Preparation is everything.
But I keep screwing it up over and over. Friends of mine have pointed out my lack of preparation before and I listened but still don’t seem to have sorted it out. Just a few days ago I messed up big time, but I’ll tell you about that later, and last weekend I made my usual mistake of falling off the last move.
It was on a long traverse on Dogs Dinner Buttress in Cheedale. Unclimbed but looked at by many. I spent a few days on it about 7 years ago, then a few sweaty afternoons last month and then went early to avoid the sun for my third visit this year. The traverse is very definitely a route of four quarters, and a route rather than boulder problem being over 100 moves long. Each quarter is split by a rest, though the one between the first two is poor. The first half is the meat of the problem, 8c+ to a very good rest. It could end well there. Then maybe another 8a+ to a natural break in the climbing before the last section. This is where I was aiming to finish, previously the last section had been under ivy and trees, and though now cleaned off, there was no low level traverse possible, only some potential way up at 30 feet to complete the entire wall traverse.
Five Ten athlete Paul Smitton was there already when I arrived, it was 8am, and he’d been there for ages; keen! I warmed up on bits of the traverse, and noted that the last quarter looked easy but high, something too worry about another day. I went for a burn expecting to fail but somehow ended up in the middle, more than I’d hoped! Then the next section I was freestyling, unclimbed terrain for me with Paul behind pointing the way. I sketched it to the last quarter by the skin of my teeth. So that was my aim, time to dismount? No – the whole challenge was there. Paul spotted as I progressed, up high on loose flakes, though cleaned and dry and chalked. He’d put a lot of work in! Dithering I made it, then at last back down low and across the final slab on good crimps, the easy looking section. I was within a few meters and began my celebration, a smile building within for another success. But suddenly I was stuck, right hand where my left needed to be, the finishing hold winking at me barely out of reach. Unable to reverse the move I’d dropped into I hung, clawing at the nothingness with my left as my right gradually exploded. Then I was off, gutted, only to instantly find the hold I needed, a good one too, and now a place I’d never fall off, and, had I seen this hold, a place I would not have fallen off on this go!
Preparation lets me down again. In hindsight it was easy to see that I should have given this a quick glance, guaranteeing success. Now, with the sun coming round and my energy burned it would have to wait for anther day! Sometimes though something good comes out of it (rarely). I’m glad I dropped it there. For a start Paul had put a lot of work in and was really after the first ascent, he’d been there a lot. He absolutely deserved first dibs. The last section I would never have touched if he hadn’t cleaned it all. He was to go down in the next few days and get the complete ascent to give ‘Pedigree Chum’ - one of the best traverses in the country, now totally clean and dry. Secondly if I’d nailed it I’d probably never have gone back, but now I had to, and it was yesterday that I scurried along the high last section again, aware of my aloneness should any of the snappy flakes depart, to finish easily across the previously unprepared slab. But it was back down on the ground when a spanner dropped neatly into the works of my success, the final quarter somehow unsettling me. Three quarters was not good enough, now clearly the climbing cannot end there, but the final section is out of character, high up and not hard with a very good high up rest before. But the low version is impossible – isn’t it? What about those holds? Small and facing the wrong way. Three hours later the moves were done, the section climbed with just one fall. Desperate for sure and with no rest before it: 9a+ for the lot most likely. So it’s not over. Good news, a mere three days on such quality rock would have felt too few, now there is gonna be a good bunch more!
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