a couple of sessions on it last week on a flying visit with Claire, I was eager to go back and get it led. So this weekend Claire and I started the long drive south again, gathering Diff and Tom on the way to film the deed for a wee film we’re thinking of making together.
On the way, the forecast got worse, the crag was covered in clouds and the rain started as I was abseiling down the wall to chalk the holds. I took this as a negative sign. However, the burst of rain eased back to spits and spots and this teasing as I uncoiled ropes and briefed Claire of the flight plan saved me from the nerves of anticipation.
A hurried tie in and go was much better that a drawn out moment of commitment. I stopped briefly at the top of the arch 10 metres up to guess if the leaden sky would give me another 20 minutes and then started into the groove, talking to myself (inwardly) about why I was there. The distraction resulted in a left foot that wouldn’t stop rolling off a smear while I fiddled with tiny RPs on big screamers. I stopped, spreadeagled and rested my toes alternately. That was nice; After 10 minutes on the wall I finally stopped reminding myself to be scared, and accepted that I wasn’t scared and should start thinking about the climbing instead.
The next bit up to the good hold before the crux went much better. Stood there I tried to feel the aura of the route to tell myself I shouldn’t be there. But after a few minutes I still wasn’t scared and felt I ought to be getting moving on sore feet. I looked down. Claire was yawning. I felt thirsty, and noticed a fly buzz past. Time to go.
I was tight, aggressive and ready for trouble moving through the crux bulge, but it didn’t come and I woke up three moves from the jug with lost concentration and a misplaced foot on a smear. On a move left I felt both ropes swinging below, unhindered by runners. Get the jug!
I only had time to let Claire know I was holding the jug when the announcement came back that the rain had arrived. A speed climb up the final corners landed me in the wet grass ledge just in time to avoid a rescue epic. A miserable wet trudge down the hill for everyone was a reminder of how lucky and privileged I was to have the opportunity to be here.
This morning we spent a nice morning chatting to Johnny Dawes in Pete’s Eats about our feelings about the climb, and bold rock climbing in general. I can’t wait to read Johnny’s book when he finishes it. What a talented and creative guy!
Doing the business. Diff on the rope filming.
Claire MacLeod - not fussed by belaying Indian Face whatsoever, apart from that it meant getting soaked to the skin and freezing cold.
Coming Back
I had previously had a play on the Indian Face in 2007 but in the end decided to do something else on that trip. It was quite interesting for me to do that, and also afterwards to experience a lot of questions from people at lectures and comments etc.
I decided not to lead Indian Face on that visit for a few separate reasons. First of all, a hold snapped on me while toproping it which made me acutely aware of an objective danger issue not under my control. As routes go, it’s really quite solid and lovely rock to climb. But the small crimpy flakes do occasionally snap. In one way maybe I was unlucky that one snapped on me but I was certainly happy it happened while not leading! So I worried about this at the time. One particular foothold in particular worried me. But it turned out I had gone slightly too far right near the crux and after watching Alun Hughes’ Indian Face film realised I didn’t need to go to that hold.
The other reason was that my feet are, in general, very weak and I seem to suffer more than most from foot cramp and always have a painful first month of the trad season. That spring I’d been working on the first ascents of Metalcore 8c+ at the Anvil until late May so had been doing nothing but dangling from roofs. My feet were bloody killing me on Indian Face. So I figured a trip later in the trad season would be a better idea (which I never got round to).
The third reason was a bit more subconscious and not necessarily about the Indian Face. I’d just had a year in which things had changed a lot for me, I’d just opened the first E11, repeated two E10 graded routes, done my first 8c+ and gone from beavering away by myself on these projects to talking about them to hundreds of people on lecture tours. I got a bit worried about all this. I worried that I might not be able to keep in tune with the inner voice that keeps you safe and making good decisions on cliffs and routes without much gear. Whether I had anything real to worry about or not is irrelevant, the point is it’s a healthy thing to think if you spend your life sketching about a long way above gear.
I thought it would be a good idea to see if I could be a bit more relaxed about climbing routes and be able to just walk away and leave them. My concern was that I might slip into an unthinking routine of doing one after another, without taking time to reflect, and in so doing, walk blindly into a climbing accident. So my decision was to leave Indian Face alone until further notice.
Further notice arrived last week after some dry weather and a month of doing a lot of trad on my weak old toes. So I went back down and did it. All of this is no big deal, is it?
But my surprise was that folk didn’t seem to quite get the difference between trying a route like Indian Face and project at the limit of today’s standard. Even though Indian Face was at the time 2 grades below the maximum level of trad climbing (and now even more), it still kills you if you break a hold, or just make a mistake and fall off it. To climb very poorly protected trad, whether it’s VS or E12, you have to respect the fact that you might get killed doing it. I mean, properly respect it.
The harder the route, the smaller the margin for error, and the more important it is to be completely full of inspiration, focus and love for that route. To be worth it, it’s got to be damn important to you. On a route like Echo Wall, it had a high level of personal meaning for me in lots of ways. So I was willing to increase my level of acceptable risk. Indian Face is a lovely route, but it doesn’t hold that level of meaning for me. So it just didn’t make sense to do it with unfit toes and not enough time to work a sequence around the worrying looking foothold. I spent the last day of the trip doing Trauma instead.
I’d totally recommend this process of deliberately breaking your routine of doing anything that’s risky once in a while, so you can step back and be sure you’re having a clear conversation with yourself about that risk. If people taunt you for ‘bottling it’ in a macho and idiotic manner, all the more reason to hold off until the absolutely correct moment comes around.
This spring has been good for injecting some sanity into the comparison between the hardest trad routes. I know I didn’t help much by not bothering to grade Echo Wall, but then it was hard for me to find a good comparison, and still is. I’d concur with Johnny’s original grade (in the scan from the new routes book in the Cloggy guide) of soft E9. In it’s time (the 80s) it was I’m certain the hardest trad route in the world until Dave Birkett put up If Six Was Nine in 1992, which is probably half an E grade harder, just as serious and much more demanding of fitness. ISWN is the benchmark E9 in my opinion. Holdfast is nearly a full grade harder than Indian Face. And it was great to see Dave B repeat The Walk of Life, confirming it at E9 and that there is actually some method in the grading system.
Things have come quite a long way since Indian Face in trad. The hardest route I’ve done, Echo Wall, is either two, or three E grades harder, I can’t really decide. But a direct comparison between them is kind of silly; Echo Wall is about 8c (IF is 7b+) and has poorer protection than Indian Face and is considerably harder to spend any time trying. The experience of climbing both routes could not be more different. After about 15 climbing sessions and I only ever linked Echo Wall on a toprope twice. I think the only time I ever actually fell while working Indian Face was when the hold snapped. Predicting the chances of survival in a fall from poorly protected routes is a highly dubious game. Let me tell you that falling off either route is a seriously bad idea. But if I had to choose I’d rate my chances a lot higher falling off Indian Face onto those RPs than onto the nuts in that wobbly tooth under the Echo Wall roof.
It might seem laboured reading all these details about the grades - it feels like that writing about it too. But the myth about the difficulty of Indian Face has built up to an embarrassing level. As Dawes said to me this morning - “There is so much bullshit written about that route, you would think a Welsh dragon is going to swoop in and get you at the crux”.
Great Wall after the rain came. Thank god I didn’t hang about any longer before leading...
When I’m back in Lochaber, I’ll post up some video stills from the ascent. If you are psyched to see the footage, I’m sure you will later in the year. Thanks to Claire for suffering another singleminded mission to the other end of the UK, a minging sodden trudge down Snowdon in the rain and for saying “It’s just a bit of rock, get it led”.
Johnny and Nick describing Indian Face and where your head needs to be to climb it!
Thinking about moves on Indian Face. Photos: Hot Aches
Neil Gresham emailed with some thoughts about Indian Face last night. Neil repeated the route several years ago and since then It’s had top ropes from other climbers who thought it was too snappy to justify. Neil didn’t find it snappy, I guess because nothing must’ve snapped on him! A part of a hold snapped on me while I was working the moves just before the RP cluster which would’ve been a 80 foot groundfall for me had I been leading at the time. Meaningless death is not cool.
Of course dealing with loose rock is all part of the game of climbing. Part of the normal everyday headpoint process is getting a sequence that allows for more careful use of creaky or thin holds. As routes go I agree with Neil that this one isn’t actually that snappy. There were just two or three holds that were a bit worrying, especially the “brittle spike” that Dawes mentions in his account of the first ascent. Before a lead you could minimise (but unfortunately never eliminate) the risk of them snapping by spreading the force more equally across limbs. The other unfortunate is that if they did snap you would probably die.
Indian Face is an excellent climb overall and the snappyness was a minor issue compared to the aesthetics for me. I wasn’t that psyched to spend another day going back up there to lead it when it wasn’t really that enjoyable moves for me and getting sore feet (I always get foot cramp on big slab trad at the start of the summer season – I should have waited til later maybe). Lovers of this type of climbing will undoubtedly think the moves are excellent (and no climber could mistake the quality of the line). It so happens my taste in moves meant that Trauma was the much better route for me, hence I spent the rest of my few days climbing that instead.
It would be cool to climb the route just for the history attached to it and the awesome experiences the previous climbers have had on this wall. But I’d never climb something you could die on just for the sake of a climbing cv or following others. How stupid would that be! I also like to save the times when I really stick my neck out for climbs that push my limit. I don’t feel the need to go around ticking classics for the sake of it.
I might go back on Cloggy if I’m passing that area again and perhaps fall in love with the moves more slowly? They will silently brew in my head as always. But I doubt it would be an obsession for me – and that’s what I look for in climbing. So I’ll second Neil’s good word for the quality of Indian Face. If you are in the pass – go do it…
Trauma E9 7a, Dinas Mot. Click on it for a bigger view. Photo: Claire MacLeod
Claire, Kev and me headed to North Wales for a few days to meet up with some of the Edinburgh massive staying in Nant Peris. I was keen to check out the historic route Indian Face. This route is a massive slab climb with really bad RPs for protection, although I knew the climbing on it was meant to be not too bad physically (F7b+). After the huge hype about this route in films, books and the magazines, I was expecting some really awesome climbing.
When we clapped eyes on the cliff it did indeed look very idyllic above the mountain loch, although not as big I expected (I guess I’m used to the Ben though). I toproped the route a few times cleanly and thought about going for a lead the next day. But unusually for me I didn’t feel my usual all encompassing psyche to lead the route I’m working on. The climbing wasn’t very technical, just standing up on many very small toe edges for 100 feet. You can take both your hands off on any move on the whole thing, but it’s still super thin on the toes. My feet hurt! Foot cramp was putting me off at first, but then later when I thought about leading the route, I realised that the only thing that would make me fall off would be the snappy nature of the some of the footholds or one of my feet randomly skidding. Both were relatively likely and although the RP protection was not nearly as bad as I had read, there is still the possibility to die in a fall from the end of the hard part. So I sacked it and went in search of something more motivating to climb. It was a good experience – really reinforcing that the reason I like to climb bold routes is to exercise skill and judgement to control risk - and therein lies the enjoyment. When your chances of survival come down to whether a crystal decides to snap at that given moment, I’m not really that interested. The only bones I have ever broken so far happened in this way – when a pebble decided to snap when I was soloing Doug (E8) on Gritstone, after staying firm while I toproped it minutes before. 9 years on, I still have to walk or run uphill on my toes with that foot because I can’t bend it. Good call I think.
Ray Wood’s inspiring picture of Leo on the first ascent of Trauma
It’s nice to be able to go and experience it yourself! Photo: Claire MacLeod
Next up was Wales’ non-slabby E9; Trauma (E9 7a) in the Llanberis pass. The iconic photo of Leo Houlding on it would get anyone psyched and I wanted to be in the same place as Leo in that photo. So after coming down from Cloggy I ran up quickly to get a couple of hours on it before dark. That was enough time to suss the (exquisite) moves and gear. Next day, I got it in the bag. Conditions were a bit on the warm side for a Scot, but that psyche was back again, a good feeling. Just before I was going to pull the top rope, the quite amazing climber James McCaffie and his friend Jack raced up the slabs below us to say hello. Caff tied on and had a blast too – he’ll have it led in a day or two I reckon. After they nimbly hopped off up the grooves on their speed soloing mission, The Hot Aches guys arrived, sweating, having just belted across the valley from the Cromlech.
They’d been filming Jude Spanken cruising Lord of the Flies (E6) onsight for their new film, and got themselves sorted to film me lead Trauma. No need for recce-ing camera positions; they already filmed James Pearson making the second ascent earlier this spring! Probably the hardest part of Trauma is to blindly place a crucial wire in the middle of a 6c cross-through move, and then downclimb half the route to the ground. Setting up for the move, I had a proper faff, getting my feet tangled in the previous piece of gear (a small pecker). So by the time I got the wire in, strength was no longer in abundance, and I had some impressive all-over Elvis on the downclimb. The Elvis shake returned with a vengeance on the lead through the crux. I made it through, but very (VERY) nearly dropped the final piece of gear which would have left me stranded near the top of the wall in a sticky situation. A great evening’s climbing, and rewarding to make a very fast ascent.
Kevin Shields on the sharp end. Photo: Claire MacLeod
The next morning it was Kev’s turn to feel the pressure of the impending headpoint. With the help of the sounds of psyche from his ipod while tying on, he did the business in style. Claire was also on a learning curve this week, getting used to moving about on big crags on a rope to take photos. I could see she still had to swallow her feeling of exposure abbing over the top of Dinas Mot to photograph Trauma, but once over, she was dangling about happily and snapping furiously as I slapped furiously.
Back home now…time for bed… tomorrow begins the big pack up to move house.
The team (Kev, Diff and Emma) have a kip at Cloggy
