Led astray by the telly? - Roger Dyke
By Roger Dyke
Watching Joe Brown's TV climbing spectacular at Wen Zawn long ago, what caught Keith Bolton's and my imagination was Don Whillans and Pete Crew on 'Wen'. It looked like something we could do. And it looked brilliant.
So, never having been on a sea cliff before, we went to do it. Wen Zawn was deserted and intimidating. We looked across to the thin crack up an apparently blank, near-vertical wall. "Not today", we agreed.
Let's do 'The Trap', that's supposed to be easier" said Keith. Realising what The Trap was before we set off, we rigged our abseil accordingly, and were able to pull our rope down. Somehow I came to lead off. OK for a while, then the holds became smaller, and wetter? Keith took over. "Bloody hell, this is not The Trap just because you could easily jam your abb rope?"
We eventually regained the "viewing platform", and saw there were now two folk on 'Wen'. We had lunch. They made steady progress. "Keith, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"They only look like ordinary people. If they can do it, we can."
"We can use their abb rope".
"Let's go."
A desperately steep heather descent to the abb point, then down their rope to the ledge. Fortunately the tide kept us off the bottom pitch. By the time we were settled on the ledge, the route was clear. Keith led our first [actually the middle] pitch in his usual steady style. I followed. It hadn't been climbed much then, and there was a lot of loose rock.
At one point both my hand-holds broke off, one after the other: but one foot was on a good hold, and I re-established myself after no more than a little tweek on the rope.
"If you saw what I was belayed to, you wouldn't fall off!" drifted down to me. I approached Keith in the niche: "You'll have to lead through: we can't change over here."
"OK, I'll pick up the gear as I climb over you."
"You've got it all - why do you think I'm belayed on this?" - his head indicated one of our little home-made wedges on a bit of 5mm cord. "Put something good in as soon as you can."
I got a MOAC in, but then I was on the bulge. Absolutely on the limit of my ability, and my strength fading, I didn't dare stop to put anything else in until the angle eased. I put a good one in before the traverse, and while I was doing that Keith called "Lace that ***** traverse for me - I don't fancy that at all".
"OK - I've got plenty of gear left." Indeed, I had an embarrassing amount, having only put on 3 runners since I left him. So I really laced the traverse, 3 or 4 pieces, just keeping a couple for a belay. Yes, to those who are quick at arithmetic, we didn't have much, so the weight of our iron krabs was not a problem. [In fact there is a lot to be said for iron krabs if you don't want your knotted-rope loops to lift off spikes.]
Keith followed. "There's no ***** runners here! Why have you passed all these lovely MOAC slots?"
"I was too gripped, Keith."
"***** hell!! I'd have been gripped if I'd put nothing in!"
Meanwhile, as Keith came up, the rippled surface of our hawser-laid rope shook out first one runner from the traverse, then another? By the time Keith reached my bomber at the start of the traverse, all bar one of the rest were hanging loose on the rope. Keith's gear rarely fell out. [Indeed, I once complained about the extreme difficulty of getting some out. "Listen youth: I put gear in for my safety, not your convenience."]
"Is this what you call lacing the traverse for me?"
