No Thank You
By Gavin Anderson
Unlike its frutchy cousin in the Cairngorms, Tremadog Rock is made for stylish climbing, and here we were going to do One Step in the Clouds, a lovely name for a lovely climb on everybody’s tick list. And it was all ours. No one crowding the stances, no impatient hot-shot youth goosing the last on the rope. We took our time, for we were all a bit rusty. Even setting up a solid belay had to be reviewed; runners had to be tugged into place. It was only Mild VS but still the delicate climbing had to be approached with caution, especially for me in the lead.
It was all too good to be true. We had finished the initial blocky pitch without incident, and were enjoying the rock on the exquisite second pitch. And here it comes, Trouble with a capital F. Way behind us was a woman nimbly storming her way up the crag in bare feet; everything was for show, , a golden limb transferred elegantly to that vacated hold, no rope, no nothing. Even the way she grasped the rock was a fashionista’s cat walk; the hand dramatically poised above the hold, the posture held still for the edification of all around, then gently, the hand lowered precisely onto its mark, no fumbles, no piano playing. All eyes were on her. She clearly thought the route beneath her, justified merely as a warm up for a swim. And was fairly scampering up the crag, gently unwinding her body like a sleepy cat. I disliked her immediately.
She was pals with everyone on the crag, bragging about herself and belittling us, dropping names shamelessly. “Where’s Joe today? He’s not gone fishing, has he? What’s Don up to now?” Don had been dead for several years. She said all this, plus non-stop gossip, garnered from the watering holes of the famous in her posh Estuary accent, while sauntering up the route and making vocal her impatience with us, plodders, especially Honeysuckle, who practising great forbearance said nothing, but I could sense the volcano simmering. “Can’t you wiggle faster?” She was living perilously.
“This slab is so easy…” She was just beneath us, on the long slabby pitch near the top. It needed careful attention to footwork. What with being rusty, I was a bit jittery. It was very exposed, verging on frightening, and needed to be taken seriously. There were slippery patches where the rain hadn’t completely dried out. For my two friends unused to the vagaries of Welsh rock it was intimidating. A tight rope was called for. Honeysuckle slipped once but adroitly regained her footing; however it was obvious enough to elicit a sneer from Jungle Jane.
“What price Yosemite, Huh?”
“I would be careful on this crack, if I were you. It’s greasy.” She ignored me of course, but I felt duty bound to say it.
“Bollocks! The whole thing is a piece of piss.” She laughed gaily and started up one of these insider conversations with someone on Vector. “Is so-and- so still screwing such-and -such?” Meanwhile her onward progress had come to a stop. She was sort of climbing, making tentative moves up an awkward exposed mantelshelf near the top and then sliding down. I knew that was fatal. With a mantelshelf you either do it or you don’t. She was dithering about indecisively looking for that miraculous hold to appear or an easy way out, not so confident now.
“Hang about. This ledge is greasy. Whoops my leg just slipped! My feet are all covered in mud. I‘m slipping!” The posh voice, now not so posh, had risen an octave or two. “Jesus! Please help me! She started to cry. Happily she was wearing a harness. I tied a figure eight knot in the rope clipped a krab into it and threw it down to her. I looked to Honeysuckle, she not needing telling, had already whipped a belay onto my harness. The girl was panicking, kept missing the harness loop. Every bone in her body was shaking. Any second now! Thank God she just managed to clip in and immediately fell off. She shrieked, her full weight coming onto my wrist belay, old fashioned, but I hadn’t time to put the rope through an ATC. It was so sharp I could feel a burn sizzling across my palms. But we held her. Both of my comrades were hauling with all their might, and eventually we got the girl back onto the rock. She stopped screaming and was climbing hand over hand Tarzan style. She was as skinny but even with the three of us pulling, it was nigh on impossible, and for me bloody painful. “Climb won’t you!” I shouted. She reverted to climbing the rock. A few more jittery moves, then she settled, and in no time at all reached our stance amid the trees. She gasped, scowled, threw down our rope and then took off down the descent gully. Not a word!
“Rushing off to meet Don,” Honeysuckle quipped,
Greydon “She nearly did.”
(95% of this is true!)
