Petestack Blog

Some rain this week to dampen our recent spell of fine late autumn weather (aka ‘summer’) but, with today looking OK and my new La Sportiva Trangos (the blue ones, just bought for Mount Kenya) needing a test beyond some evenings as expensive carpet slippers, I took them for a wander up North Buttress on the Buachaille Etive Mor. And how good they are… being light, comfortable and precise, walking, scrambling and climbing well, and just generally inspiring confidence in everything they do. Also thanks to Dean Carpenter at Ellis Brigham, Fort William, for the time spent on Wednesday playing with fit and trying tweaks for my mutant right foot, none of which I needed today (was carrying that tweaked insole just in case!) but am glad to have in reserve for the longer periods of wear where they might yet prove significant. :-)

While there are many great rock climbs at Polldubh, Storm (HVS 4b,4c,5a) is the undisputed classic in taking a compellingly natural and sensationally exposed line in three pitches of increasing difficulty up the biggest and best wall on the crags. And I’d done it just once before (22 July 1990), with my 21-year-old memory of gibbering up it on second remaining a demon requiring exorcism through leading now I’m back climbing again and promising to expand my leading horizons beyond measure if I ever plucked up the courage to get on it. So I hummed and hawed about it for a couple of years, but still couldn’t quite see it happening with that half-imaginary great shadow to cloud the issue until suddenly deciding (maybe after listening again to Dougie MacLean’s Ready for the Storm?) one unexpectedly sunny day last week that it was time. But I couldn’t find a partner, the weather turned again and it was ultimately just luck that brought me the combination of a fine evening (last few hours before the rain, with enough breeze to keep the worst of the midges at bay) and a willing accomplice in the very steady Johnny MacLeod last night…

So I gave Johnny the first pitch (no gimme at 4b with a couple of awkward moves low down), with the master plan being for me to lead the big crack pitch (if that’s not a misnomer when you’re basically climbing a wall with holds up the crack line rather than the crack as such) and crux groove while retaining the option of Johnny leading through to take the crux if I’d had enough. Can’t say I was quick on the crack, but kept it all under control with the climbing steady rather than hard and moves exciting more for the situation than their technicality. Then must admit to wavering with another party on the route behind us (‘we’d be quicker if you just led through and we didn’t have to rearrange this hanging belay, Johnny’) before taking the plunge… except that it wasn’t a plunge but more of a silly slip from the crux bulge as I missed a foothold and felt my stupid hands let go when all but over it. So I could have backed off and turned my agenda for the climb inside out by letting it all get to me, but one crucial foothold and two good nuts (to back up the two ‘blind’ cams that caught me) later and I had it below me, yelling ‘ya beauty!’ and finding it surprisingly straightforward in the end. A pity about the fall (not the first Johnny’s seen me take!), but still pretty chuffed and not letting that take too much of the shine from such a cathartic experience! :-)

So you know what’s sitting in the CD tray this morning and will be spinning again as this gets posted? That’s right, The Essential Dougie MacLean…

But I am ready for the storm, yes sir, ready
I am ready for the storm, I’m ready for the storm

‘It was the best of times (pitch 2 of Butterknife), it was the worst of times (pitch 2 of Centurion), it was the age of wisdom (choosing Butterknife), it was the age of foolishness (considering Centurion even if Johnny couldn’t make it), it was the epoch of belief (leading the jugtastic steep Butterknife corner), it was the epoch of incredulity (finding the equivalent Centurion corner to be steeper and more sustained than I’d thought)’… och, stuff that, it’s not original and not even all true when (despite one or two of those ‘just get me out of here’ moments) Scottish mountain rock climbing simply doesn’t get much better than Butterknife and Centurion on consecutive days! So perhaps it wasn’t necessary to misappropriate and mangle one of the most memorable opening paragraphs in English literature to say so, but somehow ‘we went climbing on Friday and Saturday’ just doesn’t carry the same evocative weight as ‘we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way’…

So we (Isi and I) went climbing on Friday and Saturday with two four-star mountain crag classics in mind, heading first for Butterknife on Garbh Bheinn of Ardgour then (roping in Johnny to look after us on the hard bits!) Centurion on Ben Nevis. And (to deal with Friday first) our ascent of Butterknife was absolutely the ‘best of times’, with the stunning corner of the second pitch as good as it gets at any grade (some say VS, but we thought it Hard Severe 4b) and the one fairly nondescript pitch (the third) in four not detracting significantly from a route of the very highest quality.

Butterknife photos mainly by Isi, with first and last cropped by me and that corner unmistakable below/right of centre in the first…

Now, you can’t really top Butterknife in its own way, but Centurion’s bigger, meatier, two full grades harder and just as good in taking the central corner of the mighty Carn Dearg Buttress to some easier (but breathtakingly exposed) middle ground before breaking through a crown of overhangs via two stunning final pitches. So you start up this deceptively tricky little wall (given 4c in the SMC guides but 5a by Latter, and led by Johnny after I turned it down), then it’s straight to business with the big corner pitch at no-nonsense, unlikely-to-be-bone-dry 5a. And Isi bravely took this on, making steady progress at first but finally running short of quick draws at some slimy impasse about two-thirds of the way up, taking a hanging stance and bringing up Johnny to finish the pitch with the pair of them doing well to sort things out up there. By which time I’d had long enough to start getting both lonely (with the ‘queue’ below dissipating to try other routes) and suitably apprehensive at the first stance, found it exciting enough just to follow with my comparative lack of recent rock mileage and (perhaps disappointingly when I’ve not been backing off so far this year) subsequently declared myself content to remain passenger/photographer for the day. So Isi led the airy 4b traverse across the corner’s left wall and Johnny naughtily ran the 20m 4b pitch up the flaky wall above into the following 40m 4a groove thing on our 60m ropes to land us below the so-called second crux. Which (according to the master plan) he led and I might have gone second, but had to send up Isi first to re-clip the crucial runners from her red rope to my blue rope with a potential swing to kingdom come facing me if I came off the way things were. And it’s a great 5a pitch, feeling both more my style than the big corner and surprisingly amenable to follow but, just when you think you’ve unlocked the door and are almost home dry, you’re confronted with the most improbable-looking seventh and final pitch up a 4c ‘spiky arete’ and bulge which Isi coolly despatched to log a thoroughly deserved ‘alt lead’ for the climb as a whole.

Centurion photos currently all by me, but still hoping to get one or two of me from Isi…

So that’s Centurion, and what a great day we had despite (or perhaps even because of) those ‘moments’ we’d ultimately all miss if they never happened! Must just add that there were teams enjoying routes all over the Ben including (we believe) something new and hard up the right wall of Sassenach, but also some major rockfall incidents (we heard two) with the helicopter apparently lifting someone from Tower Gap as we were tackling our final pitch, so obviously hoping those involved are recovering OK.

Summer at last and you might think this the ‘wrong’ time to be sitting inside blogging, but I’m between climbing days, it’s on the hot side for mid-day running and (without looking at any wholesale waste of the weather) I’m happy enough to be hiding from the noon sun right now. So time to tell you about another good day yesterday and a surprising first visit for Noel (who’s climbed just about everywhere else I can think of!) to the Ardnamurchan Ring Crags.

Now, where better to start than the lovely VS slab of Greta Gabbro on Dome Buttress which, having led three times before, I had lined up as a nice wee lead for Noel? Followed by the steeper neighbouring (H)VS of Claude which, having seconded just once and remembering nothing about the moves, looked like a good tick for me. And it’s a great wee route with some surprises up its sleeve, being essentially non-pumpy where it looks strenuous, with good rests (the one thing I could remember clearly) and gear but some quite tricky climbing. So VS or HVS? For what it’s worth I can see the argument either way, with the rests and gear maybe suggesting VS but some of the moves (undoubtedly 5a) just feeling sort-of HVSy! And, having climbed both harder VSs and easier HVSs, I’m still on the fence here.

Anyway, after I’d abseiled back down Claude to get two hands and a nut key onto the walking Master Cam 0 that Noel couldn’t retrieve single-handed on the way up, we moved over to Meall an Fhir-eoin Beag (aka Creag Meall an Fhir-eoin) for the essential VS crag classic tick of Yir, which I’d expected Noel to lead before finding myself back on the sharp end. But Noel led the lovely curving crack (second pitch of Cuil Iolaire) above to keep things nice and even. And then we headed up to the summit knoll of Meall an Fhir-eoin for Fear of Flying (VS) so I could get on something I hadn’t done before (the lure being Gary Latter’s Scottish Rock description of ‘a good route in a wildly exposed position for the grade, following parallel cracks running horizontally left above the overhanging wall’)… but who knows if we did it right or not? So there are three cracks leaving the corner of Pyroclast, with the first being an obvious foot ‘ledge’ along the top of the wall but threatening an increasingly tricky escape upwards and the others (just a few feet higher and more obviously ‘parallel’) which I took being fingery and very, very naughty for 4b (felt closer to 5a)! Not quite what I was expecting either way, with these thin cracks being short-lived but exciting when I’d had this vision of fatter cracks going on for longer, and arguably a somewhat contrived way to leave the more logical Pyroclast corner, but still another good lead for me. And perhaps we were just spoiled by starting with three of the absolute Ardnamurchan classics, so… another day in crag heaven? Overall (with four good routes on perfect rock, stunning sea/island views from our progression up the hill and a perfectly-timed return for the second-last, 9:00pm ferry), you bet!

So yesterday might have been Wednesday (who knows when you’re on holiday?) but, graced by the fine evening which Tuesday lacked, it made a good surrogate Tuesday for the Polldubh Club at (guess where?) Polldubh. And I climbed the first three pitches of Autobahnausfahrt on High Crag with Noel, finding them dirty and feeling harder than their given grades of 4a, —, 4b, with the route apparently needing more traffic to keep it ‘nice’ (NB we’d both soloed it before, but not for many years and neither of us would have done last night!). So it came as no surprise this morning to discover a note (re. the middle tier of High Crag) in Gary Latter’s Scottish Rock stating that:

The routes are a little bit dirtier than the more popular shorter routes lower down, but not unduly so.

However, this post is not so much about Autobahnausfahrt as Enigma (a fine Sullivan/Clough route on the cleaner upper tier of High Crag), which searching this blog should tell you I’ve climbed far more often. But it’s also a route that appears to have been accidentally ‘airbrushed’ from the history of Polldubh climbing and (through cumulative misreading of something started with the best of intentions) completely swallowed up by Autobahnausfahrt. So let’s take a look at the strange history of the ‘Autobahnausfahrt Enigma’…

• Enigma was climbed at Hard Severe by Terry Sullivan and Ian Clough on 11 April 1959, with Enigma Direct (the better way) added by Clough in 1962 and described in the 1970 Schwartz/Wright guide (the only place noting the distinction?).
• Autobahnausfahrt was climbed at VS (with combined tactics and a point of aid over the upper tier roof) by Klaus Schwartz and Brian Chambers on 2 September 1969 and again described in the 1970 Schwartz/Wright guide (possibly also the only place with a clear description of the third pitch).
• With the aid being removed from the upper tier roof of Autobahnausfahrt by Kenny Spence and Rab Anderson in 1981 to produce the much harder Auto Roof, Autobahnausfahrt is described (to produce a consistently-graded combo) in the 1985 Grindley guide as finishing up Enigma. But, with the note explaining this unfortunately not on the same page as the route description, the accidental elimination of Enigma has begun…
• Skip forward another five years to Kev Howett’s Rock climbing in Scotland (1990) and we find a Kinloss Grooves/Autobahnausfahrt combo that’s actually a Kinloss Grooves/Enigma combo, with first ascents credited to Clough/Sullivan and Schwartz/Chambers when they should be Clough/Sullivan and Sullivan/Clough!
• Forward again to the SMC’s Highland Outcrops (1998) and the Autobahnausfahrt description gives the unacknowledged Autobahnausfahrt/Enigma combo, where looking up 1969 in the separate first ascent list will tell you that the FFA of pitch 4 (as Auto Roof) was by Spence and Anderson, but not that pitches 4 and 5 are actually Enigma. And yet the information is buried there (where no-one not in the know will be looking for it) under 1959, where you’ll find the solitary reference to Enigma in the whole book (it’s neither listed as a route in the main text nor mentioned in the Autobahnausfahrt description) as ‘now included as the second last pitch of Autobahnausfahrt.’
• Forward again to the SMC’s Scottish Rock Climbs (2005) and Latter’s Scottish Rock (2008) and you’ll find both describing the whole combo as Autobahnausfahrt (credited to Schwartz and Chambers), with Enigma conspicuous by its absence and the accidental ‘airbrushing’ complete.

So does it matter? Well, I say yes! Both Sullivan/Clough and Schwartz/Chambers partnerships are important to the history of Polldubh, but Enigma’s a great little route in its own right (the best and cleanest part of the new ‘Autobahnausfahrt’) and deserves to be recorded properly. So (making an open plea to future guidebook writers here) please can we have Enigma back?