Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

On Thursday I drove West again to meet up with another friend of mine who was over from Chamonix (France) for the festive period. This time it was Will Sim, who was just stopping off in Britain on his was back to the Alps after a successful trip to Patagonia with John Griffith.

I picked Will up at the Green Welly Stop in Tyndrum, where his parents had dropped him off on there way north. We talked about where to go, and from the weather forecast it was obvious that we had to get as high as we could due to the high temperatures that where melting most of the Scottish winter conditions. So the Ben was the obvious option.

Will was psyched to get on something hard and preferably a new line, and I had just the route in mind that would enter into both those categories. It was an amazing looking line that Guy Robertson had tipped me off about and I had spied a look at it when I did the route “Babylon” on No.3 gully buttress. It follows the steep crack line up the overhanging wall which is round the arête to the left of “The Secret”.

Topo of the route. This pic was taken on a clearer day

After describing this route to Will and showing him some pictures of the line that I had on my laptop, the psych began to flow freely and we were both eager to give it a go.

When we were walking up No.3 gully, the temp was only just below freezing and the humidity was obviously very high. This did not fill us with confidence for finding our intended route in condition! But we trudged on upwards anyway until our steep objective loomed above us.

Our weapons of choice

The route looked fierce and very intimidating, but we where keen to give it a shot. Thankfully all the snow and turf was well frozen and there was ice smears on the first pitch, while the second pitch had a very light riming of frozen hoar frost. Unbelievably, It was looking good!

While we where stood at the bottom of the route, Will commented that the rock was still literally rhiming/hoaring up before our eyes. The wind was blowing straight onto the main/top pitch and it was swiftly getting whiter and whiter. So there was only one thing for it……….

We sat in the freezing wind and snow for 2 hours eating biscuits, chatting about past trips and gathering all our psych. Until we eventually decided to go for this beast of a line. So now the turf was frozen, there was ice and neve on both pitches and the top pitch was in exceptional hard mixed condition, IT WAS GAME ON!

Will started up the first pitch, which climbed a thin ice smear in the right facing corner, then up right onto a steep rock shield, he then traversed further right into the hanging chimney (hard) and up out onto the snowy turfy ledges to below the impending steep rack in the looming headwall.

Will starting up the ice smear on the first pitch

Once I had seconded the pitch and was also under the steep second pitch, I soon started having second thoughts about the days objective. “F**king ‘ellllll, it looks well harder from here”.

Will gave some good words of encouragement and said just to give it my best, so that’s what I did! I started up the immaculate crack and much to my disappointment there was very little progress to start. There where no chock stones or good hooks anywhere to be found and after a few up and down climbs I thought it was an unrealistic objective.

I looked around, and saw what looked like a potential sequence to get higher up the pitch. Not wanting to spoil other peoples on-sight of this awesome line, I’m reluctant to go into too much detail on how I did the lower crux moves, but what I will say is that it was super thin, super hard and very pumpy! Once I had reached the obvious chock stone at about half height I swiftly tried to get into a comfy position to try and get rid of the raging pump in my forearms. From my so called rest position (a place where I got even more pumped) I looked up at the rest of the pitch that loomed above. I could see the obvious ledge at 3/4 height that would be home to a very comfy rest, all I had to do was figure out the second crux to get there.

Me heading into battle on the crux pitch (unfortunately the humidity killed my camera lense)

After some more up and down climbing from the semi-rest position I had placed some marginal kit below the bulge in the icy crack and had kind of figured out how I was going to surmount the ledge. There was a tv sized block hanging over the lip of the ledge which looked like it was welded down by ice and hard snow. I pulled up and hooked this. Suddenly it moved closer and started to topple off, I swiftly shoved it back onto the ledge as far as I could, but all the time I was doing this I was locked off on my left axe and my bicep felt like it was going to explode. I quickly reversed back to the good axe hook and tried to slow my breathing and focus on getting some strength back in my arms. I knew it was going to be very hard getting onto the ledge without knocking off the block, but I had to, because if it was to fall it would defiantly have crushed Will, and that would not have been Ideal!

On my second attempt I managed to get a very high right foot on the ledge, to the side of the block and make an all mighty press move off my left axe while trying to avoid touching the block. The next few seconds are a bit blurry in my mind (probably due to fear) but I found myself stood on the ledge with the block between my feet and my chest pressed hard against the overhanging wall above. I was in a fairly stable position and managed to place a high runner above my head. Unfortunately the ropes where now getting caught round the block and it was starting to move again.

We decided that I would stand very still and in balance on the ledge while Will untied from the belay and soloed further up the turfy ground below to get out of the way of the block. Once he was in